Now That Trump's President... (not any more!)

[ambermonk]

Just pre-ordered.

[zero]

10 hours ago, goDel said:

A quick review of the book

 

 

I agree with this line from that review 1000%:

Quote

Mary takes the media to task for searching for a “strategy” in anything Donald does and for soft-pedaling what she describes as multiple psychological disorders, which, by her account, check a variety of boxes in diagnostic manuals.

the media egg him on relentlessly and IMO play into a game with him causing him to send out outlandish and ridiculous tweets. the majority of his tweets should be viewed as childish off the cuff remarks that he will never follow through with, mostly because he can't due to the fact that the president is not a king.

[azatoth]

So SCOTUS ruled that Trump can't hide his taxes anymore from SDNY. That's gonna make little Donald very mad.

Edited July 9, 2020 by azatoth

[goDel]

27 minutes ago, zero said:

 

I agree with this line from that review 1000%:

the media egg him on relentlessly and IMO play into a game with him causing him to send out outlandish and ridiculous tweets. the majority of his tweets should be viewed as childish off the cuff remarks that he will never follow through with, mostly because he can't due to the fact that the president is not a king.

True. Although, to a certain degree he does play the media (by pushing BS through his twitterfeed), imo. But to assume there's a genius strategist at work here.....nah. It's mostly reactionary "panic football". If there's a genius to it, it's because he just happens to attract a large group of voters.

And - let's not forget - he has the GOP by their balls. Not sure if that's Trumps "genius", or because the GOP has a base which resembles a giant piece of cheese with holes. Where most of it are people who are ideologically fluent, and either operate by group think, or by emotion.

Trump genius =

 

[apriorion]

29 minutes ago, azatoth said:

So SCOTUS ruled that Trump can't hide his taxes anymore from SDNY. That's gonna make little Donald very mad.

Unfortunately, no chance of those tee cords being released before Election Day. And even if they were released, I doubt they would affect his support all that much anyway. 

[psn]

True, but there is probably plenty of criminal evidence in there.

[goDel]

Good thing SDNY can continue to do it's job investigating Trumps finances. Still betting on that orange jumpsuit. Regardless of him winning another round. Which I just don't see happening, btw. Even if he cheats...

The corona-crisis and an economy in shambles is a recipe for a disastrous election. And the BLM-thing has the hole nation in the curtains as well.

 

[ignatius]

4 minutes ago, goDel said:

Good thing SDNY can continue to do it's job investigating Trumps finances. Still betting on that orange jumpsuit. Regardless of him winning another round. Which I just don't see happening, btw. Even if he cheats...

The corona-crisis and an economy in shambles is a recipe for a disastrous election. And the BLM-thing has the hole nation in the curtains as well.

 

and he's trying to force schools to open w/o any offer of help.. only punishment if they don't do what he wants.. even though it's not in his power to punish the schools.. anyway.. he's basically been doubling down on bad decisions and stupid. also, he's retreating to his comfort zone which is racist dog whistles, america first and culture war type shit because he has nothing else to offer 

[zero]

17 minutes ago, goDel said:

Regardless of him winning another round. Which I just don't see happening, btw. Even if he cheats...

I really hope you're right, but I'm keeping my expectations in check as we can never underestimate the power of stupid. I see bad things ahead if the rona appears to be winding down (or pausing before wave 2) around October time frame, the stock market ticks up again, more free $ trump bucks are issued to those in lower income brackets, and other non-Trump things he undoubtedly will take full credit for. we know the base is not moving and he still polls in the high 30%/low 40% range, even with everything that's occurred so far...but I'm trying not to go there yet because mentally I don't know if I have enough left in the tank to deal with 4 more years of this.

[azatoth]

The decision was lame enough that Trump could keep arguing their case in the lower courts for ages before anything is released. While Trump cares more about covering up his financials than anything else, the media would do go good in just concentrating on the Trump admins colossal fail of the covid response, BLM protests, rising unemployment and general chaos.

[custom knob]

if you work on the assumption that trump is the kind of guy who would do anything if it is in his own self-interest, all this anti-china rhetoric of late and american warships moving to the south china sea worries me a bit

 

[dingformung]

3 minutes ago, custom knob said:

if you work on the assumption that trump is the kind of guy who would do anything if it is in his own self-interest, all this anti-china rhetoric of late and american warships moving to the south china sea worries me a bit

 

To be honest it's one of the few things that went right under the Trump administration. Solidarity with Taiwan against the monster that China now is isn't too wrong. China is a power that has concentration camps and does ethnic cleansing and views itself as the natural dominant world power. They don't really have a state of law and the communist party is ruthless and doesn't give a shit about human life, they even sell their own population as quasi slaves just to get rich. They try to undermine Europe and Africa and aim to control the world economy through clever business moves but also lies and tricks. Chinese companies are bound to act under direct order of the Chinese government, which has nothing to do with free trade yet Western democracies treat them as equitable business partners and take their word for granted. The US is imperialistic and committed various atrocities and the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism is not sustainable yet they are not nearly as bad as China is. I'm sure Trump supports Taiwan for all the wrong reasons and the way he and his administration communicate their intentions is as expected total nonsense but in its effect it's the right kind of policy. I wish Europe were less of a lala land and dealt with China in a less naive way.

[custom knob]

I agree with you about the awfulness of the chinese regime, and I think I even agree that trump is right that america should be pushing back against them much more firmly than before - I just think trump + open war with china is a disaster. admittedly I don't know very much about geopolitics or whatever, but it seems unlikely to me that russia would stay out of it, or north korea, or australia, or japan, or indonesia or on and on. ?ww3 with trump in charge of the biggest arsenal - or is china's the biggest arsenal now?

[Nebraska]

hope big T is going to do something to stop this in it's tracks

Edited July 10, 2020 by Nebraska

[dingformung]

11 minutes ago, custom knob said:

I agree with you about the awfulness of the chinese regime, and I think I even agree that trump is right that america should be pushing back against them much more firmly than before - I just think trump + open war with china is a disaster. admittedly I don't know very much about geopolitics or whatever, but it seems unlikely to me that russia would stay out of it, or north korea, or australia, or japan, or indonesia or on and on. ?ww3 with trump in charge of the biggest arsenal - or is china's the biggest arsenal now?

The US has the biggest arsenal and probably will have that for a good part of the next century. Even when public life goes to shits the military apparatus will live on for a while. Sure, it needs to be financed and when China's influence on the world economy increases this will be harder, but I guess the US government would rather do cuts in all other areas before they reduce military spending. The military-industrial complex including secret services is the reason the US can keep its dominant role in the world, they won't give that up. China can't compete with the US in that regard and as for now, nobody is interested in a new World War. It would set civilization as a whole back and nobody would profit. Sure, you can't count on all players being rational, but nobody really wants to commit suicide.

[ignatius]

[may be rude]

On 7/9/2020 at 2:11 PM, azatoth said:

the media would do go good in just concentrating on the Trump admins colossal fail of the covid response, BLM protests, rising unemployment and general chaos.

the media is allied with ratings. they helped trump win. they're in love with the revenue coming from his perpetual controversy, even if they think they hate him. it's actually really sad to see these institutions struggle with the ethics of the choices they have to make.

there was a lot of pressure on the networks to stop covering trump's covid press conferences, because he was using them as a free platform to pump lying rhetoric into voter ears, under the guise of epidemic info. easy ratings for the networks. viewers of msnbc and cnn were pissed at the networks and were letting them know that, and the networks were trying to pry themselves free from trump's fake covid pageant ratings teat. sometimes starting coverage late, sometimes ending coverage early, sometimes breaking away from the covid press conference and then returning, and sometimes just not covering it. some networks said they would try to fact-check them in real time, but they didn't end up really doing that, though some anchors would comment on them in their own ways. 

it was around the disinfectant injection episode that the white house covid press conferences kind of went away. they stopped being daily. at first they moved to earlier in the day for like a week but then they just went away. the networks were already struggling with their choice of offering the megaphone to the biggest liar causing the most deaths. cnn and msnbc were already on the brink of just stopping coverage. i think word got from the networks to the white house that they couldn't keep displacing their primetime shows to cover trump's shit shows anymore. especially if they lost birx and fauci, who were openly bristling at the nature of the pressers.

so it's not idle speculation. you can witness the craven addiction of the media outlets to ratings. they air what is likely to get and keep the highest number of viewers. their agenda is not anti-trump. their agenda is pro-ratings. and actually that worked to get trump elected and it continues to amplify his messaging.

Edited July 10, 2020 by very honest

[zero]

a wooden "statue" of Melania was set on fire recently:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53343671

Quote

Melania Trump sculpture in Slovenia set on fire on US Independence Day

 

donnie's wooden statue was already burned down earlier this year 

Edited July 10, 2020 by zero

[Silent Member]

BAD.

[EdamAnchorman]

1 hour ago, very honest said:

the media is allied with ratings. they helped trump win. they're in love with the revenue coming from his perpetual controversy, even if they think they hate him. it's actually really sad to see these institutions struggle with the ethics of the choices they have to make.

there was a lot of pressure on the networks to stop covering trumps' covid press conferences, because he was using them as a free platform to pump lying rhetoric into voter ears, under the guise of epidemic info. easy ratings for the networks. viewers of msnbc and cnn were pissed at the networks and were letting them know that, and the networks were trying to pry themselves free from trump's fake covid pageant ratings teat. sometimes starting coverage late, sometimes ending coverage early, sometimes breaking away from the covid press conference and then returning, and sometimes just not covering it. some networks said they would try to fact-check them in real time, but they didn't end up really doing that, though some anchors would comment on them in their own ways. 

it was around the disinfectant injection episode that the white house covid press conferences kind of went away. they stopped being daily. at first they moved to earlier in the day for like a week but then they just went away. the networks were already struggling with their choice of offering the megaphone to the biggest liar causing the most deaths. cnn and msnbc were already on the brink of just stopping coverage. i think word got from the networks to the white house that they couldn't keep displacing their primetime shows to cover trump's shit shows anymore. especially if they lost birx and fauci, who were openly bristling at the nature of the pressers.

so it's not idle speculation. you can witness the craven addiction of the media outlets to ratings. they air what is likely to get and keep the highest number of viewers. their agenda is not anti-trump. their agenda is pro-ratings. and actually that worked to get trump elected and it continues to amplify his messaging.

Exactly this.

Journalism (at least in the US) isn't true impartial journalism anymore, the focus is on ratings and making money instead of impartially reporting facts and uncovering stories.  I don't see anything in the near future that will make this change.  Everyone here loves watching their "team's" news and reveling in the spin presented to them of their team winning and the other team losing.

What's the situation in the EU, is it as bad as it has become in the US?

[Silent Member]

It's not as bad as over there, but it's getting worse, a lot of regurgitation of talking points and news fed by lobbyists, so-called "think tanks" and communication agencies, if not that, it's trending stories bought from news agencies, investigative journalism is dying a slow death.

Edited July 10, 2020 by Gocab

[ignatius]

this guy is filling his diapers w/rage and spewing incoherent slogans in  a run of verbal diarheehaa

 

[zero]

roger stone is set to report to prison next week from his current house arrest, since the judge & justice dept have denied his whiny complaints that he can't handle incarceration. what will donnie do? he loves to "go with his gut" and prove all the naysayers wrong, so I'd say there's a 99.9% chance he's going to do something stupid, like pardon him, because everyone around him is saying it's a bad idea. and seems this is causing a bit of a rift in donnie's house. Barr is saying don't do it, yet the fox newsers are saying go for it.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/09/inside-campaign-to-free-roger-stone-355440

Quote

Stone has little support in the White House and the Trump campaign. Corey Lewandowski, the 2016 campaign manager who advises the current reelection effort, has called Stone a serial liar. Stone’s friends say there’s also animosity with the campaign manager, Brad Parscale. Even Attorney General Bill Barr, who gummed up other investigations into the president, supports Stone’s imprisonment.

But outside the campaign and White House, Stone has support from influential backers that include Fox News’s Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, Newsmax founder Chris Ruddy and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, a top Trump ally.

Gaetz has been so aggressive pressing the president for a pardon that it’s led to grumbling in the White House and among fellow Republican House members. Some of them grew uneasy with him for lobbying the president on Air Force One during a trip to Cape Canaveral to witness the SpaceX rocket launch in late May.

 

[apriorion]

On 7/9/2020 at 12:15 PM, goDel said:

Good thing SDNY can continue to do it's job investigating Trumps finances. Still betting on that orange jumpsuit. Regardless of him winning another round. Which I just don't see happening, btw. Even if he cheats...

The corona-crisis and an economy in shambles is a recipe for a disastrous election. And the BLM-thing has the hole nation in the curtains as well.

 

Why in the world did autocorrect change my correctly spelled "records" to "tee cords"? Weird. 

Anyway, I wrote a bit about what I'm really concerned about in the other "WTF is wrong with America" or whatever it's called thread, but my concerns are more about the substantial (non-majority, but still substantial) portion of the electorate, and how they're going to handle the current convergence of crises. While I hope you're right and there's an orange jumpsuit waiting around the bend, that's not going to change the underlying problem that exists in this country. We have too many people who don't see a problem with Trump's behavior, and many of those actually like that stuff about him. Even if he doesn't win, what are the chance that there will be violence in the wake of the election? How close did some places get to historical violence over not getting haircuts 'cause "freedom", or whatever? I know that those events didn't happen, but how close were we, really? It's a counterfactual conditional that we have to evaluate here, so reference to the actual occurrences aren't enough to assuage my worries. I'm concerned about how bad things would have got if one silly, probably insignificant thing had been different. I mean, there are way too many people walking around with assault rifles, gettin' ready. Now, let's pile on rampant and probably not fluid unemployment, evictions, pandemic, conspiracy theories, historic levels of distrust of those with differing political views. How much longer until we hear substantial groups of people declaring that others, out-group members are simply not human? Or are pieces of shit to be disposed of? And the worse is yet to come. Experts say with some regularity that this pandemic is really a "trial run" for the real deal, probably around the corner. Zoonotic diseases are amping up exponentially, given population increases, habitat destruction, etc. When's the real problem going to catch on given what the fuck Brazil has been doing to its forests in just the past few years, thanks to Bolsonaro? When's the potable water supply going to make things worse? (Not just a rhetorical question: I'm genuinely concerned about this one, and the timing.) We just don't have our shit together, and with racial tensions shining a spotlight on criminal justice injustices in this country, we're seeing that people are just fucking stubborn and incapable of genuine rational dialogue and planning. 

Trump's re-election is not really the issue. I am inclined to agree that he won't win. But his election in the first place is a symptom of much deeper problems that we're starting to see bubble up to the surface, and his fucking insane plans to defund the WHO and pull out of the (largely vacuous and symbolic, admittedly) Paris Climate Accords just shows how there are enough people who inform our democratic "process" to drive us all off a cliff. 

[may be rude]