Trump Trainwreck - Ongoing diary of betrayal and evil

[Eric the Green]

[Odin]

(01-19-2017, 05:35 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Gen. James Mattis, the pick for secretary of defense, has spun through the revolving door, leaving the military to serve on the board of General Dynamics, a multinational military contractor, and the scandal-ridden Theranos, a startup company that misled investors and consumers about its blood-testing technology.

To be fair to Mattis, here, a lot of people fell for the BS that woman who owned Theranos was peddling.

[Eric the Green]

So I watched The Donald give his address. He didn't say "you're fired" to President Obama, but thanked him for his help in the transition. He didn't engage in racist rhetoric, but said prejudice is not patriotic. He claimed that the people are now taking back their country, and that forgotten people will no longer be forgotten.

That's all good, but words are easier than actions.

And the lies are embedded in his speech, and must be called out. The people are easily deceived that he is giving back power to them. He is not. He talked about the elites that have enriched themselves in government. But the government is not where the elites are that have enriched themselves. They are in the capitalist and corporate world of which Trump is the most famous member. They control the government, and the Republican Party which he now heads are its representatives there. They are allowed to lobby and control both parties through their money. And he has appointed them to his cabinet, and will appoint them to the Courts. Trump's new administration is not a return of power to the people, as he claims. It is a corporate takeover.

Mr. Trump, I agree with you that the inner cities, the abandoned factories, the people left behind are hurting. It is mostly Republican policies, not so much Democratic and liberal/left policies, that have created this condition, and only Democratic and liberal policies can help change it, not Republican ones. I agree that we have enriched other countries at the expense of our own. Let's see if you can really create better trade deals, Mr. Trump. Your appointments belie your words, however. Your administration's officials seek to bring our nation down to the level of others whom we have catered to in our trade deals. Your administration seeks to pollute our rivers, destroy our lands and native heritage, and exploit our workers with low wages and reduced protections. Your deregulation promises to ravage our people, our climate, our lands and our economy, without the prosperity trickling down from corporate profits that you promise, and your tax policy seeks to further widen the gap between the rich and the rest of us.

If you truly wish to fulfill your promise to "make America great again," then Mr. President, you will have to wake up and get educated. You will have to say "you're fired" to most of the folks you have appointed, and hire others who will defy your Party and pursue opposite policies. If you really want to rebuild our roads and bridges and airports as you promise, then you will have to work with Democrats to spend real tax dollars on these projects, and not merely give tax breaks to your crony capitalists in hopes they will be able to get rich with tolls and usage fees.

You will need an education about foreign affairs. America First may appeal to the American people, and may have a point, but we have allies that must be supported, and tyrants to guard against. All peoples of the world, just like all peoples of the nation, are God's people and one people. What benefits one, benefits all. Our borders are not being over-run; they have already been protected. Our military is great enough. You will need to work politely and intelligently with our allies and neighbors, uphold the rule of international law and not the interests of yourself or corporate profits, and not take personal offense or conduct foreign affairs by tweet.

Mr. President, words are easy, but you face an education if you are going to make them real. And we the people face an education too. We need to get informed about what's going on in this administration, and who is doing it. We can't be naive; we can't paper over differences. We must stand up for truth and justice, and foster the awakening that alone can bring it forth.

[Ragnarök_62]

(01-20-2017, 07:12 PM)taramarie Wrote: What everyone who voted for Trump needs to hear.

I didn't vote for Trump, but why the hell did you post this  fucking snowflake?!!!!!

Take this, snowflake!

[pbrower2a]

Donald Trump has simplified everything in American life to the maximization of profit for the 'right people' from whom all blessings allegedly flow. Many like simple messages.

[Ragnarök_62]

(01-20-2017, 10:44 PM)taramarie Wrote: Why are you personalizing it as if i directed it at you rags?

I'm not personalizing it.  I have a huge allergic reaction to pollen and self righteous nag snowflakes like the one posted. I watched the entire youtube vid and all she did was nag. My hands were literally shaking when I posted the prior thread.

[Ragnarök_62]

(01-20-2017, 11:32 PM)taramarie Wrote: Was she wrong though other than the fact she was making a generalized smear?

She was wrong by the very nature of generalized smears. 

Generalized smears = bigot.

Therefore she's the bigot and therefore a hypocrite.

[Eric the Green]

It doesn't take long for Drumpf to violate his promise to give America back to the people.

Trump’s First Act As President Is To Raise Mortgage Rates On Struggling Homeowners
By Jason Easley on Fri, Jan 20th, 2017 at 3:56 pm
http://www.politicususa.com/2017/01/20/t...wners.html

One of Donald Trump’s first acts as president was to hurt struggling homeowners by signing an executive order that reversed an Obama interest rate cut on FHA mortgages.

This is how Trump began his presidency that he claimed gave power back to the people:

Trump’s first act as president was to hurt people who may already be struggling to pay their mortgage.

Obama cut the interest rates in an effort to help more borrowers gain access to the mortgage market that has seen a surge in rates for homebuyers. The rate cut would have trimmed payments for homeowners by hundreds of dollars a year, but that is all gone now because Donald Trump’s people’s presidency isn’t about those people.

What Trump omitted from his inaugural address was that when he talked about giving power back to the people, the people he was referring to were people like himself, rich, white, old men. If you are not a rich, white, old man, the next four years are going make life much harder. Trump left that part out of his speech.

The American people can learn a great deal about their new president by what he prioritizes as soon as he assumes office.

In the case of Donald Trump, his top priority appears to be harming people who have less, so that he can enrich those at the top who already have more.

[Eric the Green]

(01-20-2017, 11:40 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(01-20-2017, 11:32 PM)taramarie Wrote: Was she wrong though other than the fact she was making a generalized smear?

She was wrong by the very nature of generalized smears. 

Generalized smears = bigot.

Therefore she's the bigot and therefore a hypocrite.

I'd have to say, to coin a phrase, "I'm with her."

Sorry Rags

Trump and the Tea Party Republicans made this the way politics is. I would not expect Trump's opponents to be any more polite and less "generalized" smearing than he was.

That's not to say I myself will not sometimes at least try to be polite

[Ragnarök_62]

(01-21-2017, 12:46 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: It doesn't take long for Drumpf to violate his promise to give America back to the people.

Trump’s First Act As President Is To Raise Mortgage Rates On Struggling Homeowners
By Jason Easley on Fri, Jan 20th, 2017 at 3:56 pm
http://www.politicususa.com/2017/01/20/t...wners.html

One of Donald Trump’s first acts as president was to hurt struggling homeowners by signing an executive order that reversed an Obama interest rate cut on FHA mortgages.

This is how Trump began his presidency that he claimed gave power back to the people:

Trump’s first act as president was to hurt people who may already be struggling to pay their mortgage.

Obama cut the interest rates in an effort to help more borrowers gain access to the mortgage market that has seen a surge in rates for homebuyers. The rate cut would have trimmed payments for homeowners by hundreds of dollars a year, but that is all gone now because Donald Trump’s people’s presidency isn’t about those people.

What Trump omitted from his inaugural address was that when he talked about giving power back to the people, the people he was referring to were people like himself, rich, white, old men. If you are not a rich, white, old man, the next four years are going make life much harder. Trump left that part out of his speech.

The American people can learn a great deal about their new president by what he prioritizes as soon as he assumes office.

In the case of Donald Trump, his top priority appears to be harming people who have less, so that he can enrich those at the top who already have more.

Uh, no. IMO, Trump didn't do it right though.  The FHA, along with Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, etc. should be abolished due to the fact that help on house buying/back door subsidies to house builders/realtors is NOT a proper function of any level of government.  However,  shelter like section 8 is a proper function.

[Galen]

(01-21-2017, 02:01 AM)taramarie Wrote: I think some of the cheeky people here are rubbing off onto me. Eww icky Xer snark (wipe wipe wipe wipe)

Learn to enjoy it because its one of the fun things about being Xer.   Agreeing with Eric the Obtuse is a sign that something is wrong with your reasoning because reason is beyond him.

[Galen]

(01-21-2017, 05:45 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(01-21-2017, 03:59 PM)Galen Wrote:

(01-21-2017, 02:01 AM)taramarie Wrote: I think some of the cheeky people here are rubbing off onto me. Eww icky Xer snark (wipe wipe wipe wipe)

Learn to enjoy it because its one of the fun things about being Xer.   Agreeing with Eric the Obtuse is a sign that something is wrong with your reasoning because reason is beyond him.

In many ways yes. I cannot see any posts where he has the ability to reason or change tune. As someone who has changed my tune on a lot of different things such as religion, politics and other things it baffles me that someone can be closed off to learning. I shared the post because in some ways I agree with her because they did not just vote for the parts they like about Trump but the whole Trump and that is what they will get. I do despise the smears though. That is not an intelligent way of communicating to the other side nor is it a close observation of the individuals. But i do agree with her regardless of their individual motives they did vote ultimately for all of him.

I have my own issues with Trump but having the Clinton's back in the White House is just too hideous to contemplate.  Then there was the little matter of her sounding a little too much like this guy for my taste:




It could be Hillary was sounding more like this general.




For some strange reason back in the seventies the hippies loved Russia when it was totalitarian communist state.  Now that it is rapidly becoming a nationalist christian state they hate Russia.  Say what you like about Putin but Russia now is nowhere nearly as bad as it was then.

[Galen]

(01-22-2017, 05:19 AM)taramarie Wrote: I think certain groups of people in Russia would say otherwise. Bans on anything remotely referring to gays in banned and can cause one to end up in jail. Putin is not totally there yet but he is leaning towards the direction of totalitarianism. I will let an actual Russian who lives there do the explaining for me. I do not know what it was like in the past nor know what the hippies thought. The earlier boomers will have to address that part of your post for clarification.

Whatever the hippies were doing it certainly was not thinking.  At this point you are lucky if you can get a Boomer to admit they were a hippie.  Just imagine a whole bunch of people thinking and acting just like Eric the Obtuse except they are about fifty years younger and didn't have the collapse of the Soviet Union so they were much more open about being communist or socialist.

In the wake of the color revolutions funded by the CIA and Soros it doesn't surprise me that they are more paranoid these days.  Having NATO parked next to their border isn't helping.

[Bob Butler 54]

(01-22-2017, 05:49 AM)Galen Wrote: Whatever the hippies were doing it certainly was not thinking.  At this point you are lucky if you can get a Boomer to admit they were a hippie.  Just imagine a whole bunch of people thinking and acting just like Eric the Obtuse except they are about fifty years younger and didn't have the collapse of the Soviet Union so they were much more open about being communist or socialist.

I didn't get to San Francisco during the Summer of Love. I wore bell bottoms, but everybody my age was wearing bell bottoms. I don't know think I was a true all out hippie by most reasonable definitions.

But in my youth, there were still black and white bathrooms, water bubblers, restaurants, etc...

In my youth there were coat hanger abortion, blatant job allocation prejudice by gender and other forms of overt gender discrimination.

In my youth, the GIs were still into the Domino Theory. It was felt necessary to defend every nation against communist aggression, no matter how wretched that government was, and no matter that nobody was willing to send enough troops over to cleanly quash an insurgency. What I saw then was a quagmire war to prop up a wretched government.

Today there are vile stereotypes of what hippies were like. There are entirely inaccurate propaganda impressions being passed off as true by people who weren't there.

It is true that nobody is wearing bell bottoms, tie dye and love beads anymore.

Try to restore mid 20th century prejudice though, or start a quagmire war, and a blue boomer will get quite impassioned very quickly. Even if the old fashions are dead, the old passions are not far beneath the surface, as you ought to know quite well. The Blue Boomer stereotype of idealistic, impassioned and stubborn has a basis in the Awakening of our youth. We saw the ugly side of the 1950s. We remember what the newer generations never experienced.

The stereotypical hippie might be considered a Feeler under the Myers Briggs scheme. There is truth in the old mantra of 'Love, Peace and Rock N' Roll'. There was a togetherness and comradeship in the old days. There was no lack of intellectual discussion, however. We didn't have internet message boards to endlessly debate things. It was done verbally in dorm rooms. In my case, I attended a 'American History' course in my high school led by a teacher who favored Dylan and Thoreau. The theme of protest against injustice was overtly taught in public schools. There were Thinkers among the awakening boomers. Sit us down with a traditionalist conservative of the time, and we could hold an intellectual debate with as much or little merit as we see today, just with no emoticons.

There were a few communes started, farms owned jointly by a bunch of kids. These were few, far between, and failed early on. There were a few among our generation that bought into Marx. They got nowhere. Nixon might have thought the SDS and the Democratic Party were thoroughly infiltrated by Soviet spies, and some modern conservatives still echo Nixon's thinking, but Nixon was paranoid delusional. Marx wasn't a big deal, not compared to Dylan, Peter, Paul, Mary, John, George, another Paul and Ringo.

Eric? He's no more the pure Hippie archetype than I am. Few of the hippie generation are into mystical thinking. His recent eagerness to leap into quagmire wars in the Middle East is quite atypical of the blue half of his generation. He's also an extreme partisan, and I am dubious about any extreme partisan being typical anything.

But I suppose you will build a vile stereotype around him. That's what extreme partisans do.

[Bob Butler 54]

I attended a family dinner yesterday.  We had three short people with us, aged from not quite terrible two through third grade.  Among the adults were the father, a member of the school board, the mother, very active among the parent teacher organizations, and my sister the retired first grade teacher.  I learned about one more wrinkle in the Trump affair.

Nobody was allowed to heavily criticize Trump in front of the kids.  

This is Massachusetts.  Nobody in the house voted for or favors Trump in any way.

However, there was a resolve not to teach the young ones to feel unsafe, to feel their world was going to fall apart, to be afraid of their own government.

Have others seen anything similar, either now with Trump, or with Obama in recent years?

[Eric the Green]

Yes, I'm seeing it in my relations with my church authorities.

[pbrower2a]

(01-22-2017, 05:19 AM)taramarie Wrote: I think certain groups of people in Russia would say otherwise. Bans on anything remotely referring to gays in banned and can cause one to end up in jail. Putin is not totally there yet but he is leaning towards the direction of totalitarianism. I will let an actual Russian who lives there do the explaining for me. I do not know what it was like in the past nor know what the hippies thought. The earlier boomers will have to address that part of your post for clarification.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015...ISFkFxFs0Y

Freedom House rates the Russian Federation as "not free". On sevencritical issues Freedom House rates political entities from "0" to "12" to "16", "0" indicating a complete absence of freedom to "12" or "16" (the latter where such is possible) for no serious compromise of freedom. For Russia, ratings are:

A. Electoral process, 1/12.  The President is nearly beyond challenge, and opposition is impotent.

B. Political pluralism and participation, 3/16. Although opposition parties may form, they might not have a chance to appear as electoral choices.

C. Functioning of the government, 3/12. Official corruption is rampant, and many critical decisions are made behind closed doors.

D. Freedom of Expression and belief, 3/12. Media have become propaganda conduits, let they be shut down. Journalists are in danger of assault and murder for reporting what the Leadership  does not want told. The Internet is heavily regulated to suppress access to politically-inconvenient websites. The government employs Internet trolls to disrupt discussions (personal statement -- I have had the misfortune of meeting some of them on the Internet).

E. Associational and Organizational Rights, 3/12.  The State can interfere with any organization with arrests, severe fines, and prison terms for activities deemed hostile to the regime. Labor unions are ineffective in defense of workers. .

F. Rule of law, 2/16. No independent judiciary. Insurgencies create real danger in the Caucasus region. Immigrant groups and some ethnic groups resident in Russia (notably Ukrainians)  aere subject to mistreatment.

Speaking of gays, lesbians, and transgender people:

Quote:LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people are subject to considerable discrimination. A 2013 law banned dissemination of information promoting “nontraditional sexual relationships,” putting legal pressure on LGBT activists and encouraging violent attacks. In late 2015, the parliament was considering a bill that would penalize people merely for publicly expressing or demonstrating “nontraditional sexual orientations.”

G. Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights, 7/16. At this Russia is in the 'average' zone. But people  must still carry and show internal passports. Some areas have residential restrictions for persons from certain parts of the former Soviet Union, especially Central Asia.

State takeovers of private property show the precariousness of property rights. Women are grossly underrepresented in elective office, and only two of 31 cabinet ministers are women. Domestic violence against women is rampant and little punished. (Ironically the Soviet Union was fairly good at gender equity).

The Russian Federation rates 22 of 100 in an aggregate score of freedom. That is hardly the worst: North Korea rates only 3 of 100; Syria rates only 1 of 100 (due in part to a civil war between the two totalitarian causes of official Ba'athism and Islamic-Nazi ISIS). Saudi Arabia rates 10 of 100. China rates 16 of 100. Russia has made great strides backwards from what it was in the last years of the Soviet Union in freedom and respect for the person. But Donald Trump shows more respect for Russian than for, let us say, that of Finnish leadership (a perfect 100 of 100).

Closer to the middle? Mexico rates 65 of 100; Mexico would rate significantly higher -- probably in the upper 70s, at least, were it not for American addicts fueling the drug wars with blood money. (Curse you, American drug addicts!) Indonesia rates the same.


On the other side, the USA rated 90 of 100 in 2016 (although I expect that to go down substantially in 2017). India barely rates as a free country with  77 of 100. Canada rates 99 of 100 (do not be surprised if I end up sending postcards altered to read "Greetings from FREE Toronto" to friends and family this year!), the United Kingdom 95 of 100. America's chief enemies of World War II? Japan rates 96 of 100; Italy rates 89 of 100; and Germany rates 95 of 100. Countries incorporated into the Devil's Reich during World War II... Austria, 95 of 100; Czech Republic, 95 of 100; Poland (mostly) 93 of 100; Slovenia 92 of 100. The country founded heavily by people who had suffered horrifically under Satan Incarnate? Israel, 80 of 100.

In honor of what could be the world's oldest democracy by the end of this year (Switzerland)  -- 96 of 100. Before
anyone takes a swipe at Islam as an implacable enemy of freedom, Tunisia rates 79 of 100, which could be above where I see America within two years.

Oh -- New Zealand, 98 of 100.

Data from here, but the analysis is mine.

[Galen]

(01-22-2017, 04:17 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(01-22-2017, 05:49 AM)Galen Wrote:

(01-22-2017, 05:19 AM)taramarie Wrote: I think certain groups of people in Russia would say otherwise. Bans on anything remotely referring to gays in banned and can cause one to end up in jail. Putin is not totally there yet but he is leaning towards the direction of totalitarianism. I will let an actual Russian who lives there do the explaining for me. I do not know what it was like in the past nor know what the hippies thought. The earlier boomers will have to address that part of your post for clarification.

Whatever the hippies were doing it certainly was not thinking.  At this point you are lucky if you can get a Boomer to admit they were a hippie.  Just imagine a whole bunch of people thinking and acting just like Eric the Obtuse except they are about fifty years younger and didn't have the collapse of the Soviet Union so they were much more open about being communist or socialist.

In the wake of the color revolutions funded by the CIA and Soros it doesn't surprise me that they are more paranoid these days.  Having NATO parked next to their border isn't helping.

I hope you realize hippies were just a counter culture group and that not all boomers were hippies because 1. some were not interested in it, 2. some were working. 3. some boomers merely watched what was going on because they were too young to take part in it. Like my MOTHER.

Can't say much about what was going on in New Zealand but in the US hippies popped up pretty much everywhere.  The communes were a particularly entertaining circus for the most part.  Most of them collapsed pretty fast.  The Rajneesh and his followers were probably the worst and I don't recall many people shedding tears when he finally took the big dirt nap.

Unless you plan on starting a nuclear war there really isn't much that can be done about how the Russian government treats the homos.  On the geopolitical stage the US is going to have to find a way to get along with them because I just don't see Russia becoming subservient to US interests.  I never said Russia was particularly free but compared to the Soviet Union the Putin government is a vast improvement.

You might want to consider the policy of Detente during the Cold War.  Which was much better than poking the Soviet Union with a stick all the time.  As I have noted before, unless you plan on going to war with Russia there isn't much you can do about their internal policies.

[pbrower2a]

(01-22-2017, 04:12 PM)taramarie Wrote: I take it your response to me pbrower is an add on to what i was saying? Because i feel it should be directed at Gale who seems to respect Russia for some unknown reason.

......and hell yeah not bad. 98 out of 100. Not bad not bad. We can do better.

It was a response to something that you posted, even if that was a response to Galen.

Fully aware that what I say is not scientific, I too respect some aspects of Russia -- but those are cultural and scientific. They would be admirable if they were associated with any country. The Russian heritage in politics is sordid whether under the Tsars or the Communists. If the opulent splendor of the Romanov dynasty and the pharaonic gigantism of the giant projects of Stalin awe me, I at least know what was behind them. The opulent splendor of the tsars was possible only through the severe exploitation of the serfs; the superhuman projects of Stalin could exist only under a regime that could disregard the human cost.  Yes, American plutocrats could buy seemingly anything that they wanted at times, and American government agencies could build gigantic public works culminating in the Interstate Highway System. Big projects in the United States always had some respect for cost and benefit; either they had some payback assumed by users or a profit motive. Thus Hoover Dam, the bridges across the lower Hudson and Delaware Rivers, most sport stadiums, the Hoover Dam, and the Big Dig. The Interstate Highway system has paid for itself in reductions in highway fatalities and crippling injuries from vehicle crashes.

But back to Russia: Vladimir Putin seems to admire both Imperial Russia for opulent splendor (he can't get enough of it) and the pharaonic gigantism of Stalinist show projects. Perhaps having been a KGB chief (obviously not a good environment for promoting empathy toward anyone) he can be blinded to both the dehumanizing tendencies of both Imperial and Soviet Russia. A wise and humane person like Barack Obama can see beneath the surface. Donald Trump, a man of intellectual and moral hollowness, gets the awe but no sense of human tragedy (I need not go into the details); Vladimir Putin can snow him. Maybe Vladimir Putin saw someone that he could use. (I see that as a miscalculation; it is far safer to make dealings with someone who has a moral compass, because someone with a moral compass has an eye to the interests of people other than those making the deals).

[Warren Dew]

(01-22-2017, 05:19 AM)taramarie Wrote: I think certain groups of people in Russia would say otherwise. Bans on anything remotely referring to gays in banned and can cause one to end up in jail. Putin is not totally there yet but he is leaning towards the direction of totalitarianism.

Merely leaning towards the direction of totalitarianism is what makes Russia a lot better today than the Soviet Union was.  The Soviet Union had had half a century in which to perfect their totalitarianism by the 1970s.  I doubt that any substantial groups of people in Russia would prefer the Soviet Union, though some young enough not to have experienced it might "say otherwise" due to their historical ignorance.