Trump hits new low in approval poll

[nebraska]

Trump hits new low in approval poll

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/politics/...818128.php

[pbrower2a]

I wonder what his polling will look like after the unfortunate suggestion that people can 'cleanse' themselves of the Corona virus with bleach or Lysol by drinking one or the other -- maybe even injecting it. How could anyone say anything so stupid? Kill the germs, but kill the person? Cremation alive would do that trick!

The dirty little secret is that chemotherapy agents, radiation, disinfectants, and antibiotics are all poisons. Maybe they kill the malignant neoplasm, the bacteria, or the germ... but those have their places. Chemotherapy and radiation therapy are desperate measures against cancer when alternatives are gone. Disinfectants are for killing "germs" on surfaces, and most such substances are highly toxic. Lye or vitriol would do an excellent job of killing bacteria, but you do not want to touch either one. OK, bleach and carbolic acid are both safer because they are less violent upon flesh, but you certainly don't want to ingest or inject them.

Antibiotics selectively poison bacteria, yeasts, molds, and fungi more delicate than we are. Antibiotics do not work on viruses. UV radiation? Yes, it can kill bacteria and viruses, but bacteria and viruses are made of the same stuff that we are made of. To kill a virus one must kill its DNA or RNA. Kill the DNA of a human cell and you kill the cell. Distort the function of the DNA in a cell, and you may end up with a cancerous cell.

[sbarrera]

How is it even as high as 34%??? He has no business being President of the United States. 

[pbrower2a]

Trump just got caught in an incredible lie. One is about his competence on medical matters. This man does not have even the training to be a medical orderly, yet he told people that they could use disinfectants internally. No -- they are for sanitizing surfaces, and they are dangerous poisons, as the manufacturers of those products containing sodium hypochlorite or carbolic acid make abundantly clear. The second is that he was saying this sarcastically. Donald Trump seems to lack any sense of humor whatsoever. If he says something funny, then it is by accident.

The simple reality is that any substance that kills anything else (viruses, bacteria, mold, fungus, yeast) is harmful in a way to us. Antibiotics and chemotherapy agents selectively damage bacteria or cancerous cells enough to hurt them but not quite enough to kill us. Disinfectants are less harmful to us than to stuff on a surface because we have dead skin cells as protection against the toxic qualities of traces of some nasty chemicals. The problem with COVID-18 is that as a virus it is nearly impossible to kill without killing us. We and viruses are more similar. A virus is largely genetic material as DNA or RNA (COVID-19 is RNA)... and because it is difficult to kill the viruses in a human without killing the human, chemical agents do not work on viruses.

Covering for a falsehood even if said in mere error is itself a lie. The honest thing to do is to say "I was wrong"after one finds out that one was wrong. It is best to be right from the start, but that is a privilege that many of us do not have. People have said that they were wrong about bigotry in the past and that got the late George Wallace to win the black vote in Alabama for a gubernatorial election. He could never undo the hurtful statement "Segregation yesterday, segregation today, and segregation forever" as he was infamously known for saying. But he could say that he knew that what he said then was terribly wrong and hurtful, and he could repudiate segregation with integrity. Trump is not only stupid, vain, and cruel; he is also dishonest and cowardly in his inability to repudiate his own errors.

It is far too early to see how that will work in polling.

[Eric the Green]

(04-27-2020, 08:16 AM)sbarrera Wrote: How is it even as high as 34%??? He has no business being President of the United States. 

Exactly right. And yet, this latest gaffe looks like it will have no greater lasting effect than the one about the Nazis in Charlotteville, or grab em by the pussy, or insulting Senator McCain and handicapped people, or any of the thousands of other gaffes he has made.

Latest real clear politics average:
President Trump Job Approval

• Approve45.6
  
  
• Disapprove52.0
  

Disapprove +6.4

[David Horn]

(04-27-2020, 08:16 AM)sbarrera Wrote: How is it even as high as 34%??? He has no business being President of the United States. 

"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

H. L. Mencken

[Detroit]

Exactly.

There are negative interest rates now. Get your money out of banks today. The dollar is worthless and banks will go bankrupt. Buy gold, canned goods, foreign currencies, and guns.

The US is becoming Communist.

Don't be surprised if Trump nationalizes airlines, hospitals, car companies, the media, and banks soon.

[Eric the Green]

President Trump Job Approval
Approve 45.0
Disapprove 53.0
Disapprove +8.0
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/2020/

[pbrower2a]

Trump can be re-elected with just over 45% of the vote. Barely, if all goes right for him (and wrong for America).

What he can't do is to find new support.

He is doing badly in the seven states (MI, PA, WI, FL. NC, and AZ) that he most barely won, with approval no higher than 41% on his handling of COVID-19. As with Hoover with the economic meltdown of 1929-1932 and Carter with the in-your-face hostage situation in Iran, the President's handling of this monumental disaster will be what people most remember. If 2020 turns out to be a great year for anyone it will be perhaps for getting a job or winning an election.

Trump is back to his old tricks of vilifying anyone who disputes him or disagrees with him and otherwise appealing to the moral and intellectual gutter. Many people now know where that leads -- to things that many of us cherish being unavailable for no other reason than incompetent leadership.

[Bob Butler 54]

Do we need another thread for blue partisans to dump on Trump?  Isn't the internet electron limited or something?  

[Eric the Green]

(05-24-2020, 09:44 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Trump can be re-elected with just  over 45% of the vote. Barely, if all goes right for him (and wrong for America).

What he can't do is to find new support.  

He is doing badly in the seven states (MI, PA, WI, FL. NC, and AZ)  that he most barely won, with approval no higher than 41% on his handling of COVID-19. As with Hoover with the economic meltdown of 1929-1932 and Carter with the in-your-face  hostage situation in Iran, the President's handling of this monumental disaster will be what people most remember. If 2020 turns out to be a great year for anyone it will be perhaps for getting a job or winning an election.

Trump is back to his old tricks of vilifying anyone who disputes him or disagrees with him and otherwise appealing to the moral and intellectual gutter. Many people now know where that leads -- to things that many of us cherish being unavailable for no other reason than incompetent leadership.

the seven states (MI, PA, WI, FL. NC, and AZ)

That's only six.

[pbrower2a]

Whoops! I must have counted something else or counted twice.

[Tavo5]

WTF?

Defending freedom doesn't mean that you are a Commie.

The government is not your mommy.

The government is not your daddy.

Freedom is the absence of government.

Someone who smokes weed near you is not tyranny.

Tyranny is when the government says that you can't smoke pot.

When Libertarians say free speech is good, traitors who attack Libertarians are not defending freedom.

Those who scream Trump is a holy god for supporting wars, debt, and tyranny sound like hypocrites when they turn around and say Obama was evil for embracing wars, debt, and the police state.

If you think Trump should declare martial law and use the military to shoot protesters, what will you say when Biden uses the military to shoot protesters?

Can't you defend your own property?

Why not just end the tyranny that causes people to protest?

Do you think freedom doesn't benefit you?

Do you really think that you are exempt from the police state?

What country is this?

Why fight Nazis and Commies and then become Nazis and Commies?

[David Horn]

My God, another one! I'm adding Tavo5 to my mental list of posters not worthy of response.

[pbrower2a]

Yada, yada, yada.

I consider it far more dangerous that Donald Trump has decided, unlike any prior President, that dissidence against him is a crime, and that America needs 'special' agencies to monitor demonstrators and critics of the President. Such is a secret police, and we don't need any Gestapo, KGB, Ovra (Mussolini's Italy), Kempeitai (Japan in WWII), Tontons Macoutes, Stasi, SAVAK, BOSS, or Mukhabarat (Satan Hussein's Iraq).  We need be free of such. It is up to our leaders to use the normal tools of convincing us that they are doing well for us, and not to fault us for failing to believe what those leaders believe.    

The President's deficiencies of intellect, rationality, and conscience are becoming evident to those who thought that he could serve their agenda. Now we know.

Conservatives are no more fascists than liberals are Marxists.  To be sure, "conservative" has often become a self-applied euphemism for right-wing, authoritarian extremists. Well, there are conservatives of the tradition of Edmund Burke, G K Chesterton, Sir Winston Churchill, and Dwight Eisenhower... and they need take their word away from fascists, demagogues, and political thugs or else find some new word and its derivatives for self-description.

Donald Trump is not a conservative; he is a fascist pig. He now has more in common with David Duke and Agosto Pinochet than with Ronald Reagan. He has exposed his despotic tendencies in ways that should leave no question of what he is. He insists that any disagreement with him is treachery.

We liberals may have disliked the Tea Party and its agenda... and despised its connections to people who believe that America defers to wealth and class privilege above all else. We did not call for its suppression. We thought that it was enough to ridicule people who made expressions like this:





or this collection of bumper stickers:



It is safe to assume that after a few decades that the mainstream view of Barack Obama  will be that he was an above-average President who did far more right than wrong, who was more effective than ineffective, who did what was possible under the political circumstances, and made no critical errors as President. Obama was quite conservative in his style as a leader. Stuff like what I show in the three images above will be embarrassments, especially the sticker that says "Don't Re-N*g". Obama got elected twice with clear majorities, so stuff like this insults anyone who voted for him. 


This map may suggest similarities between two Presidents. 


 
gray -- did not vote in 1952 or 1956
white -- Eisenhower twice, Obama twice
deep blue -- Republican all four elections
light blue -- Republican all but 2012 (I assume that greater Omaha went for Ike twice)
light green -- Eisenhower once, Stevenson once, Obama never
dark green -- Stevenson twice, Obama never
pink -- Stevenson twice, Obama once 

No state voted Democratic all four times, so no state is in deep red. 

...the biggest category in this overlay is "Eisenhower twice, Obama twice", suggesting that their temperaments well suited the political cultures of two very different times, even if in opposite political parties. In elections, such is good for Obama winning 325 electoral votes that with the same distribution of votes from states that voted in the 1950's as in 2012. (Obama won 332 electoral votes in 2012, and only seven of his votes came from places not voting in the 1950's -- DC and Hawaii).  Neither ran as a populist out to shake things up; both were sticklers for protocol and precedent; both had scandal-free administrations. Neither was effective in strengthening his Party's hold in Congress. Historians will assess their Presidencies similarly -- above average.  

Trump will be fair game as an example of how not to be President for debasing political discourse and insisting upon powers that the Founding Fathers never authorized to any President.

[lsna]

Americans want to live in a police state because Americans hate personal responsibility,

In a police state, you don't need to pay your debts. Food, housing,
Obamaphones, and medical care are free.

You can kill kids if the Gestapo tells you to.

There are no morals because there are no churches.

If you have a problem, you can just blame Trump, Russia, or the UN.

[pbrower2a]

(06-07-2020, 09:40 PM)lsna Wrote: Americans want to live in a police state because Americans hate personal responsibility,

Haven't I seen this line before? In a police state people are responsible to the political bosses and the bosses offer practically nothing in return other than a relaxation of brutality that should not already exist.

Quote:In a police state, you don't need to pay your debts. Food, housing,
Obamaphones, and medical care are free.

It depends upon who runs the police state and for whom. Nazi Germany was a police state and an extreme plutocracy. In the Third Reich, people were responsible to employers who could set whatever norms of production they wanted. Anyone who fell short or grumbled about conditions got to go to a concentration camp where one was obliged to work harder for starvation rations under conditions that would eventually kill one if one did not get sent back to the exploitative peonage of German agriculture or industry. Nazi Germany had a 'modern' version of medieval serfdom in that one could not change employers without the consent of the current employer.  

Quote:You can kill kids if the Gestapo tells you to.

The Gestapo was bad -- but not quite that bad. It did send families to death camps to be annihilated. 

Quote:There are no morals because there are no churches.

The churches have called out our President for defiling a church by using it for a photo op without consent -- and worse yet, using force to make that blasphemous photo op possible. 

Quote:If you have a problem, you can just blame Trump, Russia, or the UN.

Non sequitur.

[David Horn]

(06-07-2020, 09:40 PM)lsna Wrote: Americans want to live in a police state because Americans hate personal responsibility,

In a police state, you don't need to pay your debts. Food, housing,
Obamaphones, and medical care are free.

You can kill kids if the Gestapo tells you to.

There are no morals because there are no churches.

If you have a problem, you can just blame Trump, Russia, or the UN.

Yet another manifestation of the anarchist mind. It's a pretty fantasy, until you actually live it.

[Eric the Green]

(06-07-2020, 07:18 AM)David Horn Wrote: My God, another one! I'm adding Tavo5 to my mental list of posters not worthy of response.

It's all the same guy.

[David Horn]

(06-09-2020, 12:08 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-07-2020, 07:18 AM)David Horn Wrote: My God, another one! I'm adding Tavo5 to my mental list of posters not worthy of response.

It's all the same guy.

Judging by the past, that's probably true.