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Thread: Donald Trump Presidency-Day One
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11-21-2016 #51
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Re: Donald Trump Presidency-Day One
The divide between how he was described and how he is is so stark. These are subjective impressions, but Obama is patient, thoughtful, eloquent, direct, thick-skinned. Trump is impatient, impulsive, thin-skinned, inarticulate, and dishonest. We really have been so polarized that these sorts of fact-supported opinions can't be generally agreed upon. Imagine trying to tell a Stalin partisan that Stalin was paranoid and cruel. They'd say that's just your opinion because you don't like him.
He got the Trump University lawsuit out of the way; it's not a bad idea to get it figured out ahead of time but he clearly defrauded the students of Trump University whether he admits guilt or not.
As Stavros said, I'm not sure what he has to do with his assets...he's not going to set up a blind trust. Some have recommended that since he already knows what he owns and the assets are not liquid, a blind trust would not be sufficient to avoid conflicts. He would have to liquidate his assets and then put them in a blind trust so that he doesn't know what he owns. I remembered reading that the conflict of interest rules don't apply to the President....but I don't know whether the source was reliable.
Edit: this is where I read it. He is not legally required to avoid conflicts, but something called the emoluments clause does apply. He has to avoid accepting anything construed as a gift from a foreign government.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...pt-conflict-i/
1 out of 2 members liked this post.Last edited by broncofan; 11-21-2016 at 09:13 PM.
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11-21-2016 #52
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Re: Donald Trump Presidency-Day One
Maybe polarizing was the wrong word. But from people insulting Bush about his intelligence and saying that 9-11 was an inside job. To people saying that Obama wasn't born in this country and of course the subtle/not so subtle racist comments, both of them didn't react to every negative thing that was said about them. Trump needs to learn that a ton of heat comes with job that he has just been elected to. Some of it will be warranted and some of it won't. He needs to grow a thicker skin.
While that war has gone on 15 more years than it should have, I still believe that invading Afghanistan was the right response to the 9-11 attacks. But you're right about how much good will Bush wasted with the invasion of Iraq.
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11-22-2016 #53
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Re: Donald Trump Presidency-Day One
Basically we agree; this is just a quibble about our reaction to Afghanistan. It's not clear ( as far as I know) that Al Qaeda was state sponsored. It's true that the government was essentially Taliban, and both Al Qaeda are Sunni, but the connection may end there. Yet we opted for regime change in Afghanistan and we opted to implement it militarily.
The people of Afghanistan are incredibly poor. We might have tried to change hearts and minds by offering to provide aid, build schools and hospitals. We could have remove Al Qaeda more surgically. Of coarse the objection to this might be that we have no business building schools in Afghanistan in an attempt to moderate their politics and religion. But if that's a valid objection, then neither do we have any business forcing a regime change.
1 out of 2 members liked this post."...I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize."_Alice Munro, Chaddeleys and Flemings.
"...the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way". _Judge Holden, Cormac McCarthy's, BLOOD MERIDIAN.
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11-22-2016 #54
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Re: Donald Trump Presidency-Day One
The problem lies in defining 'state sponsored'.
It is well known that both the USA and Saudi Arabia provided the finances and in the case of the USA some of the military hardware (Stinger missiles) that was used by the Mujahideen to fight the USSR in Afghanistan, but direct US involvement was minimal and most of the oganization was left to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency [ISI] and their primary aim was to buttress the domestic Islamist politics in Pakistan imposed by General Zia ul-Haq following the execution of President Bhutto in 1979, through its support for Islamic forces in Afghanistan, just as they nurtured the student movement in the refugee camps in the 1980s which morphed into the Taliban. For most of the 1980s the Arab fighters were considered useless by the Afghans, but after the Soviet withdrawal Osma bin Laden removed from the Sudan and with a few thousand fighters in the 1990s proved to be useful to the Taliban in fighting warlords around Kandahar. The money came from bin Laden's own resources and whatever he could raise from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf and while this must have come from wealthy individuals linked to the royal families, it is not possible to describe it unequivocally as 'state sponsored'. More like the states concerned -the USA, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran supported various groups in Afghanistan for their own interest, which (as we observe in Syria), is one reason why the war lasted so long and national unity proved, then as now, so hard to cement. There is an extensive, if relatively short history here-
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/p...or-the-taliban
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11-22-2016 #55
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Re: Donald Trump Presidency-Day One
If I disagree with this, it is only because I see the 1960s as a pivotal decade following the Roosevelt era, possibly more influential than the Reagan era which dismantled the New Deal economy that had held since 1933. The reason is thus not so much economic in origin as social and political and can be seen in the data the Pew Research Center has published on the transition away from a bi-partisan Congress to an increasingly polarised one, and that it began in the 1970s. Here is a key illustration of what happened -
Since the 1970s, the congressional parties have sorted themselves both ideologically and geographically. The combined House delegation of the six New England states, for instance, went from 15 Democrats and 10 Republicans in 1973-74 to 20 Democrats and two Republicans in 2011-12. In the South the combined House delegation essentially switched positions: from 91 Democrats and 42 Republicans in 1973-74 to 107 Republicans and 47 Democrats in 2011-12.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...se-ever-since/
-I think we know that the impact of Civil Rights legislation hammered the 'Dixiecrats' in the South, just as the arch-Conservative Moral Majority and other evangelical Christian groups used the South as a base from which to mount their attacks on the 'identity politics' which then and now they believed is 'destroying' America. But what also happened, according to the late Richard Rorty is that the Democrats became the party of 'identity politics' to the extent that they abandoned a coherent economic programme that would maintain a degree of attention to poverty, income inequality and the fair re-distribution of wealth-
The alliance between the unions and intellectuals, so vital to passing legislation in the Progressive Era, broke down. In universities, cultural and identity politics replaced the politics of change and economic justice. By 1997, when Mr. Rorty gave three lectures that make up the spine of “Achieving Our Country,” few of his academic colleagues, he insisted, were talking about reducing poverty at all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/bo...ming.html?_r=0
I think Rorty underestimates the problem that the Democrats had after the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan -their inability to win the White House -they only won it once between 1964 and 1992. It was this hunger for the Presidency that forced the Democrats to move to the centre ground defined by Reagan and throw in their lot with globalization without seeking to manage its worst excesses, symbolized by the 'regulation lite' of the banking and financial system although the repeal of Glass-Steagall originated in Congress and Clinton would not have vetoed it. Thus the Gingrich 'Contract with America' is an attempt to distance the Republican Party from an economic agenda it would have supported in previous years, but was an extension or affirmation of the breakdown of a bi-partisan Congress but also illuminated the divisions within the Party which Trump has been able to exploit, and just as the Republicans are hungry for power, they will grab whatever morsels Trump throws at them.
But, fundamentally the 1960s remains the dividing line for me, and what is most striking is not just the extension of constitutional rights to all Americans, but the outstanding fact that the one 'group' who emerged from the 1960s in a far better position than before was women, and one can hardly describe American women as a minority. Yet the vitriolic abuse of Hillary Clinton makes me wonder if the deepest -or least recognised- cleavage in the USA is not regional, not 'racial' or even economic but gender based. And here the irony is that the Trump many believe regards most women as furniture will become President while the woman who not only won two million more votes than he did, scored the second highest vote in US election history. That doesn't remove the Democrats credibility problem, but it does offer an intriguing recipe for change and success, if it chooses to embrace change -and develop a coherent economic strategy.
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11-28-2016 #56
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11-29-2016 #57
Re: Donald Trump Presidency-Day One
ISIS is just the Muslim version of the American klan/nazis who are currently crawling out of the woodwork like so many maggots.
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11-29-2016 #58
Re: Donald Trump Presidency-Day One
Actually, ISIS is one step closer than the klan/nazis to being civilized, for the simple fact that they're not racist.
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11-30-2016 #59
Re: Donald Trump Presidency-Day One
After Trump walks into the Oval Office on Day 1, he will issue an executive order banning the abortion drug RU-486.
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12-07-2016 #60
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Re: Donald Trump Presidency-Day One
http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-da...-and-pizzagate
I thought this was a good article about pizzagate...the conspiracy theory spread by right wing nutjobs that the President elect panders to. It was promoted by the National Security Adviser's son (Flynn himself had promoted similar conspiracy theories) who was part of the transition team but has since been fired. Terrifying. Also terrifying that it's already considered old news in our news cycle.
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