I'm so angry with the U.S. and Chinese governments right now!

[Hetfield]

The funny thing is Trump's arrogance is a classic case of Dunning-Kruger effect. The amount of gaffes and unforced errors he makes is unbelievable. He has like a 30 word vocabulary too, yet he says "I know all the best words." No one with a grasp of English past a third grade speech and vocabulary level would ever utter such a statement. The man is nigh illiterate, yet he believes himself to be a genius. It would be very funny if his actions weren't actually causing so much real harm. But tragedy plus time equals comedy, so I am sure all of the future movies made about his presidency will be comedies.

The fact he thinks he is a genius is absolutely terrifying, absolutely terrifying. Everyone should be terrified by by that, everyone.

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[highfigh]

Oh he didn't block Fox news from the press room, he sat them off the first row.

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Sorry- memory is a bit foggy after so many years of bickering.

From Snopes-

"What's True
President Obama attempted to delegitimize Fox News by calling their oppositional stance "destructive" for the country, took questions from Fox News correspondents less frequently than he did from those of other major networks in press briefings, and his administration expressed a willingness to exclude Fox reporters from interviews with top officials."

 

[highfigh]

You're supporting him, he's your boy. Just what is he getting done particularly? You still thinking about the stupid wall? He hasn't undone enough environmental protections for you? Not supporting old fossil fuel industries sufficiently at our expense? Not a criminal? LOL.

Where have I ever written that I'm in favor of those?

I guess I should have written "let him do something, on a leash".

Is it OK for other countries to stop immigrants who want to enter, without making sure of who they are and whether they pose a threat, whether criminal or via some disease?

 

[shadyJ]

Sorry- memory is a bit foggy after so many years of bickering.

From Snopes-

"What's True
President Obama attempted to delegitimize Fox News by calling their oppositional stance "destructive" for the country, took questions from Fox News correspondents less frequently than he did from those of other major networks in press briefings, and his administration expressed a willingness to exclude Fox reporters from interviews with top officials."

He should have expelled Foxnews from any kind of media access as much as possible. I mean, if Foxnews is allowed, why wouldn't he just allow Stormfront at that point?

 

[GO-NAD!]

I seem to have triggered a highly partisan debate here. Sorry about that.

I'll be honest - if I was an American, I could not bring myself to be a Republican. I realise that many who voted for Trump had legitimate grievances that were not being addressed by either party - people who were being left behind by the disruption caused by globalisation. So, they voted for the disruptive candidate. I get it. I'm not sure he's done anything to help them since he came into office though. If those same people vote for him again, I would be less understanding.

His biggest accomplishment - tax cuts - benefited the rich, primarily, and raised the deficit. Bravo.

As for his wall, which he seems so determined to get - so much so, that he would be quite happy to shut down government over it - appears to be a bit redundant, doesn't it? Illegal immigration has been dropping for years - long before Trump was elected.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/why-is-the-undocumented-immigrant-population-dropping/426612/

So, this "crisis" looks more fabricated than real.

That's just an observation from the outside, looking in.

 

[shadyJ]

I seem to have triggered a highly partisan debate here. Sorry about that.

I'll be honest - if I was an American, I could not bring myself to be a Republican. I realise that many who voted for Trump had legitimate grievances that were not being addressed by either party - people who were being left behind by the disruption caused by globalisation. So, they voted for the disruptive candidate. I get it. I'm not sure he's done anything to help them since he came into office though. If those same people vote for him again, I would be less understanding.

His biggest accomplishment - tax cuts - benefited the rich, primarily, and raised the deficit. Bravo.

As for his wall, which he seems so determined to get - so much so, that he would be quite happy to shut down government over it - appears to be a bit redundant, doesn't it? Illegal immigration has been dropping for years - long before Trump was elected.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/why-is-the-undocumented-immigrant-population-dropping/426612/

So, this "crisis" looks more fabricated than real.

That's just an observation from the outside, looking in.

The wall has nothing to do with actual problem solving. It's a purely symbolic expression of racism.

The same is true for much of the votes for Trump in the first place. No one really expected him to make anything better. His supporters just wanted him to make things worse for the ethnicities that they don't like. On that campaign promise at least, he has delivered.

 

[Hetfield]

The funny thing is Trump is the very definition of the swamp. He never was gonna "drain the swamp", he was part of it and has only made it worse.

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[lovinthehd]

Sorry- memory is a bit foggy after so many years of bickering.

From Snopes-

"What's True
President Obama attempted to delegitimize Fox News by calling their oppositional stance "destructive" for the country, took questions from Fox News correspondents less frequently than he did from those of other major networks in press briefings, and his administration expressed a willingness to exclude Fox reporters from interviews with top officials."

You said "Obama blocked Fox News from the press room" So let's add the other part from Snopes you left out:
What's False

The Obama administration never rescinded the press passes of Fox News reporters nor ejected or banned them from White House press conferences.



Then again Fox News is not really mainstream news, more like the open-to-conspiracies right wing opinion channel for those who like to be spoon-fed with their prejudices.

 

[KEW]

Is it OK for other countries to stop immigrants who want to enter, without making sure of who they are and whether they pose a threat, whether criminal or via some disease?

No one is arguing that we should not control our borders.

The question actually being debated is whether a wall is a cost-effective solution. Trump is saying "wall or nothing". The problem with the wall is there is already Bollard Wall Fencing (see below. Trump calls it a wall for political reasons, everyone before him called it fencing) in the locations where it is most needed (which was routinely authorized by Obama and previous administrations),and there is currently more of this being constructed in Southern Texas (which must be what Trump is referring to when he claimed they have already built a lot of wall, since there has been no movement using the wall proposals Trump requested).
In the past, this has been run like any business/organization. They evaluate their needs and if a fence makes sense, they request it.
The experts say the wall is pretty effective at blocking people, but is an easy target for drugs because it is not patrolled aggressively. Drug traffickers use tunnels, catapults, or drones to get past the fence. A real wall will not be any more effective at any of these. You could make it more difficult by making it taller or deeper into the ground, but how much do we want to pay for such a wall? It seems too easy in this age to communicate a night-time rendezvous at GPS coordinates and catapult boxes/bundles of drugs over the wall (using some low level led lights attached to the packages as needed to quickly retrieve the packages and get out).
Illegal entry through the legal check points is recognized as more common than sneaking across the border in the desert, and the experts say resources would be more effectively used at the legal points of entry to perform more thorough inspections.
There are very few Democrats or Republicans in congress who disagree with the objective of increased security. The debate is about building a wall, not security. If Trump was pushing for $5 billion to start/fund increased security in-line with what is recommended by the people most involved in overseeing border security, there would not be so much resistance. As is, not all of the Republicans are on board!

 

[3db]

I am very sorry for the way of our president responded to the Canadian hostages.
It is one of many embarrassments he has saddled our country with.
Trump has no understanding of the art of diplomacy.

I have to admit, he does seem to have a knack for understanding power, intimidation, and control; and that seems to be the venue he likes to operate in. As a wealthy businessman, there is no shortage of sycophants willing to suck up to him for the opportunity to get some of his money. He seems not to understand that loyalty does not come from money or manipulation. He has intimidated many of the Republicans to side with him; however, these are people who do not like to have their hand forced, and they will be smiling as Trump is confronted with the reality of his past indiscretions.

Some of his base have let him redefine reality; however, the vast majority still recognize that the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc are not minions of Hillary or of the "deep state".

He does not seem to understand honor, and it is sad to see how readily he is willing to allow Saudi Arabia to plan and execute murder because he can personally profit. Perhaps more troubling is he does not understand why he shouldn't do that. There are likely others who would look the other way (as Trump does) for personal gain, but they understand the penalty if it gets publicly revealed that they put personal gain above morality. Trump seeks to publicly justify it based on exaggerated claims of financial opportunities for our country.

There is not one social redeeming quality that Trumps possess. He would throw his own son under the bus if it gave him an advantage. He's without a doubt the biggest f?cktard that ever ruled a country. I wonder when we'll find out that Putin asked him to pull out of Syria in order that Trump can build more towers in Russia.

 

[Audio-A]

By a very small margin in the popular vote, but absolutely not WRT states.

OK, lets look at why the Electoral College exists, on a smaller scale-

If you have a county that's made up of a group of voting districts, do you want a few large ones to determine the outcome, just because they have more people? I guarantee you don't if they cost the city incredible amounts of money because of their criminal activity, wasteful spending and placing extreme demands on city services. Then, to add insult to injury, they have a school system that decides it needs to increase the size of its school board and spending when the whole school system has a small number of students for the population as a whole, which adds millions to the already high taxes. The adjacent suburbs are forced to pay higher taxes, even though they have no say in who is elected to the city government and as further insult, the people who have no problem violating just about every law in existence go from the city to the 'burbs to carry out their BS and the county government does what it wants because they look at it as "They're in the county, but we operate inside of the city, so it's too bad if they don't like what we're doing".

Now, expand this to the state level- if the two largest cities have the most voters who aren't in agreement with the rest of the state, should the state have to suffer under what those two cities want the government to do, when that wouldn't provide anything near equal services for the rest of the state and the cost to the outlying areas would be higher than it should be?

BTW- the first example is Milwaukee and the second is Wisconsin. The City almost always votes Democrat, but the outlying areas vote mainly Republican. The City hasn't had a Republican Mayor in 100 years and to be honest, it's circling the drain. The problems in the surrounding areas are reaching the point where people are getting out while their homes still have some value. I'll be doing that soon enough and I have lived here my whole life- never thought I would want to leave as much as I do.

The US was never intended to be a simple 'majority rule' type of Democracy- it needs to consider groups of people, not just individual votes. I certainly don't want California and the whole West Coast to determine what happens in the whole country, do you? What about New York, Illinois, Florida, Texas, etc? As it is, the states with the largest populations have the most electoral votes- you would think Hillary could have carried more of those states, but she didn't and in fact, she lost 30 states- why should she have won the election?

I took a computer to have it serviced and my friend had the news on TV going- he listens to many sources, several from Europe and at one point, he said "This country is going to fall". I asked how long he thinks it will take and he said 10-15 years. He came to the US from Ukraine in the late-'70s and is thinking of going back because of where this is heading and he likes living here, but doesn't see good things ahead.

Once Trump is voted out of office and the loony left socialist extremists get control of the reins... you can start the count down to the demise of the Republican Party and The USA! Civil War will follow and Armageddon will soon follow! Your friend is very smart... this has been in the works since the 80-90’s... when those parents stopped parenting, the good ole fashion way!! Unfortunately, now the kids tell their parents how it’s going to be and what they are going to do and if the parents don’t follow... the kids call CPS! Our Government has been a joke since The Clinton Foundation was registered as a 503c. )b)!!

If I offended anyone, I sincerely apologize!

I’ve just had it with how absolutely blind, deaf and totally self centered some have become and how corrupt our government is!!

It was good while it lasted.




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[Hetfield]

Once Trump is voted out of office and the loony left socialist extremists get control of the reins... you can start the count down to the demise of the Republican Party and The USA! Civil War will follow and Armageddon will soon follow! Your friend is very smart... this has been in the works since the 80-90’s... when those parents stopped parenting, the good ole fashion way!! Unfortunately, now the kids tell their parents how it’s going to be and what they are going to do and if the parents don’t follow... the kids call CPS! Our Government has been a joke since The Clinton Foundation was registered as a 503c. )b)!!

If I offended anyone, I sincerely apologize!

I’ve just had it with how absolutely blind, deaf and totally self centered some have become and how corrupt our government is!!

It was good while it lasted.




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Dude relax, Good god relax. Take the tinfoil hat off. Civil war and Armageddon, good God relax.

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[KEW]

If I offended anyone, I sincerely apologize!

You certainly don't offend me!
"Blow my mind" would be "Yes!"

So from your perspective, why is future control by the Dem's going to be so much different/worse than when Obama was at the reins?

Once Trump is voted out of office and the loony left socialist extremists get control of the reins... you can start the count down to the demise of the Republican Party ...

I do agree with you that Trump's association with the Republican party has done serious damage; but, even then, I don't believe it is irreparable!

 

[shadyJ]

You certainly don't offend me!
"Blow my mind" would be "Yes!"

So from your perspective, why is future control by the Dem's going to be so much different/worse than when Obama was at the reins?



I do agree with you that Trump's association with the Republican party has done serious damage; but, even then, I don't believe it is irreparable!

I don't think you are going to accomplish what you hope by trying to debate someone that vitrolic.

 

[lovinthehd]

Once Trump is voted out of office and the loony left socialist extremists get control of the reins... you can start the count down to the demise of the Republican Party and The USA! Civil War will follow and Armageddon will soon follow! Your friend is very smart... this has been in the works since the 80-90’s... when those parents stopped parenting, the good ole fashion way!! Unfortunately, now the kids tell their parents how it’s going to be and what they are going to do and if the parents don’t follow... the kids call CPS! Our Government has been a joke since The Clinton Foundation was registered as a 503c. )b)!!

If I offended anyone, I sincerely apologize!

I’ve just had it with how absolutely blind, deaf and totally self centered some have become and how corrupt our government is!!

It was good while it lasted.




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LOL as if the republicans have much to go back to....they went off the rails with McCarthy back in the 50s, had Nixon and the goon squad in the 70s, and the generally weird coalition with fundamentalists/tv evangelists and racists since (well, the racists were pretty much always there). Great stuff to "go back to" LOL. The government has been corrupted by money in politics....let's simply get it out and clean up both parties (and open the door for other more relevant ones perhaps).

 

[KEW]

I don't think you are going to accomplish what you hope by trying to debate someone that vitrolic.

First off, I do not see him as vitriolic!
He is not attacking anyone!
More than anything, he is fearful of what is to come in the aftermath of Trump!

I have no intention of debating what he thinks in response to my question. As a matter of fact, I coached my question in terms of "from your perspective, why..." and I will never win any debate over what someone perspective is. Only he is aware of his perspective!

He has (from my perspective) extreme opinions and I would like to try to understand why/how he believes what he believes!

I don't see why Obama (who was a little more liberal than my ideal, but I sincerely appreciate the measured and respectful way he treated the people under and around him) would be less damaging than the incoming Dem's and given the rhetoric promoted about him, don't see why someone would expect the next Dem wave to be significantly worse!

I am also indirectly highlighting how Obama was largely made out to be the anti-Christ by Fox, etc., but in the end he was pretty ineffectual in that role as perhaps a source of reassurance.

@Audio-A , I believe, at a fundamental level, we all ultimately want the same things (security, stability, prosperity, good health),but disagree on how to accomplish them. My question about "what you see or have heard makes the future Dem's more prone to severe tragedy in our country than Obama's presidency" is an honest one. Thanks!

 

[shadyJ]

First off, I do not see him as vitriolic!
He is not attacking anyone!
More than anything, he is fearful of what is to come in the aftermath of Trump!

I have no intention of debating what he thinks in response to my question. As a matter of fact, I coached my question in terms of "from your perspective, why..." and I will never win any debate over what someone perspective is. Only he is aware of his perspective!

He has (from my perspective) extreme opinions and I would like to try to understand why/how he believes what he believes!

I don't see why Obama (who was a little more liberal than my ideal, but I sincerely appreciate the measured and respectful way he treated the people under and around him) would be less damaging than the incoming Dem's and given the rhetoric promoted about him, don't see why someone would expect the next Dem wave to be significantly worse!

I am also indirectly highlighting how Obama was largely made out to be the anti-Christ by Fox, etc., but in the end he was pretty ineffectual in that role as perhaps a source of reassurance.

@Audio-A , I believe, at a fundamental level, we all ultimately want the same things (security, stability, prosperity, good health),but disagree on how to accomplish them. My question about "what you see or have heard makes the future Dem's more prone to severe tragedy in our country than Obama's presidency" is an honest one. Thanks!

Anyone who thinks "socialist extremists" are going to get the reins on government is so thoroughly cocooned in a bubble that no amount of reasoning or fact citing is going to persuade them of anything. Anyone who thinks that civil war and armageddon are imminent is well beyond the rational discussion. You are trying to have an level-headed discussion with the guy on the street corner waving a sign around that says "THE END IS NIGH!" and is rambling about eschatological gibberish. By the way, you will have had a very different experience of the Obama presidency than this person, or anyone else in the right wing bubble, so referring to the Obama administration as 'not so bad' will note jibe with this person's experience. He is going to say that Obama is a tyrant who tried to being in as many illegal immigrants as possible to vote for democrats. He will think Obama tried to turn preschoolers gay. He will think that Obama tried to seize all of American's firearms so that they will be helpless to resist when Obama has ISIS comes to invade and occupy the USA, so that they can take all of the white women and sell them into slavery.

In other words, this person has already set off more than enough red flags to suggest that arguing with them is a futile endeavor.

But hey, maybe I am wrong.

 

[Irvrobinson]

Once Trump is voted out of office and the loony left socialist extremists get control of the reins... you can start the count down to the demise of the Republican Party and The USA! Civil War will follow and Armageddon will soon follow! Your friend is very smart... this has been in the works since the 80-90’s... when those parents stopped parenting, the good ole fashion way!! Unfortunately, now the kids tell their parents how it’s going to be and what they are going to do and if the parents don’t follow... the kids call CPS! Our Government has been a joke since The Clinton Foundation was registered as a 503c. )b)!!

If I offended anyone, I sincerely apologize!

I’ve just had it with how absolutely blind, deaf and totally self centered some have become and how corrupt our government is!!

It was good while it lasted.

And what, pray tell, is parenting "the ole fashion way"? Corporal punishment? Spare-the-rod and all that biblical crap?

I've just done an estimate of the size of my Republican tax increase bill, and it's even bigger than I thought. I'm at the point where I'm looking forward to the demise of the Republican Party, because it sure as hell doesn't represent my interests, and I'm a quite right-leaning capitalist. I think most Americans are fundamentally centrists and moderates, so I don't buy this prophetic socialist takeover of the country. If Trump gets voted out of office it'll be because of his own intellectual dysfunction and inability to lead people who demand well-reasoned justifications for actions. The angry old white man thing can't last forever.

For Thanksgiving we were invited to a friend's home, and every year she passes out little cards where you have to write down what you're thankful for, and then people try to guess who the writer was when they're read aloud. Not surprisingly, one old white guy just wrote: "Trump". Groans were heard from some. But I got the biggest laugh by writing: "The two-term limit."

 

[shadyJ]

But I got the biggest laugh by writing: "The two-term limit."

There is no chance that trump will be anything more than a singe term president. There is a big question mark about him even completing a single term.

 

[Hetfield]

There is no chance that trump will be anything more than a singe term president. There is a big question mark about him even completing a single term.

From your lips to God's ears.
I think the maga nuts get something very wrong on why we say that too. It's not just policy issues, that is very little do with needing him to leave. He's unraveling everything that has held the US and it's allies together and kept us from having a WW3. It's the constant destruction of the pillars of our institutions that has held our democracy in place. The complete disregard of Truth and facts. Look what he had done the premiere law enforcement agency in the world, the FBI and it's not for a noble cause, it's not for any good reason except his own selfish reasons. Everything he does and says is for himself not to help others. It's sad anyone still buys into this BS.

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