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U.S. Politics: Comey, Comey, Comey, Comey, Comey Chameleon


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2 hours ago, SkynJay said:

Thus...a protest?  To draw attention to to one's cause?

Considering your calling leaving the speech childish yet a speaker deriding the culture one of the various campuses he is visiting is not I find your entire position laughable.  Did Pence not get his safe space to comfortably deride campus safe spaces?

No, the true irony is that he would have a true safe space only if everyone heeded Commodore's admonishments. AKA the hypocrisy of ridiculing "safe spaces" whilst simultaneously deriding political expression via protest as mere "virtue signaling."

 

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7 hours ago, Kalbear said:

It's actually a lot harder, it seems. He holds on  to friendships for a bizarre amount of time. Look at how he behaved towards Ailes and O'Reilly, even after it was not profitable for him to do so. Or Flynn for that matter. 

But Flynn, Ailes and O'Reilly didn't do anything wrong, in Trump's eyes. Critically, they never criticised him or disagreed with him. They stuck by him so he stuck by them.

It's not that Trump dumps people when they're inconvenient - it's that he dumps them when they stop flattering his ego. So flattering his ego is an easy way to get in his good books, but it's hard to put that to good purpose. If you're going to oppose trump, the best way is to oppose him, not to try some cunning ninja trick of befriending him first.

7 hours ago, Commodore said:

Do they think this comes off as anything other than childish?

I think they do, yes, and they are right. It comes off as a dignified and powerful expression of their principles. I certainly see it as such. It's a shame that you don't.

As for irony, I think a man who refuses to dine alone with women criticising others for needing a 'safe space' beats all in that department.

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So after hearing multiple times the story about how some agencies try to keep Pres. Trump's attention by putting his name in reports as often as possible, a thought occurs. Now I'd have to assume that by now he has seen these same news stories. I wonder what his reaction to them are. Does he see these and think to himself, "Looking from the outside that behavior is really strange. Do I really do this? And if so maybe I should stop?". Does he know he does this and just doesn't care? Or does he see these stories and think to himself "Fake News", I don't do that!. (Looks back down at briefing and reads,"***** Trump ******* ***** ****** **** ********* *** Trump***** Trump ******** ****** BIGGEST INAUGURATION CROWD EVER!!!!!". I'm guessing it's probably the 2nd or 3rd option.

Edit: F B. the gods of the thread were not offered their customary 400 posts. A sacrifice was necessary to placate them. 

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16 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

It's so annoying to watch the press fawn over Trump's speech. It was truly awful and it felt like it was written by a college freshman. But hey, because Trump didn't vomit mid way through, piss his pants, and insult Muslims too much, it's viewed as a tremendous success.

Fucking idiots. It's mind blowing how low the bar is for this man.......

Which outlets were doing this?   The general take I've been reading has been more along the lines of "It could have been a lot worse" than anything resembling praise, though I've admittedly not seen any cable news.  I'm not doubting it happened, I'm just curious how widely it's happening.

On a similar note, is anyone looking at conservative outlets?  I'm curious how they're taking his cozying up to Saudi Arabia (including that flattery donation to Ivanka's "foundation").   That was such a big talking point against Hillary that Trumpkins kept using-- she and her corrupt foundation had too many ties to the evil Saudis and so forth.   Is it good now because leader says it's good?  Or are the outlets running distraction stories instead?

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9 minutes ago, butterbumps! said:

 

On a similar note, is anyone looking at conservative outlets?  I'm curious how they're taking his cozying up to Saudi Arabia (including that flattery donation to Ivanka's "foundation").   That was such a big talking point against Hillary that Trumpkins kept using-- she and her corrupt foundation had too many ties to the evil Saudis and so forth.   Is it good now because leader says it's good?  Or are the outlets running distraction stories instead?

I'm seeing this as mostly distraction stories. 'Look Melania isn't wearing a headscarf' , 'Trump gets tough with Muslims'.

People only pay attention to headlines and all that adds up to showing Trump as someone who doesn't take crap from those arabs. 

And of course, nothing about Russia.

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There's a lot to unpack from this story.

 

Quote

 

Publicly, President Trump didn't seem overjoyed when, earlier this month, he signed a $1 trillion bill to keep the government open. Privately, his mood was much, much worse.

Behind-the-scenes: When the spending bill had been negotiated and finalized, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus phoned the former House Speaker John Boehner and told him the president doesn't like how the negotiation came out and is thinking about vetoing the bill. Boehner has told associates that Priebus asked him if he could talk Trump into signing the spending bill. Boehner said he would.

 

Ten minutes later, Boehner's phone rang. It was the President. Boehner made a couple different arguments to Trump about why he should sign the spending bill:

  1. He told Trump he should be happy about the fact that he doesn't have to give a dollar of domestic spending in exchange for increases in military spending. And he got a substantial boost in military spending.
  2. The most important argument Boehner made: the last thing you need right now is a government shutdown.

Why this matters: I'm not suggesting Boehner's conversation with Trump was determinative. It's telling, however, that the President hated the spending bill so much that his chief of staff felt the need to reach out to the former House Speaker — a guy who captained an implacable conference through plenty of funding battles — to convince Trump to sign the bill

 

As the article says, hard to know how important this call really was. But its kinda amazing that Boehner is still being forced to be the responsible one and that Trump maybe almost vetoed his own party's budget deal. It'll be something to see how much of a tantrum he throws when Congress completely ignores his proposed FY2018 budget and does something else entirely. 

(Assuming he's still President in late September that is. He almost certainly will be, but its nice to dream.)

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4 hours ago, butterbumps! said:

Which outlets were doing this?   The general take I've been reading has been more along the lines of "It could have been a lot worse" than anything resembling praise, though I've admittedly not seen any cable news.  I'm not doubting it happened, I'm just curious how widely it's happening.

Yeah it  initially received a ton a praise, though commentators have since cooled on his speech.  

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SCOTUS upheld the lower court decision striking down North Carolina's gerrymander as racially biased. It was a 5-3 decision with Gorsch not participating; oddly it was Thomas that joined the liberals, which is a rare sight indeed.

Roberts, Kennedy, and Alito didn't fully dissent though, instead they issued an opinion agreeing in part and disagreeing in part.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-1262_db8e.pdf

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7 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

So after hearing multiple times the story about how some agencies try to keep Pres. Trump's attention by putting his name in reports as often as possible, a thought occurs. Now I'd have to assume that by now he has seen these same news stories. I wonder what his reaction to them are. Does he see these and think to himself, "Looking from the outside that behavior is really strange. Do I really do this? And if so maybe I should stop?". Does he know he does this and just doesn't care? Or does he see these stories and think to himself "Fake News", I don't do that!. (Looks back down at briefing and reads,"***** Trump ******* ***** ****** **** ********* *** Trump***** Trump ******** ****** BIGGEST INAUGURATION CROWD EVER!!!!!". I'm guessing it's probably the 2nd or 3rd option.

Edit: F B. the gods of the thread were not offered their customary 400 posts. A sacrifice was necessary to placate them. 

He doesn't see those stories because they are on media he doesn't follow?

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I know watching polls too much is foolish, but the Ipsos/Reuters poll (who do pretty good work) was just horrible for Trump.  His approval/disapproval was 38/56.  His net rating of -18 is down 5 points from last week.  Perhaps most importantly, that decline was primarily amongst Republicans.

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Among Republicans, 23 percent expressed disapproval of Trump in the latest poll, up from 16 percent in the same poll last week. The decline in support from Republicans appears to be a primary reason why Trump's overall approval rating is now at the lowest level since he took office.

Declining support amongst Republicans is the best news we can hope for in terms of limiting the damage Trump can cause.  If congressional Republicans can act independently of him without fear of getting called out, then we might start seeing actual oversight from them.

But on the down side, this international trip and the special council Mueller will take the heat off him in the short term.  I actually expect his polls will stabilize temporarily, at least until the CBO score comes out and puts the AHCA back in the news. 

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16 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

 I actually expect his polls will stabilize temporarily, at least until the CBO score comes out and puts the AHCA back in the news. 

Oh yeah, the new CBO report comes out Wednesday.
Should be big laughs as we see how the keystone cops do healthcare.

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But, but, Rush Limbaugh said we had the best healthcare in the world!
What in the hell is going on here?

http://voxeu.org/article/us-healthcare-inefficiency-evidence-prescription-drugs

Quote

Although the US spends more on healthcare per capita than any other developed country, it does not enjoy better health outcomes. Are institutional features of the US healthcare system driving this apparent inefficiency? Garber and Skinner (2008) hypothesised that the fee-for-service system of reimbursement prevalent in the US may create incentives for faster adoption of new medical technologies that may have minimal clinical benefits. However, directly testing this hypothesis is generally complicated in part because it is difficult to construct consistent measures of healthcare utilisation across countries in a way that holds quality of care constant. For example, a surgical procedure may be used more in one country than another because the quality of the procedure is higher in that country, not because it is inefficiently administered.

 

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