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Author Topic: People Supporting Trump  (Read 29142 times)

Offline limerence

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Re: People Supporting Trump
« Reply #44 from previous page: March 27, 2018, 04:35:07 AM »
Oh I see my post is missing words, my phone gets buggy (will try to autocorrect word but just deletes it) and laggy when its cold (down clocks for battery compression), and i blindly typed that while taking 2am smoke. "Hypocritical liberals". If liberal hypocrisy doesn't ring any bells, i dont think we will agree on anything. A good example is posting polls to make some point about how Trump supporters are a sinking ship or a small minority, ironically the same polls said Trump had like 0-5% chance to win the election.

Cambridge-Analytica? Pretentious way to say Facebook leaks? If you referring to Trump campaigns relation, I'm sure all companies, political campaigns, etc buy as much data as they can. If you're calling it unscrupulous, I don't know what to say other than fat majority of population has been brainwashed to not care about privacy, because they "have nothing to hide", so unless that changes, it will be very easy to buy lots of intimate information. Is that why its in the news everywhere? What is the wrong doing? Facebook stock took a dive, why is the msm caring about Facebook privacy now, it's been no secret?

Do you not believe in a "deep state", who still call most of the shots, presidents and their house have been mostly puppets or celebrities (since at least JFK lol) for people to get mad or happy at. I do not know if Trump won the election organically, or he was chosen to win since the beginning by tptb.

Sure Trump lies, the media act like children with jabs they take. He says retarded stuff so they act twice as retarded. All presidents and politicians just say whatever sounds nice. I hate all politicians, any reasonable person should. People act like his disjointed contradictions are proof he's senile, or mindless compulsive liar or whatever. Its pretty clear to see his blabber have the news cycles under his thumb. CNN and friends will keep losing viewership because its so ridiculous to anyone who isnt completely operation paperclipped brainwashed.

Were you a big fan of obama or bill?
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Offline Opus

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Re: People Supporting Trump
« Reply #45 on: March 27, 2018, 06:24:27 AM »
Oh I see my post is missing words, my phone gets buggy (will try to autocorrect word but just deletes it) and laggy when its cold (down clocks for battery compression), and i blindly typed that while taking 2am smoke. "Hypocritical liberals". If liberal hypocrisy doesn't ring any bells, i dont think we will agree on anything. A good example is posting polls to make some point about how Trump supporters are a sinking ship or a small minority, ironically the same polls said Trump had like 0-5% chance to win the election.

Bells? The only bells I hear are from the ringing empty-headed conservative morons walking around. Maybe you could re-phrase the question?

It seems like you're saying that opinion polls are meaningless, because tRump polled low, yet still won?

Nobody ever said that polls are any sort of absolute. Nobody. Ever. I posted the link to emphasize sentiment, it's pretty far from the root of any argument here.

Regarding "liberals" -  how any American dopefiend could cling to conservative ideals, is completely beyond me. Conservatives are our enemies; case-in-point: Jeff Sessions. I have more.

Have you ever looked at the definition of the word "liberal?" More and more I think a lot of people toss it around, without really understanding its root. Personally, I like new ideas - so fucking sue me or call me a snowflake or wtfever. I'm long outta fucks and I strongly believe that theology has no place in politics, which is absolutely a principle based in the right.

I digress..

Quote
Cambridge-Analytica? Pretentious way to say Facebook leaks?

First off: Pretentious? I didn't name CA, and I referenced them specifically for a reason. If you don't like my vocabulary, please let me know so I can go lube up my dictionary for you.

Second, more educations for yu0, as you seem lacking in facts:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-faceook-nix-bannon-trump

What CA has done here in the US and also wordwide, is illegal on a shit-ton of levels -- I'm not even talking about ethics here, which is actually monumentally important. This subject is way bigger than this thread, but you should probably do some reading before anymoar posting shit about how irrelevant CA is to this presidency.

Quote
Do you not believe in a "deep state", who still call most of the shots, presidents and their house have been mostly puppets or celebrities (since at least JFK lol) for people to get mad or happy at. I do not know if Trump won the election organically, or he was chosen to win since the beginning by tptb.

What I believe in otherwise isn't terribly relevant. What is relevant here are FACTS. Honestly you come off to me as someone who isn't paying very close attention to the facts. One thing I will tell you about my beliefs, is that apathy due to conspiracy theory is a cop-out, but again we digress.

Quote
Sure Trump lies, the media act like children with jabs they take. He says retarded stuff so they act twice as retarded. All presidents and politicians just say whatever sounds nice. I hate all politicians, any reasonable person should. People act like his disjointed contradictions are proof he's senile, or mindless compulsive liar or whatever. Its pretty clear to see his blabber have the news cycles under his thumb. CNN and friends will keep losing viewership because its so ridiculous to anyone who isnt completely operation paperclipped brainwashed.

I don't see much there worth responding to, most of those statements don't really connect (trump lies, then people act dumb -- the point? The difference here is pathology, demonstrated in the article, k?) or don't make any sense at all. And operation paperclip took place in the 40s-50s, so again, where is the relevancy??

Quote
Were you a big fan of obama or bill?

Why does this matter?
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Offline limerence

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Re: People Supporting Trump
« Reply #46 on: March 30, 2018, 09:05:32 AM »
Here are the "facts" on CA. Any group spending tons of money on public opinion is buying data. Including democrat party, not like theres much difference between them save a few issues. https://medium.com/@CKava/why-almost-everything-reported-about-the-cambridge-analytica-facebook-hacking-controversy-is-db7f8af2d042 Everyone knows facebook provides almost 0 privacy. They agreed to sign over their data. I'm not sure exactly sure what the TOS says about personal data, once extracted, being able to be used outside of Facebook apps. Either way it is no surprise at all, stuff even the msm has been reporting for years.

Quote
I don't see much there worth responding to, most of those statements don't really connect (trump lies, then people act dumb -- the point? The difference here is pathology, demonstrated in the article, k?) or don't make any sense at all. And operation paperclip took place in the 40s-50s, so again, where is the relevancy??
Do you believe they stopped then? Is anderson cooper not a bonafide intelligence agent? Almost any public knowledge or beliefs are bought and sold. I ask your thoughts on the "deep state" because they would who is responsible for the modern operation paperclip. CIA has quite a history of saying, "ok we did this and we wont do it again," but then they do.
Pathology, meaning, Trump administration cant help but do naughty things? As I said several times in my first post, Trump's bombastic statements make the msm and especially left leaning individuals act like idiots. Which is not going to help their cause, it is not going to get more people to subscribe to their narrative, it will only cause more normal people to be wary of the msm and their brainwash. It is why Trump won, if the election process is as free and honest and we're lead to believe, unless Trump was chosen to win and was Hillary picked to lose from the start.

I ask your opinion on Obama or Clintons because I wonder if you just hate anything that is "conservative" or "republican" or if you just trash all politicians, in which case, why are you shocked, but I dont think that is your belief.
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Offline Opus

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Re: People Supporting Trump
« Reply #47 on: March 31, 2018, 03:12:20 AM »
ok, I'm looking at that article and will post back on some specifics after I look at a few of the points it's trying to make. Some comments in the mean-time:

-Nobody I know or listen to is calling this a "hack" - it's not, it was basically mining through the app you mentioned. The issue with the data is how it was used, and whether people are truly ok with it.

If you voted (?), and you learned that the decision behind your vote was based ONEHUNDRED percent, (as an example) on lies - fed through media of ALL forms. One hundred percent. Would you be ok with that? That you voted based on lies? What if it was %50, still ok? A massive issue at hand is the complexity in which these "permissions" to gather data are being used (contorted and then routed %100 full circle back to the user, for political manipulation). I think this complexity HAS to be realized before this argument can truly be appreciated. Otherwise opinions will simply be uninformed and virtually meaningless.

-Anyone attacking Chris Wylie's intellect doesn't understand programming. Simple fact is you don't get to be a (largely self-taught) top software engineer by being a fool. If you believe otherwise, then you don't code. And the comments about his hair, his gay, his blahblahblah are weak - none of that bullshit matters, if you're distracted by hair, then you're not listening.

I'll look at that article again. Until then:



Also, my political leanings run around fiscally ~centrist to the social left.

edit: ok, read it. Second-to-last paragraph sez:
"To be crystal clear, I’m not arguing that Cambridge Analytica and Kogan were innocent. At the very least, it is clear they were doing things that were contrary to Facebook’s data sharing policies. And similarly Facebook seems to have been altogether too cavalier with permitting developers to access its users’ private data."

Exactly. And then what happened from there, is the real story.

There are lots of points in that article that I could address - the question is whether it's worth my time. Do you @limerence want to start with some specifics?

"Pathology" means rooted in disease. The man's lies are symptoms of illness. Ask any psychiatrist or even anyone familiar with the DSM.

IMO this is huge, especially considering the momentum Mueller's investigation has gathered, and that Congress is immediately involved. Time will tell.. Maybe we could bury the thread a couple more years?

The rest of yer post limerence about Anderson Cooper and shit, I just can't be bothered. Checkit: I used to work for PIs, does that make me an "Intelligence Agent" too? Please spare me the conspiracy bullshit. I'm hoping you have better than some irrelevant illuminati garbage, otherwise I'm wasting my time here.. Please stick to the points.

« Last Edit: March 31, 2018, 03:51:58 AM by Opus »
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Offline dillydudeEL14

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Re: People Supporting Trump
« Reply #48 on: April 02, 2018, 02:40:59 AM »
Wow someone (op) woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning lol. I don’t support everything he does but when it came down to the choice we had:him or Hillary I’d pick him any day, and I did. But to try to answer some of your questions a lot of Americans agree with s lot of the stuff he wants to do. We are sick of illegal immigrants pouring in here and using OUR services and committing crimes. Sure Americans commit crimes too but what are you gonna do they are citizens we can’t just exile them,  but we can kick illegals out. I do support some path to citizenship for good people who were brought here illegally as kids but lots of them are gang members and commit violent crimes and use our social services. We have a hard enough time funding that shit for our own citizens. And I do believe that our citizens should get preferential treatment over people who came here illegally.

I also support gun rights. If someone attacks me I shouldn’t  t have to run or fight I should be able to shoot that piece of shit. If he dies that’s on him. He shouldn’t have attacked me. Yes gun violence is an issue but it’s not law abiding gun owners who are the problem. Maybe there are some cases of otherwise law abiding citizens going rogue and attacking people like in parkland Florida,  but there were many warning signs that were ignored. That also opens up a whole new can of worms because where do you draw the line. Like at what point do you decide to take someone’s guns or freedom because of what they post online. I don’t know it’s a tough issue and frankly I think that shootings are just something that we’re gonna have to live with for a while regardless of what happens gun control no gun control it’s just an unfortunate and unavoidable thing right now. But I shouldn’t  t have to give up my right to protect myself with a gun just because other people hurt people with them. Hell that makes me want to have a gun even more.

And the whole “assault rifle” thing is retarded. There is no definition of assault rifle it’s a media buzzword. Any rifle that’s black instead of wood is an “assault rifle” lol. We don’t have military assault rifles. Military ones are full auto. The ones we can buy are not. And people say we have no need for a weapon that is designed to kill humans efficiently. I say we do. Home defense. If I get broken into I want a gun that is designed to efficiently take down humans. Not some bulky awkward deer hunting gun that only holds a few rounds. A handgun would probably suffice in most instances but what if a crew of people break in? Unlikely sure but if it happens I’d want an “assault rifle”.

I don’t know much about the economy and economic policy but I think his heart is in the right place. He is trying to make it less attractive for businesses to use foreign steel.

The main area where I disagree with trump is drug policy. He hasn’t really done anything but I don’t like his rhetoric. And the fact that he supports rodrigo duterte is unconscionable. Duterte should be forced to watch as his grandchildren are raped and then he has my permission to die lol. Nah his grandchildren didn’t do anything wrong but I just hate him that much. I really hope some cartel captures him tortures him and kills him and posts it on the internet.  But Hillary was pretty tough on drugs too. Like I’ve said before if some candidate believably vows to seriously change drug policy for the better I’ll vote for him or her no matter what party he or she is affiliated with.

Anyway that’s about all I have to say on this for now. And I didn’t mean any offense with the wrong side of the bed thing I was just messin with you.
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Offline Opus

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Re: People Supporting Trump
« Reply #49 on: April 03, 2018, 01:31:59 AM »
On immigration - a wall is not the answer, primarily because most immigrants get here by.. Jet Plane! (durr...) Please remember what year we are in, k? Building a wall would be insanely expensive and the truth is that elevating a couple hundred pounds 20' in the air, just isn't that hard. Especially in the middle of the fucking Sonora. One thing about a wall you rarely hear discussed, is environmental impact (you can call me a bleeding-heart libtard nao) - LOTS and LOTS of critters migrate through that area each year. Building a wall puts a stop to all of that. There are a lot of reasons building a big ass wall is just a moronic idea, but those reasons aren't something you ever hear the GOP discuss. For the couple thousand migrants that do come across the border every year -- it makes a lot more sense to use technology for monitoring that land, than it does to build a wall. This is IMO a pretty clear case of having tons of options that just aren't being presented to the public, basically for publicity.

BTW I voted for Hillary and haven't ever regretted it. Her resume is long and impressive, she was always way more qualified IMO and I expected her terms to be much like Obamas. Bring sources with whatever critique you have of her, cos I'm sure I've heard it, and if you do shit like call her "Killary" - then I think you're a sucker.

Immigration - Certainly immigrants need regulated. I don't think many contest that. The problem is we're moving backwards. On the subject of DACA - Spanky just ended that. The dream act helps people who have been here 7 years get citizenship, but they just canned it - I'll post a link at the end of this. I can think of two people I know, one from Colombia, and one from Jamaica, both perfect, accent-less English speakers, both have lived here > ten years. I think should they have as much right to be here as anyone else, but if it was <7 years, they'd be sweating fucking ICE rn. They both work hard, contribute, lots of friends etc. - Fuck you if you think your birth right qualifies you for more than these guys, because tRump says so. AFAIC if you're not Native American, then you outta keep yer trap shut cos you're lucky you're allowed to live here at all.

Guns: Nobody wants your guns, but nobody needs a fucking .223 for home defense. Simple. The problem is, unfortunately, that people can't be responsible and NOT use things like ARs -- semi-automatic rifles with fat mags full of big rounds -- to mow other people down, and this shit has become fucking cliche -- it's been happening for decades now. Put yourself on the receiving end of a .223, and I bet you start to fucking empathize with some of these people who have seen heads explode. Also, don't waste your time trying to sell me this bullshit about how every American needs a .223 for home defense, sell it to the kids, cos they're the ones in the streets.

Some of you need to wake up and realize these people aren't your friends. You watch shit like Fox and then parrot about "fake news media." Like wake the fuck up already? Donald tRump is not, will not, won't ever be your fucking savior. Better luck next time.
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It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society -- Krishnamurti

Offline Mr.pooper

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Re: People Supporting Trump
« Reply #50 on: April 05, 2018, 09:43:51 AM »
What are your thoughts on the documentary "The Clinton Chronicles" ? Does it make you view them any different? i feel this documentary really opened up my eyes and changed my view on the clintons and politics in general.

I dont involve myself much in the political topics of discussion with regards to if one supports red vs blue. What are we crippin and bloodin over here? I find with politics people dont really want the truth, just support in what they believe is true. Then this universal conditioning to get angry at the opposing view. 

What i have come to notice is that all media is owned by one entity. Clear channel communications anyone? ANd i have never personally hung out with trump. All my information about him is received through some sort of media source.I often wonder What if its all altered to be against this one individual?

ONe thing i have come across is Trump is trying to take down these huge pedophile sex rings that exist amongst the political elite. By the second month of his presidency he had arrested 1500 people  nation wide connected to those child sex operations. that number as of april is supposedly hovering around 3000. I like that hes not into fucking kids like the former Clinton president.(google Lolita express airlines) At least he likes hot OLDER women, hence his super model wife. I dont ever see media reporting on this for some reason. Seems like a big deal to me.

 I atleast support my tax dollars going towards stopping pedophiles, rather than a war on drugs. Imagine if all that money and man hours that was spent on the "War on drugs" was spent stopping the child traffiking problems. and you know murder and rape...
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Offline Opus

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Re: People Supporting Trump
« Reply #51 on: April 05, 2018, 12:49:17 PM »
What are your thoughts on the documentary "The Clinton Chronicles" ? Does it make you view them any different? i feel this documentary really opened up my eyes and changed my view on the clintons and politics in general.

I think you've been duped - that Jerry Fukn Fallwell had *anything* to do with that production, should be telling? It took me less than a minute to find pages for days debunking that pile of bullshit.

This is just WP, there are a ton of references though, and they read exactly like this does:
"The Clinton Chronicles: An Investigation into the Alleged Criminal Activities of Bill Clinton is a 1994 film that accused Bill Clinton of a range of crimes. The video, directed by Patrick Matrisciana, was characterized by The Washington Post as a "bizarre and unsubstantiated documentary."[1]

The New York Times reported that it was a poorly documented "hodgepodge of sometimes-crazed charges."[2] It helped perpetuate a conspiracy theory known as the "Clinton Body Count" about a list of associates Clinton was purported to have had killed.[3] The deaths listed in the film have largely been discredited due to deliberate bias, weak circumstantial evidence, and coincidence.[3]

The film was produced by Citizens for Honest Government, a project of a Westminster, California organization named Creative Ministries Inc., partially funded by Larry Nichols, a long-time Clinton opponent, and distributed with help from the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who also appears in the film.[1] Over 300,000 copies of the film were put into circulation[2] with perhaps half that being sales.[4]

To promote the film, Falwell aired an interview with Matrisciana, who was silhouetted to conceal his identity as he pretended to be a journalist who was afraid for his life.[4] Matrisciana later acknowledged that he was not in any danger, but that the interview was staged for dramatic effect at Falwell's suggestion.[4]
[/quote]


Quote
What i have come to notice is that all media is owned by one entity. Clear channel communications anyone? ANd i have never personally hung out with trump. All my information about him is received through some sort of media source.I often wonder What if its all altered to be against this one individual?

Two days ago Sinclair Media told their networks to read from a script prepared by tRump -- fucking verbatim (!) - if this doesn't creep you the fuck out, you should probably start brushing up on your Russian:


Currently "Sinclair", right now, is making a push to grab an additional %25, on top of the %40 they already own. You're correct that a media-monopoly is a bad thing, but you don't seem aware of who really controls the monopolies? (your beloved GOP)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-real-and-disheartening-danger-of-the-sinclair-story/2018/04/03/f634b696-377f-11e8-8fd2-49fe3c675a89_story.html?utm_term=.27ab3f92d399

...

Learn to look beyond what some parrot on faux news randomly pukes out into the air, same for MSNBC or CNN - they *all* have underlying motives -- these motives are very important in regards to the validity of their messages. Seriously - research ideas don't just take shit for granted because someone said so. Learn the power of  "peer review." Learn to look at multiple sides of an argument before jumping to conclusions, always remember there are AT LEAST *two* sides to every argument. Learn to be critical of everything, everyone, and never ever get stuck in your beliefs, be gumby, evolve.

There are too many problems in politics to just write it all off as blahblahblah -- these issues affect everyone, directly, whether you know it or not, you can choose to ignore this and hand over control, or you can engage. The trick is to focus on issues you care about, that matter to you. Then do the research and vote.

--

The hard truths here are that many people reading this helped elect a dictator to the US presidency.


https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/trump-presidency-trump-cant-negotiate-his-way-out-of-a-paper-bag

Vanity Fair 3/30/018 - The Art of the Dunce:
15 Months Into His Presidency, Trump Can’t Negotiate His Way Out of a Paper Bag
Any sort of policy requires some firsthand mastery of details. Trump, as we know, lacks this. So when he goes into meetings with Democrats and gives away the store, only to backpedal hours later and pretend he didn’t, his weakness as a negotiator is only one part of his vulnerability. The other, more brutal fact is that he simply doesn’t know what’s being discussed.
by

    T.A. Frank

March 30, 2018 11:46 am
Donald Trump sits in the Roosevelt Room.
Donald Trump sits in the Roosevelt Room.
By JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images.

The power of Donald Trump purely as a cultural mascot—he has become like Che Guevara or Uncle Sam or the San Diego Chicken—means that he'll never go down to zero approval from his fans. Even to his non-fans, the middle finger that he represents to polite society still offers an occasional, if unworthy, pleasure. And I’ll stick to my argument from last week that Trump’s presidency—if only by clearing the bar of not having sent in military forces to unseat a foreign regime—remains comparatively tolerable. If we stay at peace, with a growing economy, then voters will probably forgive Trump’s daily clowning and broken promises.

But that’s about as far as any sane person can go with the positives. Trump’s foreign policy becomes increasingly interventionist and belligerent. His relationship to Wall Street seems to have been warmed by a shared interest in financial predation. And, in the past week alone, Trump offered so many lowlights that only his most maniacal or power-hungry loyalists could pretend all was well. Trump’s new national security adviser, we learned, was going to be the war-mongering and unmannerly John Bolton, one of the era’s greatest reputational threats to the mustache. Then Trump signed off on a $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill that he’d first threatened to veto and then pretended to disavow, saying he’d “never sign another bill like this again,” having secured almost none of his priorities on infrastructure or immigration.

A Trump worshipper could perhaps make the case that Trump has a good-cop, bad-cop game he’s trying to play by appointing Bolton to his post. But the omnibus bill posed a much stronger test of faith. Not only did it grant Trump barely any funds for border security—$1.6 billion—it also forbade immigration authorities from adding any more beds for detainees and forbade Trump from using any of that money toward constructing a wall from the prototypes he’d just inspected. As Vox’s immigration writer Dara Lind put it in a tweet, “Congress isn’t just not giving Trump what he wants on immigration. They’re kind of smacking him down.” The chatter is no longer about whether Trump is a dictator, but whether he’s so feckless that he’ll start a war to prove he can actually make things happen.
Watch Now: Adam Devine Hijacks a Stranger's Tinder

As a candidate who’d won by defying nearly everyone, Trump the president was theoretically in thrall to almost no one, apart from his voters. He could have told Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell that they’d get their tax cuts and Obamacare repeals when he, Trump, got his wall. He could have worked with Chuck Schumer to craft an infrastructure bill that would make Trump look like a bridger of divides—and put people to work. He could also have told Wall Street to go hang, at least for show.

But, of course, none of this happened. Trump clearly wanted to deliver on immigration and infrastructure, but couldn’t. Why not? Two theories, neither one of which rules out the other, come to mind.

The first is that Trump has always been a bad negotiator. The consensus among observers in the early 1990s—when Trump’s business was insolvent and he was at risk of losing everything—was that Trump had overpaid for countless acquisitions. The Plaza Hotel, and many other buildings and businesses, had failed to generate anything close to the revenues required to cover their costs. If he was making negotiating mistakes like that in a field he knew something about, why wouldn’t he make even bigger negotiating mistakes in a field he knows nothing about?

The second—again, not exclusive—theory is that moving any sort of policy requires some firsthand mastery of details. Trump, as we know, lacks this. So when he goes into meetings with Democrats and gives away the store, only to backpedal hours later and pretend he didn’t, his weakness as a negotiator is only one part of his vulnerability. The other is that he doesn’t know what’s being discussed. When the details are all mysterious, then you really can’t press for what matters or protect what’s essential. You just have to rely on the people around you to guide you through it, and the result is never going to be as good.

Imagine, for instance, that you were given two different, but equally incomprehensible, blueprints for a hydrogen bomb, and you had two bickering designers each trying to explain why one was best. Unless you were a physics genius yourself, you’d be at a complete loss to compare the two or to suggest combinations of ideas. Or imagine you were trying to negotiate a deal between cooks, but you had no idea what happens in a kitchen. When Cook A says he’ll agree to all the menu preferences of the Cook B, as long as butter and eggs are excluded, you say yes, without realizing that you’ve just made Cook B’s menu impossible, because it consists of pound cake.

This is a major reason why Trump’s approach to many issues has been so blundering. Health-care policy is supremely arcane, with all sorts of laws that connect in unexpected ways to other ones. So is immigration policy. When Barack Obama granted Dreamers leave to exit and re-enter the United States under something called “advanced parole,” this apparently opened up a loophole for many thousands to get green cards. Who knows why? (Even I, who try to follow immigration policy, don’t quite understand the mechanics.) If you have an attention span that hovers around the Celsius temperature of ice, you’re never going to get savvy about such things.

By contrast, if you know the details of what you want and what you’re willing to give up, you can play a cool and steady game. Consider the example of George W. Bush, who came into office in 2001 with tax cuts as an immediate priority. For months, Bush pushed stubbornly for a bill to cut taxes by $1.6 trillion, generating a deluge of unfavorable coverage. What Bush finally got was a tax cut for about three quarters of that amount, an outcome that a credulous report in the Los Angeles Times described as “a blow to the cornerstone of President Bush’s domestic agenda.” The White House dutifully played along with the idea that its dreams had been slightly thwarted. Those with a little more guile noticed that the end result was a $1.3 trillion tax cut, a result far grander in scope than anyone had thought politically possible. It was dreadful policy, of course, but the point is that Bush got what he wanted.

To be sure, Trump’s boldness while campaigning did make people wonder if he might have cracked some secret code. In mid-October 2016, right after Trump’s Access Hollywood tape had been revealed and Republicans were trying to distance themselves from their nominee, Trump fired off a tweet calling them “Disloyal R’s” and saying, “They don’t know how to win - I will teach them!” When Trump indeed did win, he started to look like he might have some superhuman grasp of the dynamics of power and influence. But that looks absurd today. Trump’s rebellion is minor, and the Republican Party is in charge, shouting about wonderful tax cuts as voters prepare to give them the boot.

For all that voters dream of a political neophyte who’ll come into the White House or governor’s mansion to save the day, successful examples in real life are few. (Ronald Reagan did reasonably well for himself as governor of California, but he’d been active in politics for many years already.) Donald Trump has made money effectively. He has branded himself effectively. He has campaigned effectively. But the idea that such talents could translate into preternatural control across three branches of government looks increasingly absurd. Trump might have promised to show Republicans how to win. As the midterms approach, however, what they’re likelier to learn is how it feels to lose.

---
added 4-6-018
TLDR: Donald Trump is a mouth breather.

Trump’s Wall Will Harm Endangered Species in Texas, Study Says
University of Texas researchers warn about dangers to a wide variety of habitats


President Trump’s proposed border wall would cause significant damage to many ecosystems in Texas and threaten already endangered plants and animals living near the Rio Grande, said University of Texas, Austin scientists who released a peer-reviewed publication on the wall’s environmental impact this week.

In a literature review published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, UT researchers Tim Keitt and Norma Fowler concluded that if the proposed wall were to be erected, Texas would experience severe environmental impacts. Damages to the Rio Grande Valley (Río Bravo it’s called in Mexico) would also compromise the region’s lucrative ecotourism industry. “Most of what’s been published so far has been focused on Arizona, but with the wall now being built in Texas, it seemed important [to publish this review],” Fowler said.

According to Keitt and Fowler’s research, much of the habitat along the border would suffer from degradation or be completely destroyed by the construction of physical barriers and associated roads. “You can’t put something that’s equivalent to a five-lane road on top of a plant and expect it to live,” Fowler said.   

Some well-known megafauna would take a hit if the wall were to be built. One example is the black bears living in and around Big Bend National Park, which are the northern tip of a larger population concentrated in Mexico’s Sierra Madre range. If the wall cuts off Big Bend, the bears there will be isolated until they disappear. The ocelot, a kind of dwarf jaguar common in Central and South America, has a small, remnant population in southern Texas that would also be at risk if the wall were constructed. 

Fowler said their research was intended to highlight environmental threats beyond these already-publicized concerns. “We’re trying to broaden the discussion from just the mammals, namely cute furry animals, to recognize and consider the damage the barrier will do to all animals and plants,” Fowler said.

One of the ecosystems the scientists are concerned about is the Tamaulipan thornscrub, located on the higher ground that runs along the Rio Grande. It used to be commonly found in South Texas, but is decreasing in size as cities and farms take over the area.

Fowler’s likes to point to the endangered wildflower Zapata bladderpod (Physaria thamnophila) that grows in a select few sites in South Texas. “Most people will just step on them...but I think these little plants are totally cool. If we’re going to preserve biodiversity, the conversation has to be more than just the terminally cute ocelots,” Fowler said. The Zapata bladderpod grows right where the wall could be built, uphill from the Rio Grande.

If engineers building the wall were to find the soil too crumbly and decide to move the wall further inland, they would create a stretch of no-man’s land between the river and the wall. Some species would struggle in such isolation.

According to data Fowler collected from a Department of Homeland Security document, the wall and roads combined would have a total width of 12 to 20 meters, which is about the width of four to five highway lanes. For every kilometer of wall, some 12 to 20 hectares of land could be destroyed. And that doesn’t include the construction sites and additional new roads that will lead up to the wall.

“As far as I know, everything I’d said is accurate,” Fowler said. “And I wish it wasn’t.”

« Last Edit: April 07, 2018, 05:04:09 AM by Opus »
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