Trump runs for POTUS / Trumped Up! Part V

[Stacko]

Fawning over Putin is an interesting choice.

 

[marplots]

Trump is looking very presidential.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It's the same old Trump-clap-trap, "I think I can fix it."

The tension is rising as Lauer mildly challenges the Donald. Quick, defuse to another audience question.

Nah nah...Clinton.... nah nah.

I can fix everything, trust me.

He pulls his 88 generals lists out, ... we're doing very well, I'm doing very well, I'm meeting with the generals...

Lauer pushes how will you be prepared?

Trump shifts to berating Clinton, claims people consulted with him about Iraq 10 and 20 years ago.

I can see why he so easily fools people, but there is nothing here but bragassary.


There were some real jewels in there that I can't imagine the press failed to notice.

 

[Frank Newgent]

I could watch thermonuclear explosions all day long. It's like having a little bit of the sun here on Earth.

Better than having a little bit of the sun here on Earth gap.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I do hope to see this in later headlines:

Trump is claiming the US can hold the oil producing areas of Iraq with our soldiers and keep the oil for oursleves. He even said outright, to the victor go the spoils.

 

[Stacko]

Lauer: Will you be ready on day one?
Trump: I'm so versed in this that they were asking me about Iraq 14 years ago.

He is insane.

 

[DavidJames]

There were some real jewels in there that I can't imagine the press failed to notice.

Trump has the benefit of low expectations.

Trump is looking very presidential.

 

[Stacko]

Did he really just claim that the Judge Advocate General's Corps doesn't exist and that they should be created?

 

[DavidJames]

Did he really just claim that the Judge Advocate General's Corps don't exist and that they should be created?

Without fact checking, he may be able to ******** his way through this.

 

[DavidJames]

Did he really just claim that the Judge Advocate General's Corps doesn't exist and that they should be created?

Geez, didn't he see the TV show?

 

[Stacko]

Geez, didn't he see the TV show?

Too much talking.

We hadn’t been airborne long when Trump decided to watch a movie. He’d brought along “Michael,” a recent release, but twenty minutes after popping it into the VCR he got bored and switched to an old favorite, a Jean Claude Van Damme slugfest called “Bloodsport,” which he pronounced “an incredible, fantastic movie.”

...

By assigning to his son the task of fast-forwarding through all the plot exposition — Trump’s goal being “to get this two-hour movie down to forty-five minutes” — he eliminated any lulls between the nose hammering, kidney tenderizing, and shin whacking. When a beefy bad guy who was about to squish a normal-sized good guy received a crippling blow to the scrotum, I laughed. “Admit it, you’re laughing!” Trump shouted. “You want to write that Donald Trump was loving this ridiculous Jean Claude Van Damme movie, but are you willing to put in there that you were loving it, too?”

 

[sunmaster14]

That's not a rational argument.

The rational thing to do is to look at all of the qualities of a candidate... their policies, their personality, and pick the one that you think would best benefit you or the voter. Rejecting a possibly superior candidate just because they belong to the wrong party is not rational, its foolish.

That's hopelessly naive and wrong. The party is like a massive body whose gravitational pull holds its candidate in orbit. Yes, any particular candidate can adjust the radius of his orbit by using his thrusters to speed up (to move closer to the center) or slow down (to move closer to the core of the party), but he can never achieve escape velocity. A Republican President will always adhere more to Republican positions that a Democratic President will. Perhaps most importantly, a Republican President will not intentionally nominate liberal justices to the Supreme Court, whereas a Democratic President will.

The bottom line is the party identification should be all-important to a voter who actually sees himself as clearly in one camp or the other.

Another irrational argument. Just being "not hillary" does not make anyone a superior candidate.

Hillary has serious flaws which she has demonstrated throughout her career as a politician and government employee. Those are not going away. On top of that, she is supported by a deeply embedded phalanx of cronies (many of whom are in the media) who will protect her from any and all accusations and investigations of wrongdoing. She is potentially very dangerous as President because she is thoroughly dishonest and has gotten away with virtually every dishonest thing she has done.

Trump of course has his own flaws, but as politician and leader is something of a wildcard. He also would have no natural support within the political establishment or the media, so any misstep would be punished harshly. I can see the power of the executive branch being diminished during his administration, which, frankly, I see as a good thing. It would reverse a decades long trend.

Hurray! An actual policy position that can be examined!

Ok, lets consider that policy... Trump wants to "crack down" on illegal immigigration. Part of that will be a wall, which will be extremely expensive and ineffective.

You see, claiming a candidate is good because they will deal with a particular issue is only relevant if what they'll do is actually beneficial. Spending billions on an ineffective wall is not better than doing nothing. Its worse.

The wall may cost ~$25 billion by some estimates, will be largely ineffective (many illegal immigrants arrive on legal visas and overstay, others arrive by air or boat or other ways, and even the ones who cross by land can simply use a rope), and can negatively affect both the environment (affecting migration habits and isolating sub-populations of various species) and the lives of people who live there (the existing wall has subdivided some communities, since it can't follow the border exactly; its unlikely Trump's wall will be any different).

First of all, $25 billion is peanuts. The average illegal immigrant household represents a net cost of over $14,000 per year to the country (although mostly to the city and state in which the household is located). At 3.5 million households, that's $49 billion a year in net cost. That dwarfs the cost of the wall, especially after netting the construction cost with the extra border enforcement costs we have in the absence of a wall. Even though a wall would drastically raise the cost of crossing the border illegally, and hence reduce the flow dramatically, the largest boon would be that we could normalize the illegal immigrants already living here without creating a moral hazard (i.e. that of providing extra incentive for more people to immigrate illegally).

As for your claim that a wall would be ineffective, I think that's obviously false. Walls have proven very effective pretty much everywhere. Israel's West Bank wall (which admittedly is a fence in parts) has worked extremely well, and stopping motivated, well-funded terrorists is a lot harder than stopping impoverished peasant families. This idea that you can climb over a wall easily is ridiculous. Climbing over is slow and you expose yourself to surveillance technologies. The idea that you can dig under a wall is even more ridiculous. It would take a tremendous amount of money and time, and, unless the tunnel was dug extremely deep, it could be detected quite easily. It's simple economics really. If you raise the cost of X (where X is crossing the border illegally), then the demand for X will drop. Seeing as how most people who desire X are impoverished anyway, my guess is the demand for X is quite elastic.

 

[sunmaster14]

Right, every poll that looks bad for Junior is bogus.

Of course not. But the one that was linked is. Did you even bother to look it up? It was an internet poll on somebody's Facebook page. You wouldn't even get a fair and random sample of the people browsing that page, let alone a random sample of military families.

 

[Stacko]

Lauer doesn't do hard news and has no business doing that kind of interview.

He did better than I thought he would with Hillary but this highlighted the biggest problem the media has covering this campaign. Hillary is questioned like a person running for president and Donald is questioned like a socialite.

 

[Donal]

Drumpf is looking very presidential.

He reminds of a specific president

 

[Donal]

His own military advisor is laughing at him on CNN. Seriously, Anderson Cooper asked him directly about Junior's plan to "take the oil", and he literally responded with "gee, look at the time" and preceded to go a round about way of admitting that it was nonsense.

 

[BobTheCoward]

As for your claim that a wall would be ineffective, I think that's obviously false. Walls have proven very effective pretty much everywhere. Israel's West Bank wall (which admittedly is a fence in parts) has worked extremely well, and stopping motivated, well-funded terrorists is a lot harder than stopping impoverished peasant families. This idea that you can climb over a wall easily is ridiculous. Climbing over is slow and you expose yourself to surveillance technologies. The idea that you can dig under a wall is even more ridiculous. It would take a tremendous amount of money and time, and, unless the tunnel was dug extremely deep, it could be detected quite easily. It's simple economics really. If you raise the cost of X (where X is crossing the border illegally), then the demand for X will drop. Seeing as how most people who desire X are impoverished anyway, my guess is the demand for X is quite elastic.

Plenty of people think a good wall is a good idea. We already built it for a few hundred miles over critical area. You mention raising the cost, and I just don't think a complete 2000 mile wall matches that. There is a point where additional length costs way more but stops fewer immigrants

Tunnels do occur. They locate a few major ones every year in Arizona. And there was work on the electronic wall, but the technology isn't there for a 2000 mile version.

 

[Biscuit]

But it's all the time. Did you see that stuff about God? Deranged.

I did not. Please do share!

Matt Lauer so far did not call Trump on his lie that he was always against the Iraq war.

Trump is claiming the US can hold the oil producing areas of Iraq with our soldiers and keep it.

Lauer let that slide and went on to ISIS.

Trump is bragging about the 88 generals that endorsed him, he shows the list in his pocket.

Hillary has 95. Why is trump losing the support of retired military leaders?

Now trump is going on and on about expanding our military. More troops! More Planes! More ships! More everything!!! It's the same sad plan that Mitt proposed in order to try and pander to the average soldier. When will republicans learn that our military members are smart enough to see through this nonsense?

Secretary Rumsfeld started our path down a leaner, meaner more efficient military to tackle the current threat faced by the United States and our allies around the world. The era of the flotilla of ships is over. We will not be dog fighting with terrorists over the skies of Syria. The age of the massive D-day invasions is over. We need a smart and agile military of tomorrow, not a massive bloated military of the cold war. trump would waste billions destroying the progress made in modernizing our military and leave us more vulnerable to attack. All because he thinks our men and women in uniform are stupid enough to fall for his rhetoric. This is even further proof that trump isn't qualified to be president, he doesn't understand the nature of the threat we face and the needs of a modern military.

He would also do all of this military spending while giving tax cuts, spending on domestic infrastructure, and preserving programs like social security - the party of fiscal responsibility my foot! He will add trillions to the national debt. There is not one rational reason to support a trump presidency.

link

 

[BobTheCoward]

I did not. Please do share!



Hillary has 95. Why is trump losing the support of retired military leaders?

Now trump is going on and on about expanding our military. More troops! More Planes! More ships! More everything!!! It's the same sad plan that Mitt proposed in order to try and pander to the average soldier. When will republicans learn that our military members are smart enough to see through this nonsense?

Secretary Rumsfeld started our path down a leaner, meaner more efficient military to tackle the current threat faced by the United States and our allies around the world. The era of the flotilla of ships is over. We will not be dog fighting with terrorists over the skies of Syria. The age of the massive D-day invasions is over. We need a smart and agile military of tomorrow, not a massive bloated military of the cold war. trump would waste billions destroying the progress made in modernizing our military and leave us more vulnerable to attack. All because he thinks our men and women in uniform are stupid enough to fall for his rhetoric. This is even further proof that trump isn't qualified to be president, he doesn't understand the nature of the threat we face and the needs of a modern military.

He would also do all of this military spending while giving tax cuts, spending on domestic infrastructure, and preserving programs like social security - the party of fiscal responsibility my foot! He will add trillions to the national debt. There is not one rational reason to support a trump presidency.

link

Not to mention the problems we face cannot be defeated by blowing stuff up. We have probably destroyed every good isis target. They will fight with sticks and rocks if they have to. They won't win, but we lose even when they attack with those rocks.

 

[Biscuit]

As for your claim that a wall would be ineffective, I think that's obviously false. Walls have proven very effective pretty much everywhere. Israel's West Bank wall (which admittedly is a fence in parts) has worked extremely well, and stopping motivated, well-funded terrorists is a lot harder than stopping impoverished peasant families.

Ha ha. No it isn't you can just shoot a terrorist. Are you proposing we shoot the impoverished peasants?

This idea that you can climb over a wall easily is ridiculous. Climbing over is slow and you expose yourself to surveillance technologies.

It happens all the time.

The idea that you can dig under a wall is even more ridiculous. It would take a tremendous amount of money and time, and, unless the tunnel was dug extremely deep, it could be detected quite easily.

Are you completely unaware of what goes on at the border? They find tunnels in Nogales Arizona alone several times a year. These aren't deep or sophisticated tunnels. They just dig north and pop out in a drainage ditch. The best ones come out in a rented house and can be used for month and years before they are detected.

educate yourself before spouting nonsense

Since the first drug tunnel was discovered in 1990 in Douglas, Ariz., border officials say they have found nearly 200 more along the nearly 2,000-mile Southwest border, mostly in Arizona and California. Tunnels are so numerous in the Nogales area that Border Patrol agents described the ground underneath the city as “Swiss cheese.”

It's simple economics really. If you raise the cost of X (where X is crossing the border illegally), then the demand for X will drop. Seeing as how most people who desire X are impoverished anyway, my guess is the demand for X is quite elastic.

You really don't get it do you? Illegal immigrants don't start five feet from the border and start walking. Most aren't even Mexican anymore. That means they face costs, threats, and impediments far far worse than a border wall will present. They are willing to risk everything, of what little they have, for a chance at a better life in America. The only cost analysis they do is "will I have any chance at a better life?" So long as jobs are here for them there is no wall large enough. Heck the Sonoran desert is one of the least hospitable places on earth. No water, no shade, and everything is trying to bite, prick, stab, or sting you.We have poisonous lizards! And that doesn't even factor in the drug cartels and gangs that prey on immigrants. You think a wall will stop people!? HA!

You are right there is an economic problem here. You can end illegal immigration if you get rid of the jobs. Start arresting and jailing the employers and you don't even have to waste a penny on a stupid, arrogant, ineffective wall.

There is no rational reason to support a trump presidency or a border wall.