President Trump: Part II

[bruto]

But the Berlin Wall destroyed the prospects of millions of their own citizens. Trump's wall is supposed to protect our citizens prospects (at the cost of foreigners not being able to illegally supplant them).


Edit to add: it may well not work that way but the goal is not immoral.

Perhaps not. The many who are thwarted may deserve it, and maybe keeping them out with a wall is not immoral, only impractical, ineffective and stupid. But that also does not make the mayor of Berlin a historical ignoramus.

 

[logger]

Let me try.

If you think that illegal immigration is a problem (as I do), and that the government should do something about it, a lot of people will call you a racist.

If you support gay marriage, but think that it's ok for a baker to turn down a wedding cake order, I can guarantee you will be called a bigot.

If you think that girls who are perfectly normal, except that they have penises, ought to use a different locker room than the girls that don't have penises, you are a bigot.

Well, a lot of people agree with some or all of those positions, and they don't really feel like bigots. When someone comes along and calls them deplorable, it ruffles their feathers. Some of those people might agree with the above statements, but not feel very strongly about them. They aren't all that significant, and not enough to change their vote. That's the way I am, for example. I agree with all of them. In other words, the "you" in the statements above could apply to me I voted for Hillary anyway because, as much as I believe those statements, I think there are bigger issues.

Nevertheless, someone out there reading this is thinking, and will probably say, that my beliefs identify me as a deplorable bigot, and despite the fact that I voted for Hillary, will say that I am a Trump sympathiser, and one of "them". Well, do that often enough to enough people, and some of those people might agree that they are indeed one of "them", and might vote accordingly.

In fact, I think somewhere around 1% of the residents of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania did exactly that.

An excellent post!

 

[logger]

[/off topic] And you've had many chances to post evidence, but you haven't. This is just another assertion.

He's not posting evidence because it is completely obvious!

Edit
Then he posted evidence and you refused to read it.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

You really have to be drinking the Kool-aide to think a different president could have prevented deaths in Katrina.

I would have phrased it differently, but had much same thought.

 

[Bob001]

I'm not going to search through that data dump! At least post a paragraph as supporting evidence, in particular, something besides some commenter asserting their opinion as fact.

Glad to help.

These maps show where the Trump surge happened and the places that flipped from supporting President Obama in 2012 to going for the Republican nominee and billionaire real-estate mogul just four years later.

http://www.npr.org/2016/11/15/50203...d-for-obama-and-trump-heres-where-in-3-charts

That national drama was playing out at the county level, too. Places that supported President Obama over Mitt Romney in the 2012 election switched their support to Trump — some with hefty margins.

http://www.cnbc.com/heres-a-map-of-the-us-counties-that-flipped-to-trump-from-democrats/

Of the nearly 700 counties that twice sent Obama to the White House, a stunning one-third flipped to support Trump.

Trump also won 194 of the 207 counties that voted for Obama either in 2008 or 2012.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/obama-trump-counties/

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I would have phrased it differently, but had much same thought.

My my how those memories change over time.

Study of Hurricane Katrina's dead show most were old, lived near levee breaches

Since when has the US ever been unable to rescue people in the US in a reasonable time frame? These folks did not die in the hurricane. They died when a few levee breaches allowed big swaths of the city to slowly flood.

Their findings, though incomplete, jibe with common sense. The dead were overwhelmingly old. Most lived near the levee breaches in the 9th Ward and Lakeview. About two-thirds either drowned or died from illness or injury brought on by being trapped in houses surrounded by water.The rest died from maladies or injuries suffered in or exacerbated by an arduous evacuation -- or an inability to evacuate quickly enough, including many who died in local hospitals that lost power and other life-sustaining services. Neither race nor gender made anyone more likely to die, only a failure to evacuate and a location near a levee breach.

This was a generous wording:

Emergency preparedness experts and government officials say the data reinforces the dire need for continuous improvement in the government's evacuation apparatus, particularly for the area's most frail, poor and often hardest-to-motivate residents.

Hurricane Katrina, What Went Wrong

The evacuation
Thousands were stranded for days at the Superdome and at the New Orleans Convention Center, all in squalid conditions.
They are just left behind," NBC News cameraman Tony Zumbado reported on Sept. 1, 2005. "There's nothing offered to them. No water, no ice. It's getting very crazy in there, and very, very dangerous.
Among the causes: A delay by state and city officials in ordering a mandatory evacuation for New Orleans until 19 hours before landfall. A Senate investigation found the delay caused "preventable deaths" and "great suffering."
Another cause: A lack of buses. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco waited until after the storm hit to ask FEMA for buses. They didn't begin to arrive until four days after landfall....

The third devastating factor was government mismanagement. Acomplete breakdown in coordination.
FEMA had only one official inside the New Orleans Command Post when the storm hit.
FEMA Director Michael Brown seemed tragically out of touch.

What was that Bush said: "Heck of a job, Brownie" or something like that?

Another generous to Bush analysis:
A FAILURE OF INITIATIVE - Final Report of the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina

The Select Committee identified failures at all levels of government that significantly undermined and detracted from the heroic efforts of first responders, private individuals and organizations, faith-based groups, and others....

The failure of complete evacuations led to preventable deaths, great suffering, and further delays in relief ...

Critical elements of the National Response Plan were executed late, ineffectively, or not at all...

Yes, this included evacuations before the hurricane, where there was a lack of buses to get people out. There was that infamous image of the flooded school buses that could have been used. So it wasn't all on the POTUS. But a lot was directly due to Bush incompetence.

Read it for yourself, yes there were failures at every level including local and state, and failures that were a long time in the making which Bush was not responsible for. But Bush and Brownie showed incompetence that most Presidents were not guilty of.

Get ready for Trump, incompetence-in-chief.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Glad to help.

http://www.npr.org/2016/11/15/50203...d-for-obama-and-trump-heres-where-in-3-charts

How does that support the deplorables assertion?

http://www.cnbc.com/heres-a-map-of-the-us-counties-that-flipped-to-trump-from-democrats/

Same thing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/obama-trump-counties/

Same thing.

Did you lose sight of what you were looking for evidence of?

Let's review:

The deplorables comment reinforced an image of Hillary as condescending and arrogant, not just with the people the comment was aimed at, but with many others.

So sayeth people with no evidence. [snipped more of Marcus on the damage of the deplorables comment]

Enough of this Clinton blaming, @Marcus, @Meadmaker, @Bob001: get over it. Baskets of idiots and deplorables elected a disaster. That was not Clinton's fault.

Then you shifted the goalpost to Clinton losing Obama votes. That says nothing about the deplorables comment.

If she couldn't keep the same voters who supported Obama, that's on her. And now we all pay a high price.

[/off topic] And you've had many chances to post evidence, but you haven't. This is just another assertion.

To which I said, "you have made another assertion." Of course Clinton did not get all the votes Obama got. That says nothing about why.

Think we're more than done here.

 

[newyorkguy]

This Bush-Katrina issue is a total derail but even Bush himself accepted part of the blame for the poor response. Remember?

President Bush said Tuesday that "I take responsibility" for failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina and said the disaster raised broader questions about the government's ability to respond to natural disasters as well as terror attacks.

The bungled response to the hurricane has helped drag down Bush's job-approval rating, which now stands at 42 percent -- the lowest of his presidency -- in the Post-ABC poll and down three points since the hurricane hit two weeks ago. Fifty-seven percent disapprove of Bush's performance, a double-digit increase since January. Washington Post article, Sept. 13, 2005

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

This Bush-Katrina issue is a total derail but even Bush himself accepted part of the blame for the poor response. Remember?

I agree, sorry for taking all this low hanging fruit/bait. Honestly, still blaming Clinton? Excusing other POTUS disasters.

Are people simply unable to consider their vote may have helped Trump get elected?

 

[logger]

This Bush-Katrina issue is a total derail but even Bush himself accepted part of the blame for the poor response. Remember?

That's because he's an honorable man, it still doesn't mean a different president would have had less deaths.

 

[Bob001]

....

To which I said, "you have made another assertion." Of course Clinton did not get all the votes Obama got. That says nothing about why.

Think we're more than done here.

I thought we had gotten past the "deplorables" business. My point was that Clinton -- one responsible progressive following another -- should have been able to hang on to the voters who chose Obama in 2008 and 2012. But she couldn't. I see that as evidence of a badly run campaign. You see it as proof that the right-wing is really mean. And now here we are.

 

[Marcus]

So sayeth people with no evidence.

Sorry, logic fail. The apology could have very well neutralized any negative effect.

Enough of this Clinton blaming, @Marcus, @Meadmaker, @Bob001: get over it. Baskets of idiots and deplorables elected a disaster. That was not Clinton's fault.

[/off topic]

What is it you want, you want me to dig up old polls to prove that your hero did the unthinkable and made a mistake? What would be the point, Hillary is history. Besides, you are disagreeing with her, she said she made a mistake and you don't believe her.

 

[Minoosh]

First, this is about calling a lie a lie. Not labeling the person who tells it "a liar." There's a big difference which I would've expected you to understand -- this even gets touched on within the ISF MA -- between using the word "lie" and using the word "liar." I don't agree the media has never used the word "lie."

I didn't say that the media has never used the word "lie."

President Bill Clinton lied under oath, and told the court he had never had a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

In this case, you can't have a charge of perjury unless some underlying falsehood is officially asserted. There is no such official characterization of Trump, yet.

If we ever get to the point where the president can tell blatant lies to the public without having them labeled as such, will we still be a democracy?

We want lies to be labeled by whom? As a journalist I avoided loaded language whenever possible. Even saying someone "claimed" something was sensitive. The point was to err on the side of fairness - or the perception of fairness. Things changed.

I'm not sure Trump is even lying; I think he may be psychotic.

 

[Regnad Kcin]

Oddly enough, according to Bloomberg, "[h]is proposed list doesn’t include Muslim-majority countries where his Trump Organization has done business or pursued potential deals."

What a remarkable coincidence.

Somewhere Capt. Louis Renault is chuckling.

 

[Minoosh]

Al Jazeera has labeled Trump right wing. I hadn't been aware of that.

per BBC:

The seven countries affected by a 90-day travel ban for nationals are Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The US's entire refugee admissions programme - affecting people from many more countries - has been suspended for 120 days. Those fleeing Syria as refugees are banned until further notice.

Looking at the 90-day and 120-day timelines - I'm not even sure what's in effect.

 

[LSSBB]

And thus we have the Trump disaster and, throw in touch of denial believing that Clinton was as bad or almost as bad.

Care to revisit this in another couple weeks?

i did not say Clinton would be almost as bad, or as bad. You want to change things? Find a better candidate than Hillary to run against a con artist, narcissist, reality show star.

 

[Resume]

i did not say Clinton would be almost as bad, or as bad. You want to change things? Find a better candidate than Hillary to run against a con artist, narcissist, reality show star.

Better yet, learn from the experience. A really unsuitable and perhaps dangerous demagogue was elected to (arguably) the most powerful position in the world. What was his appeal? Can you exploit that to advantage? Can you play tough?

You'll have to.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Let me try.

If you think that illegal immigration is a problem (as I do), and that the government should do something about it, a lot of people will call you a racist.

If you support gay marriage, but think that it's ok for a baker to turn down a wedding cake order, I can guarantee you will be called a bigot.

If you think that girls who are perfectly normal, except that they have penises, ought to use a different locker room than the girls that don't have penises, you are a bigot.

Well, a lot of people agree with some or all of those positions, and they don't really feel like bigots. When someone comes along and calls them deplorable, it ruffles their feathers. Some of those people might agree with the above statements, but not feel very strongly about them. They aren't all that significant, and not enough to change their vote. That's the way I am, for example. I agree with all of them. In other words, the "you" in the statements above could apply to me I voted for Hillary anyway because, as much as I believe those statements, I think there are bigger issues.

Nevertheless, someone out there reading this is thinking, and will probably say, that my beliefs identify me as a deplorable bigot, and despite the fact that I voted for Hillary, will say that I am a Trump sympathiser, and one of "them". Well, do that often enough to enough people, and some of those people might agree that they are indeed one of "them", and might vote accordingly.

In fact, I think somewhere around 1% of the residents of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania did exactly that.

Im not a bigot but since they called me one im going to vote for.bigotry. because im definitely.not a bigot. I just vote for it. Because I hate being called a bigot more than I hate bigotry. But not a bigot. Only voted for it.

 

[Trakar]

...My point was that Clinton -- one responsible progressive following another -- should have been able to hang on to the voters who chose Obama in 2008 and 2012. But she couldn't. I see that as evidence of a badly run campaign. You see it as proof that the right-wing is really mean. And now here we are.

Obama lost a lot of Progressive support between 2008 and 2014, and Hillary was perceived as more right-leaning than Obama. Obama might have pulled out a squeaker if he had been eligible for a third term, if the base thought they'd get the Obama that campaigned in early 2007 and served from mid-2014 to early 2017. But there were a significant number of voters, many who had been voting Democratic for the last 2-3 decades who really were not party-line voters (mostly among the Young, the Progressive, and -ironically- among the blue collar, right-leaning. Centrists/Independents who had fled, or been left behind, around ’92 – ‘94 when the Establishment Republican party made a hard Right social/political turn and stomped on the gas). All of these felt left without a tolerable option in either candidate for the general election. Most of these split more favorably for Trump than they did for Clinton. Some of these stayed at home, and a few spread to third party candidates or write-ins. There was no great rush of support for either candidate, just a lot of nose-holding and wincing by the majority of the electorate on both sides of the aisle. Trump just had a handful more nose-holders turn out in a few key states than Clinton did.

 

[Trakar]

I didn't say that the media has never used the word "lie."

In this case, you can't have a charge of perjury unless some underlying falsehood is officially asserted. There is no such official characterization of Trump, yet.

We want lies to be labeled by whom? As a journalist I avoided loaded language whenever possible. Even saying someone "claimed" something was sensitive. The point was to err on the side of fairness - or the perception of fairness. Things changed.

I'm not sure Trump is even lying; I think he may be psychotic.

You're not looking at civil suits? or don't you think the civil suit charges of misrepresentation, defraudment, deception etc., are equivalent to "lying"