The Trump Presidency: Part 20

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On a slightly separate note, trump was asked by one of the press members yesterday whether he would continue to call it the Chinese Virus or the Wuhan Virus. His response was that he was calling it that because, in his words, China had suggested that the US military may have brought the virus to China. Link

An interesting part of that exchange:
Asked whether his calling the rapidly spreading pandemic the “Chinese virus” creates a “stigma,” Trump answered in the negative. “No, I don’t think so. I think saying that our military gave it to them creates a stigma,” he said.
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because i'm rubber.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Of course they can explode the deficit, then as soon as Democrats take the POTUS office, it will be all our fault and of course the only way to deal with it is to cut 'entitlements'.

GW Bush thinks the government has too much or "your money". He cuts taxes mostly on the rich of course. Then we go to war and explode the deficit.
Trump comes into office and could care less about the deficit so he (and the GOP) give themselves huge tax breaks exploding the deficit even more.

Now we need emergency spending.

Deficits? Can't worry about that now, take back the tax cuts? Of course not.
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You forgot a key step there: Dubya largely funded both wars through emergency appropriations, hiding the cost by allowing the budget to look nice and pretty. Then President Obama came in, and as a matter of policy, transferred the actual cost to the budget, ballooning the deficit.

Cue the clutching of pearls from the now suddenly fiscally responsible republicans and the Teahaddists, and the rest is history.
 
US President Donald Trump retweeted a graphic image of what appears to be a dead body during an online rant about Nancy Pelosi. The horrific picture, which the Standard has blurred, shows a bloodied and unconscious male figure hanging over a barbed wire fence. The post, reshared by Mr Trump on Twitter, read: "Question: Who in America supports this mullahs' crime? Answer: Nancy Pelosi." 'Mullah' is a slang word for Muslim and the tweet appears to be suggesting the dead body is an anti-government protester killed in Iran.

Mr Trump shared the picture on his Twitter page just after midday on Monday [Jan. 13th] among a slew of posts criticising the US House of Representatives speaker. The President appears to have now deleted the tweet after several hours of it remaining on his page and receiving thousands of likes, retweets and comments. Link
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I don't really remember seeing or hearing about this at the time. In Googling I discovered not many links come up to media stories and most, like the one above, are from non-U.S. outlets. (The quote above is from Britain's Evening Standard.) An American president retweeted a photo of a murdered man's corpse and accused one of his political opponents of being all in on it? What the bloody hell? Robert De Niro was right: Trump's a whackjob. It's beyond shameful. No words.

Below is a screen cap with the graphic image blurred.

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Armitage72 said:
That's really funny. I once heard a right wing radio talk show host play a clip by Bill Maher, complaining about the level of scientific illiteracy in US politicians. The host's response was
"You want scientists running the country? Hitler was a scientist. Is that the sort of person you want in charge?"

Leaving aside the Godwin and the historical inaccuracy, science is the enemy.
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Arrrrrg!
Logic appears to be an enemy as well.
Maher didn’t say he wanted a scientist running the country, he merely stated lack of scientific literacy was a problem.

How do these people look at their grandchildren and say to themselves, “I am creating a country in which their lives will be equal to or better than mine”?
 
Facts are the enemy. If facts as a concept exist, you can be wrong. If everything is an opinion or subjective or a point of view you can't.

It has never been more complicated than that. It's what skeptics have been pointing at going "Guys! Guys! This is a problem and it's going to get worst!" for decades and nobody has been listening. It's just finally solidified in politics.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Facts are the enemy. If facts as a concept exist, you can be wrong. If everything is an opinion or subjective or a point of view you can't.
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Well, I feel my opinion is different than that, and I'm entitled to my truth. Let's agree to disagree, there are two sides to every story! That's democracy! Freedom!! *bald eagle soars majestically, coughs, soars some more*
 
TragicMonkey said:
Well, I feel my opinion is different than that, and I'm entitled to my truth. Let's agree to disagree, there are two sides to every story! That's democracy! Freedom!! *bald eagle soars majestically, coughs, soars some more*
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Two sides? So, what, the other (7 billion - 2) of us aren't allowed to have an opinion? Fascist!
 
newyorkguy said:
I don't really remember seeing or hearing about this at the time. In Googling I discovered not many links come up to media stories and most, like the one above, are from non-U.S. outlets. (The quote above is from Britain's Evening Standard.) An American president retweeted a photo of a murdered man's corpse and accused one of his political opponents of being all in on it? What the bloody hell? Robert De Niro was right: Trump's a whackjob. It's beyond shameful. No words.

Below is a screen cap with the graphic image blurred.
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This is from January, it seems. That doesn't make it any less despicable.
At the time, trump was hyping protests in order to encourage Iranians to become angry with their leaders, and also fresh off being impeached.
 
Aridas said:
Yup.



Honestly, I have no problem believing that. He was informed that it was very likely to officially become a pandemic and cause a truly massive death toll in the US long before it was declared such if no serious measures were taken.
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Actually, my quote is wrong. He said "I FELT it was a pandemic long before it was declared a pandemic."

Not that he had been informed ahead of the announcement, but he "felt" it.

It's total and utter ********.
 
Armitage72 said:
That's really funny. I once heard a right wing radio talk show host play a clip by Bill Maher, complaining about the level of scientific illiteracy in US politicians. The host's response was
"You want scientists running the country? Hitler was a scientist. Is that the sort of person you want in charge?"

Leaving aside the Godwin and the historical inaccuracy, science is the enemy.
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That is Peter Griffin level of stupidity, for sure.
 
But Peter Griffin and Homestar Runner are both entertainly stupid. Trump's stupid isn't funny. It's just sad or infuriating.
 
pgwenthold said:
Actually, my quote is wrong. He said "I FELT it was a pandemic long before it was declared a pandemic."

Not that he had been informed ahead of the announcement, but he "felt" it.

It's total and utter ********.
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I recall Trump saying that he perhaps had a "gift" for being able to just "know" about the virus. Insinuating he had some type of psychic ability.
 
Again it's just the same anti-intellectualism we've been seeing grow and strengthen for years.

You see those ivory tower eggheads who don't understand how the world really works... they "think." Real people "go with their gut" or "use common sense" or "insert folksy homespun wisdom cliche here" or whatever.

Trump thinks he is Maverick in Top Gun. "You don't think. If you think up there, you're dead." Worse than that he's Troi beating Data at Chess because "Chess isn't just a game of logic, but of feeling and intuition" AS IF THAT MAKES ANY GODDAMN SENSE.

The message is all the same. Thinking is bad. Reason is bad. Logic is bad. Base, emotional, reaction is good.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Facts are the enemy. If facts as a concept exist, you can be wrong. If everything is an opinion or subjective or a point of view you can't.

It has never been more complicated than that. It's what skeptics have been pointing at going "Guys! Guys! This is a problem and it's going to get worst!" for decades and nobody has been listening. It's just finally solidified in politics.
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I have seen that in business when a top administrator invents a new program or policy. They will then desperately fight against setting up any metrics or plans to determine how effective that program or policy might be. A factual evaluation of their concept is the last thing they wish.
 
JoeMorgue said:
The message is all the same. Thinking is bad. Reason is bad. Logic is bad. Base, emotional, reaction is good.
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It's such a fundamental aspect of human existence that this sort of thing pops up all the time. People who think and reason are a threat to those who don't, hence why intellectuals are always among the first victims of rising dictatorships.
 
Somehow over the past few decades people in general have been encouraged to assign equal validity to their own ideas versus those of the experts. In part it is a total misunderstanding of the Appeal To Authority fallacy. A to A states that an authority's opinion in one area does not make them an authority in another. It does not state that the views of an authority in their own area are no better than those of a non-authority.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
Again it's just the same anti-intellectualism we've been seeing grow and strengthen for years.

You see those ivory tower eggheads who don't understand how the world really works... they "think." Real people "go with their gut" or "use common sense" or "insert folksy homespun wisdom cliche here" or whatever.

Trump thinks he is Maverick in Top Gun. "You don't think. If you think up there, you're dead." Worse than that he's Troi beating Data at Chess because "Chess isn't just a game of logic, but of feeling and intuition" AS IF THAT MAKES ANY GODDAMN SENSE.

The message is all the same. Thinking is bad. Reason is bad. Logic is bad. Base, emotional, reaction is good.
Click to expand...
I can't tell you how much real life Fighter pilots hated that line.
 
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