The Trump Presidency: Part 20

[TheRealnz]

How exactly does that work?

If GM decides that it needs a certain price to avoid operating at a loss, can the federal government still demand they offer units at below manufacturing cost?

There must be some law that exists in emergency or war like circumstances where the govt have the power to nationalise/takeover an asset for their own requirements. For instance if the Govt wanted 80,000 vehicles for an emergency then GM would be chuffed.
The way that I interpreted the situation was that it's better for GM to operate and keep their own employees going so they named their price.They have the benefit of efficiency and quality.
The govt are using standover tactics with the powers they have to lower the price, a nationally run project would cost much more than what GM can produce and distribute it for so they are standing firm on their offer. I can't say if this is good or bad but if it keeps people employed then they should just pay the money.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Trump Retweeted

Sen. Kevin Cramer
@SenKevinCramer

Thank you @POTUS @realDonaldTrump for signing the CARES Act right away and for your leadership throughout this entire process.
I urge the Administration to implement this package as quickly as possible.
The lives of countless Americans depend on it. #COVID19

 

[MRC_Hans]

For the polls, there is a certain blind, patriotic rallying that happens in times of strife. Bush spiked to 70% with Iraq, but public mood turned over time.

Trump is getting his "war president" spike and it is still still below water.

Plus, he is getting it several months too early for the election.

I notice the DEMs are generally just letting him rave for now. Much of his base will have the memory of goldfish, so it doesn't matter yet.

Hans

 

[MRC_Hans]

Sure.

It's from an amateur talking on an internet board.

I thought your post also had a lot of basically correct, but also oversimplified, points. We only have so much time available. When we look back on this era, part of what we have to understand is how we could get from the nation that led the cold war, to the nation that elected Donald Trump, in a couple of generations, but that's a very complex subject.

I predict quite a few scientific articles will be written about all this, in the years to come.

Hans

 

[newyorkguy]

“At one point, he started to attack the press,” Stahl said. “There were no cameras in there.” “I said, ‘You know, this is getting tired. Why are you doing it over and over? It’s boring and it’s time to end that. You know, you’ve won ... why do you keep hammering at this?’” Stahl recalled. “And he said: ‘You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.’”

This was alluded to recently (and indirectly), following one of Trump's latest attacks on the media. That especially now, in a time of a fast-moving crisis, the public needs to have a reliable source of information they can trust, apart from government controlled sources. This is no time to be bashing the news media except in very compelling cases where a government official, like Trump, may feel the misinformation reported is so bad it has to be challenged.

But as Trump made clear to Lesley Stahl, bashing the media is his short term solution to deflecting criticism and being able to avoid having to explain and justify actions he's taken. Or validate statements he's made. That works for him but how about the rest of us? And what is the long term effect on our democracy? Obviously, Trump could care less.

This is exactly the kind of leader the Founding Fathers had in mind when they included freedom of the press in the first amendment.

 

[Darat]

You left out:

5. Appreciation for Trump

Let me fix that for you

1 Appreciation for Trump

 

[Regnad Kcin]

Let me fix that for you

1 Appreciation for Trump

Well played.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

I believe Loss aversion and the popular (and clearly false) belief that free market solutions are best explain why much of the world is the way it is and why it has been travelling in the direction it has for so many decades.

Why would a middle-class American want to share their healthcare with someone else?

Why would doctors operating in a free-market healthcare system and earning a huge amount of money choose to have their income reduced and limited by the state?

We are all addicted to our current standard of living and the thought of a perceived fall in that standard evokes powerful emotions that drive our behaviour, often in ways that prevent society progressing to a better level of well-being and eroding the well-being of others.

 

[Garrison]

I don't include them at all. If they didn't bother to vote, they don't count as far as I'm concerned.
But, if I did, I think a lot of Clinton supporters took it for granted she'd win as the polls indicated and didn't bother to vote; Trump supporters did not. They would have been damn sure to vote for him as he was the underdog.

I think a number of Democratic voters who weren't keen on Clinton also thought they could safely stay at home or register a protest vote, because of course Trump having a 35% chance to win was exactly the same as saying he couldn't win, or at least that seemed to be the attitude of those who claimed the likes of 538.com 'got it wrong'.

 

[Ladewig]

Regarding allocation of resources to states President Trump does and doesn’t like, there is a remarkable simply and legal solution.

Someone should point out that a South African billionaire just pledged one million Rand to fight the virus. There is nothing stopping President Trump from donating one billion dollars to his favorite 45 or 46 states.

There is no need to mention that a million rand is less than 58 million US$.


Of course, if we carry the war analogy near the breaking point, if one of the daily briefing doctors wanted to do a kamikaze attack on the virus, he or she could step to the microphone and say, “multi-billionaire Donald Trump has told me that his lifestyle would feel no change if he donated $100,000,000 to fight the virus, so he is going to do it. And he is going to ask other billionaires to match his donation.”

The other advantage is that such a statement might create the president’s Greg-Stillson moment as he grabs a USSS agent yelling “shoot him! I order you to shoot him dead!”

 

[Meadmaker]

I would put a little of the blame with right-wing talk radio. The opinions of the common man became more important than those of experts.

That is a very interesting point. I hadn't thought of it quite like that.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Don't worry! He may not have the legal power to do that and we all know how conscientious Trump is about following the law.

That's fine, the Senate will keep him in check.......and if not, the SCOTUS will......

ya, we're ******.

 

[thaiboxerken]

For the polls, there is a certain blind, patriotic rallying that happens in times of strife. Bush spiked to 70% with Iraq, but public mood turned over time.

Trump is getting his "war president" spike and it is still still below water.

I believe another reason for his small rise in approval ratings is that the current crisis has masked all of the other illegal/unethical/dumb things that he has and is doing. For example, not much is being made of his total relaxation of EPA regulations.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

I thought your post also had a lot of basically correct, but also oversimplified, points. We only have so much time available. When we look back on this era, part of what we have to understand is how we could get from the nation that led the cold war, to the nation that elected Donald Trump, in a couple of generations, but that's a very complex subject.

It's not that complex. Reagan himself introduced the strategy of deliberately breaking things and blaming the other party, and sowing general mistrust of government competency. Trump is just what you get after forty years of that. He's not an aberration, he's the clown leading the parade.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Relating to recent news with production plants, my understanding is that the US has secured multiple manufacturing sites for ventilators but GM wanted a much higher price. Trump or the government stood firm and said "we have the federal authority to forcibly acquire your manufacturing plants and you get nothing."
GM held firm whilst other places took the deal. I think the yanks should be given credit for that one.

Even if true, the gambit wasted precious time that cannot be reacquired. Trusting big corporations to do the right thing stupid, anyone that pays attention to historical fact should know.

 

[Cain]

But as Trump made clear to Lesley Stahl, bashing the media is his short term solution to deflecting criticism and being able to avoid having to explain and justify actions he's taken. Or validate statements he's made. That works for him but how about the rest of us? And what is the long term effect on our democracy? Obviously, Trump could care less.

This gives him too much credit. If he bashed the media for the reason he said, then why would he be doing it when they're alone and the cameras aren't rolling? If only he were so cunning. Trump does it because he's an abusive bastard living in the moment. The Machiavellianism here is ad hoc.

The recent joke that's been going around:

Researcher: "In front of you is one marshmallow, but if you can wait 15 minutes, I'll give you--"

*Trump eats the marshmallow*

 

[Andy_Ross]

Trump Tweets

The Lamestream Media wants us to fail. That will NEVER happen!

Polls are showing tremendous disapproval of Lamestream Media coverage of the Virus crisis. The Fake News just hasn’t figured that out yet!

Because the “Ratings” of my News Conferences etc. are so high, “Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers” according to the @nytimes, the Lamestream Media is going CRAZY. “Trump is reaching too many people, we must stop him.” said one lunatic. See you at 5:00 P.M.!

 

[carlitos]

I heard Nancy Pelosi with Jake Tapper on CNN this morning. She was an incoherent mess. This is the biggest lob ball ever served up to an opposition party leader. She swings, misses, and falls down in the batters box. Absolutely brutal.

 

[autumn1971]

My ex-wife’s boyfriend just told me that he is going back to work tomorrow because gun stores were just exempted from being open as a federal notice declared them essential services.

I have no other source, but most of Gainesville is closed and he is working tomorrow.

 

[Aridas]

That is a very interesting point. I hadn't thought of it quite like that.

Of likely just as much or more relevance there, the effects of the removal of the Fairness Doctrine under Reagan have been profoundly enabling when it comes to the creation of the right-wing alternate information bubble and paved the way in principle for outlets like Fox News (though, technically, the Fairness Doctrine as it had existed would likely not quite apply to Fox, itself). Even some of the lesser known things in it, like...

The personal attack rule stated that when personal attacks were made on individuals involved in public issues, the broadcaster had to, within one week of the broadcast, notify the person attacked, provide him with a copy of the broadcast (either script or tape), and allow him an opportunity to respond over the broadcaster’s facilities.

The political editorial rule required that when a broadcaster endorsed a particular political candidate, the broadcaster was required to provide the other qualified candidates for the same office (or their representatives) the opportunity to respond over the broadcaster’s facilities.

have a rather dramatic effect in preventing the formation of an alternative facts bubble. It's in fair part due to that that the whole valuing the "common man's" opinion over experts was able to go without much or any actual challenge.

It's not that complex. Reagan himself introduced the strategy of deliberately breaking things and blaming the other party, and sowing general mistrust of government competency. Trump is just what you get after forty years of that. He's not an aberration, he's the clown leading the parade.

Reagan himself was, to a fair measure, caused by those underlying forces. The libertarian force, for example, enthusiastically threw their weight behind Reagan to get him elected and pointedly influenced his policies and strategies.

"Government is the problem" is exactly what the libertarians were pushing, after all.