Is Trump nuts? (Part 2) by SIGNYM

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Is Trump nuts? (Part 2)

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Wednesday, July 12, 2017 14:03
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Thursday, July 6, 2017 2:16 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

My question is- Is he just getting a bum rap? Is the deep state out to get him? Is all of the bad press simply a pile-on of interventionist-liberals? Or is there really a problem? Is there a method to his madness? Is he just out of his depth in an unfamiliar environment? Or is he totally whack-a-doodle?

Time to revive the topic.

ETA- Most of what I've read about Trump was either based on "anonymous sources", or it PRESUMES that Trump has committed some kind of crime (Doesn't seem to matter what kind or whether there is evidence for it) or it's just plain irrelevant or trivial.

I'm hoping to focus on Trump's ACTIONS .... particularly those in foreign policy, where he has more effect .... not gossip. Incisive analysis preferred. Bullshit not welcome.

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Thursday, July 6, 2017 2:35 PM

THGRRI

Is Trump Nuts?

http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=61440

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Thursday, July 6, 2017 2:46 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

And I'll start off the thread: North Korea.

Trump's actions ... sending carrier groups in the direction of N Korea, conducting large joint military exercises off the S Korean coast, test-firing interceptor missiles, etc ... seem designed to crank up the situation, not to defuse it.

Also, there is something going on in the background with China ... apparently some sort of agreement was reached between Trump and Xi Jingping, which both sides feel have been abrogated. Because we don't know much about the presumed agreement, it would be impossible to decide who broke it first, or whether it was just a misunderstanding.

I'll be very honest and say that I know next-to-nothing about N Korea, aside what you can read in the general press. My IMPRESSION is that this regime is like a child with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) .... the more you push it, the more it pushes back.

N Korea has gone to the level of starvation and hasn't given in, so I doubt that additional sanctions or blockade would cause the regime to knuckle under. And starting a shooting war over N Korea would be the height of folly.

I've also glancingly heard that the only thing N Korea wants is direct talks with the USA. IF that's the case (and I don't know that it is) what's the harm?

One more comment .... I see that the Trump administration has taken a page or two from the Obama/ Bush playbook: Make up something provocative about the next invasion target ahead of time (Yanno, in the realm of "Saddam as WMD" or "Qaddafi is massacring his own people") and use that as an excuse for military "intervention".

In the case of Syria, it's the (false) assertion that "Assad gassed his own people". In the case of N Korea, Trump doesn't HAVE to make anything up ... but here we seem to have two leaders (Trump and Kim Jong Un) whose MO is "brinksmanship", and every indication that - if desperate enough, Kim Jong Un would use nukes.

-----------

"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
THUGR, JONESING FOR WWIII
All those guns 1kiki, are pointed towards your beloved Russia. All those cyber capabilities, pointed right at Russia. Thanks Putin, and get ready to duck.
I'll accept your apology any time, THUGR. But I know you're not man enough to give me one

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Thursday, July 6, 2017 6:14 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Here was the content of the OP for the first thread. A clearly delusional pretense of Trump's factual tweet being somehow a form of crazy talk. As reality set in, and Trump's tweet was proven, over and over again, that thread quickly veered farther into surreality, and few posts actually related to the original Libtard delusion, but seemed to branch into any form of Libtard delusion that was handy.

Quote:
Originally posted by THGRRI:
Trump Accuses Obama of Wiretapping Trump Tower During Campaign

Donald Trump alleged in a tweet storm early Saturday that former President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower before his election victory.

Trump did not provide any evidence for the claims, which followed an interview on Fox News where the allegations came up.

"Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!" Trump wrote as part of a series of tweets Saturday morning.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-accuses-obama-wiretapping-re
sidence-during-campaign-n729056

Is this thread intended to be a continuation of that nonsense? Or is this a different facet? Based upon a different premise?

Sorry that I didn't see a clarity.

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Thursday, July 6, 2017 6:20 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
My question is- Is he just getting a bum rap? Is the deep state out to get him? Is all of the bad press simply a pile-on of interventionist-liberals? Or is there really a problem? Is there a method to his madness? Is he just out of his depth in an unfamiliar environment? Or is he totally whack-a-doodle?

Time to revive the topic.

I'm hoping to focus on Trump's ACTIONS .... particularly those in foreign policy, where he has more effect .... not gossip. Incisive analysis preferred. Bullshit not welcome.

It looks like Trump has defeated ISIS.
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=61773

Looks like Trump has retrieved NASA from it's fantasy directives and returned it to reality, real science.
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=61768

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Monday, July 10, 2017 7:01 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And I'll start off the thread: North Korea.

Trump's actions ... sending carrier groups in the direction of N Korea, conducting large joint military exercises off the S Korean coast, test-firing interceptor missiles, etc ... seem designed to crank up the situation, not to defuse it.

Also, there is something going on in the background with China ... apparently some sort of agreement was reached between Trump and Xi Jingping, which both sides feel have been abrogated. Because we don't know much about the presumed agreement, it would be impossible to decide who broke it first, or whether it was just a misunderstanding.

I'll be very honest and say that I know next-to-nothing about N Korea, aside what you can read in the general press. My IMPRESSION is that this regime is like a child with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) .... the more you push it, the more it pushes back.

N Korea has gone to the level of starvation and hasn't given in, so I doubt that additional sanctions or blockade would cause the regime to knuckle under. And starting a shooting war over N Korea would be the height of folly.

I've also glancingly heard that the only thing N Korea wants is direct talks with the USA. IF that's the case (and I don't know that it is) what's the harm?

One more comment .... I see that the Trump administration has taken a page or two from the Obama/ Bush playbook: Make up something provocative about the next invasion target ahead of time (Yanno, in the realm of "Saddam as WMD" or "Qaddafi is massacring his own people") and use that as an excuse for military "intervention".

In the case of Syria, it's the (false) assertion that "Assad gassed his own people". In the case of N Korea, Trump doesn't HAVE to make anything up ... but here we seem to have two leaders (Trump and Kim Jong Un) whose MO is "brinksmanship", and every indication that - if desperate enough, Kim Jong Un would use nukes.

So your evaluation is that Trump's Foreign Policy is nuts? At least in regards to North Korea? We should let the petulant child Kim rule the world?

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Tuesday, July 11, 2017 7:48 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

It looks like Trump has defeated ISIS.
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=61773

Looks like Trump has retrieved NASA from it's fantasy directives and returned it to reality, real science.
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=61768

Looks like Trump promotes a disastrous alternative to the Affordable Care Act. The details:

Will 50 Republican senators repeal and replace? I have no idea.

But this seems like a good moment to review why Republicans can’t come up with a non-disastrous alternative to Obamacare. It’s not because they’re stupid. It’s because you can’t change any major element of the Affordable Care Act without destroying the whole thing.

Suppose you want to make health coverage available to everyone, including people with pre-existing conditions. Most of the health economists I know would love to see single-payer — Medicare for all. However, Joe Lieberman, the 60th Senator killed that all by himself. So the Affordable Care Act went for incrementalism — the three-legged stool.
www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/prescriptions/2009/10/did_lie
berman_just_kill_the_public_option.html

The Affordable Care Act starts by requiring that insurers offer the same plans, at the same prices, to everyone, regardless of medical history. This deals with the problem of pre-existing conditions. On its own, however, this would lead to a “death spiral”: Healthy people would wait until they got sick to sign up, so those who did sign up would be relatively unhealthy, driving up premiums, which would in turn drive out more healthy people, and so on.

So insurance regulation has to be accompanied by the individual mandate, a requirement that people sign up for insurance, even if they’re healthy. And the insurance must meet minimum standards: Buying a cheap policy that barely covers anything is functionally the same as not buying insurance at all.

But what if people can’t afford insurance? The third leg of the stool is subsidies that limit the cost for those with lower incomes. For those with the lowest incomes, the subsidy is 100 percent, and takes the form of an expansion of Medicaid.

The key point is that all three legs of this stool are necessary. Take away any one of them, and the program can’t work.

But does it work even with all three legs? Yes.

To understand what’s happened with the ACA so far, you need to realize that as written (and interpreted by the Supreme Court), the law’s functioning depends on a lot on cooperation from state governments. And where states have in fact cooperated, expanding Medicaid, operating their own insurance exchanges, and promoting both enrollment and competition among insurers, it has worked pretty darn well.

Compare, for example, the experience of Kentucky and its neighbor Tennessee. In 2013, before full implementation of the ACA, Tennessee had slightly fewer uninsured, 13 percent versus 14 percent. But by 2015 Kentucky, which implemented the law in full, had cut its uninsured rate to just 6 percent, while Tennessee was at 11.

Or consider the problem of counties with only one (or no) insurer, meaning no competition. As one recent study points out, this is almost entirely a red-state problem. In states with GOP governors, 21 percent of the population lives in such counties; in Democratic-governor states, less than 2 percent.

So Obamacare is, though nobody will believe it, a well-thought-out law that works where states want it to work. It could and should be made to work better, but Republicans show no interest in making that happen. Instead, all their ideas involve sawing off one or more legs of that three-legged stool.

First, they’re dead set on repealing the individual mandate, which is unpopular with healthy people but essential to making the system work for those who need it.

Second, they’re determined to slash subsidies — including making savage cuts to Medicaid — in order to free up money that they can use to cut taxes on the wealthy. The result would be a drastic rise in net premiums for most families.

Finally, we’re now hearing a lot about Texan Ted Cruz’s amendment, which would let insurers offer bare-bones plans with minimal coverage and high deductibles. These would be useless to people with pre-existing conditions, who would find themselves segregated into a high-cost market — effectively sawing off the third leg of the stool.

So which parts of their plan would Republicans have to abandon to avoid a huge rise in the number of uninsured? The answer is, all of them.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, July 11, 2017 8:24 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump was seen, rightly, as a moderate, at least while campaigning. His undoing will be that he doesn’t govern like one.

As FiveThirtyEight’s Harry Enten points out, standard polling measures of perceived ideology scored Trump as the most moderate GOP nominee in a generation or two.

On one level, this simply demonstrates the limits of this kind of measure.

But on another level, it captures something true and important about Trump’s campaign. If a Republican who seemed even-keeled and temperate (John Kasich, say, not Ted Cruz) had run on a platform of avoiding all cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, we would have rightly seen that as an enormous departure from conservative ideological orthodoxy and a huge move toward the center on economic issues.

If he threw into the mix some skepticism about the virtues of free trade and a little token praise of Planned Parenthood while criticizing George W. Bush’s foreign policy as excessively grandiose and dropping all talk of reversing LGBTQ marriage equality (to say nothing of equal rights to military service), then we’d say that, yes, Republicans had decided to try to win by moving to the center.

Obviously Trump is not even-keeled and temperate. And that’s part of the reason why Fox News, talk radio, and a large swath of the GOP primary electorate loved him. He leaned into the overtly racist aspects of anti-Obama and anti-immigrant politics rather than shying away from them. But even on these issues, Trump’s stated policy position was not in any clear way more extreme than where Paul Ryan landed after the collapse of the Gang of 8 immigration bill.

Trump promised to avoid cuts to the three biggest welfare state program out there, and he more vaguely promised to create some kind of universal health care system. He had a lot of offsetting disadvantages as a general election candidate, but in pure issue terms, he repositioned the GOP to the center, and it worked.

But to repeat, his undoing will be that he doesn’t govern like a moderate.

www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/11/15941846/trump-moderate-repu
blican

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, July 12, 2017 2:03 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

http://collider.com/errol-morris-the-b-side-donald-trump-interview/

Question: Speaking of suing people and bad taste, I always really enjoyed the short short interview that you did with Donald Trump about Citizen Kane. Even at the time it seemed so oddly revealing in ways that he clearly didn’t understand. Now it’s almost unbelievable.

Morris: I actually wanted to publish it in the New York Times, but the circumstances under which I did that movie made me vulnerable to a lawsuit and at this point in my career, I don’t want to go there. But it’s amazing. What is the moral that he takes away from Citizen Kane? I asked him if he had any advice for Charles Foster Kane and he said, “Yeah, get yourself a different woman.” What’s interesting is that Citizen Kane was meant as an anti-fascist/anti-capitalist melodrama and for Donald Trump it becomes just another kind of misogynistic claim that misses the point.

Question: Was there anything from that interview that didn’t make it into that, but was compelling enough that you wish you had used it now?

Morris: There’s some more stuff, indeed. I’ve been involved in doing advertising for various elections and I just couldn’t see doing anti-Trump advertising in this election. My line has been, “How could you do anything worse that what he does himself?” You know, anything more negative, anything more disparaging, anything more adversarial than what he does already. The mystery is how he’s gotten as far as he’s gotten. The smarter people I know declined to watch the most recent debate. I unfortunately did. I actually felt diminished by watching it. If this is what discourse has become in America, who even wants to know about it? It’s just too demoralizing and unsettling.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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