Page 50 of 67

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 8:30 pm
by williatw
choff wrote: I have to ask, could a CNN journalist like Cooper pass the same cognitive exam that Trump passed?
Depends on who administers/grades the test...you know what they say, its not the votes that count so much as who counts the votes.

As for the current Democratic engineered shutdown:

Image


Democrats shut government down, but they're still struggling to explain why
While they may not be able to admit it publicly (or even to themselves), it’s clear that the Democrats have deliberately manufactured a government shutdown. Banking on a complicit media and a confused electorate, they have now fully embraced a political tactic they decried for eight years under President Obama.

Charges that this shutdown is the fault of Republicans, or that Democrats haven’t been part of the negotiations leading to the spending bill they rejected, are not true. Instead what’s obvious is that Democrats methodically engineered a situation where the government could shut down over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Here are the steps they employed to get us here.

Step one: Democrats have yet to agree to a long-term spending deal that would allow Congress to appropriate funds on an annual basis instead of passing short-term continuing resolutions. This fiscal year began three and half months ago, and under ordinary circumstances the funding question would have been resolved long ago, and the opportunity to shut down the government wouldn’t even exist.



However, Democrats blocked a necessary increase in Pentagon funding in a naked attempt to leverage national security to win more funding for domestic programs. For that reason, Congress passed three short-term bills. Democrats blocked passage of the fourth.

Step two: Democrats rejected numerous offers to get just want they want, which is a permanent solution for DACA. While DACA is not in any way related to government spending, the Democrats have taken spending hostage in an attempt to force Republicans to deal on DACA.

There’s just one problem: Republicans are perfectly willing to deal on DACA. Trump and even the most conservative Republican leaders have proposed a true compromise and even written legislation that reflects it.

(R-Texas) proposed legislation that grants permanent amnesty to DACA recipients, in addition to common-sense border security and enforcement provisions. Having rejected this proposal, Democrats are claiming they’ll block government funding until a more favorable compromise to them emerges.

Step three: The Democrats distracted from the reality of the negotiations by creating a media circus around a comment that President Trump

allegedly made during a private meeting — a comment the president denies.

Step four: The Democrats have used the alleged comment to confuse people, charging that the president is a racist rather admitting the truth, which is that he sincerely wants a DACA deal. Otherwise, their manufactured shutdown wouldn’t make any sense at all in the face of a president who wants to give them what they want.

Step five: Having refused a long-term deal (step one), the Democrats then turned to refusing a short-term stopgap. This is the step that really brings the shutdown into play. The House proposed and passed a four-week continuing resolution that would have kept the government running while the two parties continued to hash out DACA and the long-term spending bill. Instead, Democrats rejected that offer of more time and instead opted to all discretionary spending lapse.

Step six: Democrats have cranked up the blame machine. Republicans have majorities in the House and in the Senate. This is a fact that Democrats believe makes them blameless in the Senate, but anyone who buys this line is ignorant of the Senate’s rules. Any spending bill must have 60 votes to pass the Senate. That means that while Republicans enjoy the majority, they don’t control the outcome by themselves.

Almost every Republican senator is ready to support a short-term spending bill. It is only the Democrat senators that are blocking its passage. If Republicans really did “control” the Senate, as Democrats are saying, the government would have remained open.

As has been the case in each and every policy debate so far, compromise between the parties has been elusive. A quick review of the facts reveals exactly why. Democrats, exerting the leverage they have over what can pass the Senate, will block any compromise. While feigning interest in a compromise, they continue to block any proposal that doesn’t give them exactly what they want and only what they want.

In short order, we’ll all find out whether the American people are clued in to this brand of brinksmanship.


http://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/369 ... uggling-to

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 8:33 pm
by williatw
williatw wrote:Democrats shut government down, but they're still struggling to explain why
If I was the Republicans I would force the Democrats to filibuster; no “threat of a filibuster” bs the real mcoy. They (the Republicans) should attempt to bring a Senate bill to a vote; let the Dems then filibuster away. Let it be played on the 24/7 news cycles for as long as the Dems are willing to do it. Let the American people see who is keeping the government shut down. Let’s see how that plays for the Dems in the 2018 mid term elections where they seem to think they are a shoe in to take both houses of Congress.

Addendum: Then after days or (maybe week(s)) of the shutdown the Republicans could as Trump suggested today in one of his tweets invoke the so-called "nuclear option" and pass a spending budget (not just a continuing resolution but the actual budget) on a simple 51 vote majority. They (the Republicans) would then come across like heroes saving the guv from the crazy dems; see how that would play out in 2018 elections.

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 1:21 pm
by paperburn1
great idea except there were 5 republicans that did not vote for the bill. So now what?
The truth is, Republicans didn’t even have the votes to keep the government open on their own. But Democrats also weren’t going to let the government stay open without a DACA deal, even if Republicans had the votes.

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 11:50 pm
by Diogenes
Betruger wrote:
Diogenes wrote:
Tom Ligon wrote:
You are not accounting for the buoyancy of hot air.


Or the buoyancy of his critic's empty heads.


Cause personality cults have no historical precedent and merely having nationality makes you a Chosen One immaculate of any such airhead idiocy. I'd get banned detailing how far from deserving of your self proclamations you are. You never lived under socialism nor propagandistic regimes and yet you open wide for exactly the same mindless reality-distorting double-speak because it comes from another self-serving chauvinistic blowhard....



...Everything but that long term arc from scarcity of time/space/matter to negligible TSM scarcity, is a distraction. The founding fathers dream was just a step up that staircase. The USA will lead, follow, or get out of the way, for the sake of expediency.


Verbose. I'm thinking I hit some sort of nerve.

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 11:51 pm
by Diogenes
Tom Ligon wrote:
Diogenes wrote: Or the buoyancy of his critic's empty heads.
Some of the people, all of the time.

Mainly those who get their news from New York and Atlanta.

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2018 12:17 am
by Diogenes
williatw wrote:
Betruger wrote:Everyone around him knows it, everyone who wasn't showering in feel good Kool Aid knew it, and yet here we are having to argue over whether he really is a craven klutz of an excuse for a president. No one wants a bad president nor a bad government and yet here we are with someone almost 100% uninterested in SERVING as a president is supposed to..
Hear, Hear...after all what has this charlatan-in-chief accomplished in his first year (of four maybe eight) anyway?

Oh wait someone made a list:


Good effort, but pointless I think. You can't reason someone out of a position which they weren't reasoned into.


People want to believe what they want to believe, and showing them evidence that contradicts what they want to believe just annoys them.

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2018 12:27 am
by Diogenes
Tom Ligon wrote:And a hard hit on the deficit.

When I was a boy, real Republicans were deficit hawks. This fakir has a history of running outfits bankrupt and finding a way to personally profit from it while leaving wreck and ruin for everyone else. And now he's got an actual country to ruin.


He's gonna have to hurry up if he expects to match the 9 trillion that Obama spent.


Image

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2018 12:39 am
by paperburn1
Quite frankly with the new tax laws if we do not make and keep a growth rate of 3 percent that marker will be easy for this administration to hit. :( I do not want to see the fail if it happens.

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2018 6:31 pm
by Betruger
williatw wrote:Oh wait someone made a list:
What has Donald Trump done since he has been in office!!!
[lots of exclamation mark worthy party line parroting zealot pleasing talking points
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6017&p=129665&hilit ... st#p129665

https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-ne ... s?page=5#5
Man o man. He is just the second coming. Surely nothing could outweigh such a list of miracles from such a divinely inspired, single handed effort.
Lemme regurgitates someone else's wall of text too while I'm at it.
paperburn1 wrote:1984 all over again.
TLDR!
Image

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2018 9:02 pm
by williatw
Diogenes wrote:Good effort, but pointless I think. You can't reason someone out of a position which they weren't reasoned into.
People want to believe what they want to believe, and showing them evidence that contradicts what they want to believe just annoys them.
Well Dio....looks like you called it:

Betruger wrote:Man o man. He is just the second coming. Surely nothing could outweigh such a list of miracles from such a divinely inspired, single handed effort.

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2018 9:26 pm
by Diogenes
williatw wrote:
Diogenes wrote:Good effort, but pointless I think. You can't reason someone out of a position which they weren't reasoned into.
People want to believe what they want to believe, and showing them evidence that contradicts what they want to believe just annoys them.
Well Dio....looks like you called it:

Betruger wrote:Man o man. He is just the second coming. Surely nothing could outweigh such a list of miracles from such a divinely inspired, single handed effort.

I've been arguing for decades. Some people can be persuaded by reason, but most seemingly cannot. This doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2018 9:36 pm
by Diogenes
Howard Kurtz wrote: “This is not just a feud or a fight or a battle. It is scorched-earth warfare in which only one side can achieve victory. To a stunning degree, the press is falling into the president’s trap. The country’s top news organizations have targeted Trump with an unprecedented barrage of negative stories, with some no longer making much attempt to hide their contempt. Some stories are legitimate, some are not, and others are generated by the president’s own falsehoods and exaggerations. But the mainstream media, subconsciously at first, has lurched into the opposition camp and is appealing to an anti-Trump base of viewers and readers, failing to grasp how deeply it is distrusted by a wide swath of the country.”
Howard Kurtz wrote: “These are not easy words for me to write. I am a lifelong journalist with ink in my veins. And for all my criticism of the media’s errors and excesses, I have always believed in the mission of aggressive reporting and holding politicians accountable […] But the past two years have radicalized me. I am increasingly troubled by how many of my colleagues have decided to abandon any semblance of fairness out of a conviction that they must save the country from Trump.”

Howard Kurtz wrote:This is, at bottom, a battle over the truth. Who owns it, who controls it, who can sell their version to a polarized public that increasingly cannot agree on basic facts. Everything you read, hear and see about Trump's veracity is filtered through a mainstream media prism that reflects a lying president — and virtually never considers the press' own baggage and biases. Everything you read, hear and see from the Trump team is premised on the view that media news is fake news, that journalists are too prejudiced, angry and ideological to fairly report on the president. Trump and his acolytes use these attacks on the Fourth Estate to neutralize their own untruths, evasions and exaggerations. What many journalists fail to grasp is that Trump's supporters love his street talk and view the media critiques as nonsense driven by negativity. They don't care if he makes mistakes. As paradoxical as it sounds, negative coverage helps Trump because it bonds him to people who also feel disrespected by the denizens of the mainstream press. The media take everything literally, and Trump pitches his arguments at a gut level. It is asymmetrical warfare.


https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ ... mn-1077062

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2018 11:11 pm
by Tom Ligon
Diogenes wrote: Mainly those who get their news from New York and Atlanta.
... but others instead prefer Instagram.

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2018 6:38 pm
by Diogenes
Tom Ligon wrote:
Diogenes wrote: Mainly those who get their news from New York and Atlanta.
... but others instead prefer Instagram.

I wouldn't know. I get my news from various websites around the net. Some of them function as veritable "Bussard Collectors" of information.

Re: Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2018 4:12 am
by Tom Ligon
Diogenes wrote: I wouldn't know. I get my news from various websites around the net. Some of them function as veritable "Bussard Collectors" of information.
Bussard collectors pick up only lightweight stuff of one polarity (in his later years, he concluded they should be just electrostatic). But otherwise they are not picky.

So, does this mean you only want to hear one side, and you are as likely to listen to Russian trolls as reliable sources?