Thread: President Donald Trump

Originally Posted by Dragonfly

doesn't really matter at the end, the results count

Trump signs resolution to permit dumping mining waste into waterways

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video...c2ZyJZlkWsBCPM

So much winning

Originally Posted by panama hat

most people I know vote along party lines

PH, that may be a result of the people you hang around with. My last 25 years in the USA was in a deep blue suburb of Philadelphia. As far as I know no republican ever held a local office. Yet, deep blue as it is there was/were more Trump supporters than Clinton supporters. Trump hit a nerve with "illegal immigrants" and parlayed it into the white house. Another note on that though, we were so deep blue we were ignored in the dems campaign efforts since we were a "sure thing".

Originally Posted by panama hat

I, along with most Americans cast my vote for the candidate that I perceive will promote my agenda the most

To expand on that statement. My personal opinion and the "biggest problem" in America is the "for profit" monopolized healthcare system. Medical care is the root cause of 60% of all personal bankruptcies in the USA. Holding your life hostage, pay or die. My vote goes to the candidate who promotes a viable "healthcare for all" platform.

Originally Posted by bowie

Trump hit a nerve with "illegal immigrants"

A huge threat in your 'deep blue' Philly suburb no doubt.

Originally Posted by Humbert

A huge threat in your 'deep blue' Philly suburb no doubt.

Well, Trump did take Pennsylvanias 20 electors votes. So, was it the threat of "illegal immigrants" or was it that Pennsylvania is naught more than a haven for a vast number of bible thumpin', shotgun clutchin', moonshine swillin', trailer trash hillbillies?

Ya' need to pander to the population, not denigrate 'em.

^ so you manned up and took me off your ignore list then?

Originally Posted by bowie

or was it that Pennsylvania is naught more than a haven for a vast number of bible thumpin', shotgun clutchin', moonshine swillin', trailer trash hillbillies?

Your words not mine. Everyone knows PA is heavily blue collar and likely to go with Biden if he wins the nomination. They are sick and tired, like everyone else, of Trump's divisiveness.

Originally Posted by bowie

My vote goes to the candidate who promotes a viable "healthcare for all" platform.

As will mine although for me personally have Medicare, Medicade and Private insurance. Don't care what party the candidate is from but a viable health care is probably the number one concern for your average Joe. Get that right and whoever the candidate, you have a winner.

Originally Posted by Humbert

off your ignore list

all are "off" my ignore list -to many whiners complain when they believe their "words-of-wisdom" ain't bein' heeded. However, you redded me so apparently I hit a nerve that ignited your passion enough to take exception to my comment - Why am I not on your Ignore List, as my opinion(s) run so counter to yours?

Originally Posted by panama hat

Obamacare may not be ideal and is a WiP

The Affordable Care Act is a viable framework, yet, all it did was shift the burden onto the "individual". And it was not "affordable", in fact, it is/was cost prohibitive. The individual mandate effectively shifted the burden of pre-existing conditions onto the folks who do not have them. Anyway, past history now, the two vehicles that were to pay for the affordable care act, the individual mandate and the "luxury" tax on Cadillac Healthcare Plans have both been eliminated. So the framework of the affordable care act exists but can't be paid for.

Medicare is a viable framework. Shifting the control of the "monopolized" for profit medical care system from the insurance companies/pharmaceutical companies/medical care providers and can't forget the ridiculous cost of medical care education from the uncontrollable "for-profits" to the government.

Medicare for all will work - it is a government controlled medical system (socialized medicine) that works everywhere else. It will work in the USA and it "should" work well. The USA will eventually wind up with a medicare for all system. By necessity - might as well start working on it now.

It will happen.

Trump administration takes key step to open Alaskan wildlife refuge to drilling by end of year

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-en...JNX90CpzEHZJAw

Another big fat win.

Originally Posted by panama hat

unaffordability in the US is the massive power the medical lobbies have

BINGO - 100% Hit the Nail on the Head. It always money, money, money. Lobbyists really do run the show. Medical, Energy, Labor, you name it and the special interest money will "sway" legislation.

Congress folds like a proverbial house of cards when the lobbyists threaten cutting off "donations". Hell, the labor unions barked about the "Cadillac" Healthcare Tax and, wow, gone - just like that.

Don't dare "upset" the apple cart.

So, how do we go about adjusting the system? and/or is it possible at all. Perhaps, the only solution is to destroy then rebuild. Or, perhaps, the best way is to destroy then rebuild.

Originally Posted by bowie

Perhaps, the only solution is to destroy then rebuild.

Start with overturning Supreme Court rulings which allow corporations to throw big bucks at political candidates. Not going to happen with this court but unless serious restrictions are put on big money enterprises campaign donations, nothing changes.

Originally Posted by bowie

The Affordable Care Act is a viable framework, yet, all it did was shift the burden onto the "individual". And it was not "affordable", in fact, it is/was cost prohibitive.

That's because the GOP sabotaged it from day one.

Originally Posted by bowie

BINGO - 100% Hit the Nail on the Head. It always money, money, money. Lobbyists really do run the show. Medical, Energy, Labor, you name it and the special interest money will "sway" legislation.

Congress folds like a proverbial house of cards when the lobbyists threaten cutting off "donations". Hell, the labor unions barked about the "Cadillac" Healthcare Tax and, wow, gone - just like that.

Don't dare "upset" the apple cart.

So, how do we go about adjusting the system?

Get rid of every single republican legislator would be a good start.

Especially Turtle head.

Well played Baltimore, well played.

How this corrupt administration is tolerated in America I just do not understand.

A federal appeals court in New York on Friday revived a lawsuit alleging that President Trump is illegally profiting from his hotels and restaurants in New York and Washington in violation of the Constitution’s anti-corruption, or emoluments, clauses.

In a two-to-one decision, a panel of judges for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that a lower court had wrongly dismissed the lawsuit accusing Mr. Trump of violating the Constitution’s bans on accepting financial benefits from foreign or state governments. The appeals court judge sent the lawsuit back to the lower court, ordering it be allowed to proceed.

The decision comes nearly two years after the lower court judge dismissed the lawsuit. The case is one of three that have been[at]ping-ponging[at]back and forth between district and appeals courts as judges struggle with the novel legal questions raised by Mr. Trump’s decision not to divorce himself from his business empire while in office.

Although Mr. Trump promised never to mix his personal financial interests with official business, he has repeatedly touted his properties since becoming president. He suggested recently that he should host the next summit of the Group of 7 world leaders at his luxury golf resort in southern Florida, describing the property as a “great place.”


some ways, interactions between Mr. Trump’s political role and his businesses[at]have become routine, with foreign leaders, lobbyists, Republican candidates, members of Congress, cabinet members and others with ties to the president routinely visiting his properties. In the past week, new details have emerged of[at]stays by United States military personnel[at]at Mr. Trump’s golf resort in Scotland.

Trump Still Makes Money From His Properties. Is This Constitutional?

Two lawsuits allege President Trump has violated the Constitution’s anticorruption clauses by continuing to own a business that receives payments and other benefits from foreign and domestic governments.

The appeals court judges in New York noted that a different appellate panel for Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit had ruled the opposite way, dismissing a similar lawsuit brought by the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia. The plaintiffs in that case are seeking to appeal that dismissal to the full appeals court, based in Virginia.

Yet another case, brought by congressional Democrats, is headed to Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.


In the New York case, the appellate judges ruled that the lower court judge, George B. Daniels, had dismissed the case too precipitously. By his standard, the judges said, no plaintiff would ever have the legal standing to sue the president for accepting financial benefits or emoluments from foreign governments without congressional approval.

They said Judge Daniels’s ruling was the equivalent of saying that “Congress alone shall have the authority to determine whether the president acts in violation of this clause” when in fact, the Constitution “says nothing like that.”

The judges also said Judge Daniels wrongly rejected as “wholly speculative” the plaintiffs’ complaint that they were losing business because state and foreign officials were switching to Trump-owned properties in hopes of winning the president’s favor.

“The district court demanded too much at the pleading stage,” the decision states. It was written by Pierre N. Leval, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, and Christopher F. Droney, who was appointed by President Barack Obama.

John M. Walker Jr., who was appointed by President George Bush, dissented.

It was not immediately clear whether the Justice Department would appeal the panel’s ruling to the full appeals court.

......
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/13/u...s-lawsuit.html

Gotta love the chinkies, they're playing baldy orange cunto like a fiddle.

Elsewhere, China has announced that it will suspend tariffs on goods to the US.

The country, which is currently locked in a trade war with the US, suspended tariffs on soybeans and pork.

The gesture is a conciliatory one, ahead of negotiations.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-a9103981.html

They've already sourced Soybeans from Russia and they are in dire need of Pork being 100 million pigs down on last year because of Swine Fever.

Yet they've managed to paint this as a magnanimous gesture.

Saw this on social media..




shit I hate the downgrade they did..

Originally Posted by Cujo

How this corrupt administration is tolerated in America I just do not understand.

There are two means to deal with Trump's corruption. Election or impeachment. It is certainly not tolerated but the means to deal with it are limited constitutionally.

It was, by all accounts, a furious row. Donald Trump was talking about relaxing sanctions on Iran and holding a summit with its presi3ddent, Hassan Rouhani, at this month’s UN general assembly in New York. John Bolton, his hawkish national security adviser, was dead against it and forcefully rejected Trump’s ideas during a tense meeting in the Oval Office on Monday.

Big mistake. Still angry over the humiliating collapse of his secret Camp David weekend summit with the Afghan Taliban, which Bolton had also opposed, Trump was in no mood to listen to his aide’s notoriously hardline views. “I disagreed strongly with him,” he said later. Trump lost his temper – and Bolton lost his job, summarily dismissed by tweet.

Bolton’s brutal defenestration has raised hopes that Trump, who worries that voters may view him as a warmonger, may begin to moderate some of his more confrontational international policies. As the 2020 election looms, he is desperate for a big foreign policy peace-making success. And, in Trump world, winning matters more than ideology, principles or personnel.

The US president is now saying he is also open to a repeat meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, to reboot stalled nuclear disarmament talks. On another front, he has offered an olive branch to China, delaying a planned tariff increase on $250bn of Chinese goods pending renewed trade negotiations next month. Meanwhile, he says, new tariffs on European car imports could be dropped, too.

Is a genuine dove-ish shift under way? It seems improbable. Since taking office in January 2017, Trump has not merely broken with diplomatic and geopolitical convention. He has taken a wrecking ball to venerated alliances, multilateral cooperation and the postwar international rules-based order. He has cosied up to autocrats, attacked old friends and blundered into sensitive conflicts he does not fully comprehend.

The resulting new world disorder – to adapt George HW Bush’s famous 1991 phrase – will be hard to put right. Like its creator, Trump world is unstable, unpredictable and threatening. Trump has been called America’s first rogue president. Whether or not he wins a second term, this Trumpian era of epic disruption, the very worst form of American exceptionalism, is already deeply entrenched.

The suggestion that Trump will make nice and back off as election time nears thus elicits considerable scepticism. US analysts and commentators say the president’s erratic, impulsive and egotistic personality means any shift towards conciliation may be short-lived and could quickly be reversed, Bolton or no Bolton.

Trump wanted quick 'n' easy, primetime credit for a dramatic peace deal in Afghanistan with the Taliban, pushed ahead blindly, then changed his mind at the last minute
Trump is notorious for blowing hot and cold, performing policy zigzags and suddenly changing his mind. “Regardless of who has advised Mr Trump on foreign affairs … all have proved powerless before [his] zest for chaos,” the New York Times noted last week.


Lacking experienced diplomatic and military advisers (he has sacked most of the good ones), surrounded by an inner circle of cynical sycophants such as secretary of state Mike Pompeo, and driven by a chronic desire for re-election, Trump’s behaviour could become more, not less, confrontational during his remaining time in office, suggested Eliot Cohen, professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins university.

“The president has proved himself to be what many critics have long accused him of being: belligerent, bullying, impatient, irresponsible, intellectually lazy, short-tempered and self-obsessed,” Cohen wrote in Foreign Affairs journal. “Remarkably, however, those shortcomings have not yet translated into obvious disaster. But [that] … should not distract from a building crisis of US foreign policy.”

This pending crisis stems from Trump’s crudely Manichaean division of the world into two camps: adversaries/competitors and supporters/customers. A man with few close confidants, Trump has real trouble distinguishing between allies and enemies, friends and foes, and often confuses the two. In Trump world, old rules don’t apply. Alliances are optional. Loyalty is weakness. And trust is fungible.

As a result, the US today finds itself at odds with much of the world to an unprecedented and dangerous degree. America, the postwar global saviour, has been widely recast as villain. Nor is this a passing phase. Trump seems to have permanently changed the way the US views the world and vice versa. Whatever follows, it will never be quite the same again.

Clues as to what he does next may be found in what he has done so far. His is a truly calamitous record, as exemplified by Afghanistan. Having vowed in 2016 to end America’s longest war, he began with a troop surge, lost interest and sued for peace. A withdrawal deal proved elusive. Meanwhile, US-led forces inflicted record civilian casualties.

The US and Israeli flags are projected on the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City in May.
The US and Israeli flags are projected on the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City in May, marking the anniversary of the US embassy transfer from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Photograph: Ahmad Gharabli/Getty
The crunch came last weekend when a bizarre, secret summit with Taliban chiefs at Camp David was cancelled. It was classic Trump. He wanted quick ’n’ easy, primetime credit for a dramatic peace deal, pushed ahead blindly, then changed his mind at the last minute. Furious over a debacle of his own making, he turned his wrath on others, notably Bolton – who, ironically, had opposed the summit all along.

All sides are now vowing to step up the violence, with the insurgents aiming to disrupt this month’s presidential election in Afghanistan. In short, Trump’s self-glorifying Afghan reality show, of which he was the Nobel-winning star, has made matters worse. Much the same is true of his North Korea summitry, where expectations were raised, then dashed when he got cold feet in Hanoi, provoking a backlash from Pyongyang.

The current crisis over Iran’s nuclear programme is almost entirely of Trump’s making, sparked by his decision last year to renege on the 2015 UN-endorsed deal with Tehran. His subsequent “maximum pressure” campaign of punitive sanctions has failed to cow Iranians while alienating European allies. And it has led Iran to resume banned nuclear activities – a seriously counterproductive, entirely predictable outcome.

Trump’s unconditional, unthinking support for Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s aggressively rightwing prime minister – including tacit US backing for his proposed annexation of swathes of the occupied territories – is pushing the Palestinians back to the brink, energising Hamas and Hezbollah, and raising tensions across the region.

With Trump’s blessing, Israel is enmeshed in escalating, multi-fronted armed confrontation with Iran and its allies in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. Add to this recent violence in the Gulf, the disastrous Trump-backed, Saudi-led war in Yemen, mayhem in Syria’s Idlib province, border friction with Turkey, and Islamic State resurgence in northern Iraq, and a region-wide explosion looks ever more likely.

The bipartisan consensus forged in the 1990s – in which the US towered over the world and, at low cost, sought to remake it in America's image – has failed and cannot be revived
Stephen Wertheim, historian
Yet Trump, oblivious to the point of recklessness, remains determined to unveil his absurdly unbalanced Israel-Palestine “deal of the century” after Tuesday’s Israeli elections. He and his gormless son-in-law, Jared Kushner, may be the only people who don’t realise their plan has a shorter life expectancy than a snowball on a hot day in Gaza.

Another prominent aspect of Trump world is his sinister, personal alliance with Vladimir Putin. There’s no doubt Russia’s president meddled in the 2016 US election to Trump’s benefit, as the Mueller report states. There’s no doubt Trump has gone easy on Putin over Crimea and Ukraine, over war crimes and chemical weapons attacks in Syria, over the Salisbury poisonings, and over his vicious assaults on Russia’s democratic opposition. Trump is even pushing for Russia to be readmitted to the G7. Exactly why he acts this way is much less certain.

Whether Trump is attacking Nato, insulting Europe’s elected leaders, unhelpfully taking sides on Brexit, ignoring India’s repression in Kashmir, plotting regime change in Venezuela, ignoring egregious human rights abuses from the Philippines to Saudi Arabia, undermining the UN and international law, wrecking nuclear arms control treaties, plundering the Arctic, or opposing efforts to combat climate crisis and environmental degradation, he is consistently out of line, out on his own – and out of control.

This, broadly, is Trump world as it has come to exist since January 2017. And this, in a nutshell, is the intensifying foreign policy crisis of which Professor Cohen warned. The days when responsible, trustworthy, principled US international leadership could be taken for granted are gone. No vague change of tone on North Korea or Iran will by itself halt the Trump-led slide into expanding global conflict and division.

Historians such as Stephen Wertheim say change had to come. US politicians of left and right mostly agreed that “the bipartisan consensus forged in the 1990s – in which the US towered over the world and, at low cost, sought to remake it in America’s image – has failed and cannot be revived”, Wertheim wrote earlier this year. “But agreement ends there … ” he continued: “One camp holds that the US erred by coddling China and Russia, and urges a new competition against these great power rivals. The other camp, which says the US has been too belligerent and ambitious around the world, counsels restraint, not another crusade against grand enemies.”

This debate among grownups over America’s future place in the world will form part of next year’s election contest. But before any fundamental change of direction can occur, the international community – and the US itself – must first survive another 16 months of Trump world and the wayward child-president’s poll-fixated, ego-driven destructive tendencies.

Survival is not guaranteed. The immediate choice facing US friends and foes alike is stark and urgent: ignore, bypass and marginalise Trump – or actively, openly, resist him.

Donald Trump greets Angela Merkel at the G7 summit in France in August.
Donald Trump greets Angela Merkel at the G7 summit in France in August, but he rarely misses a chance to be negative about Germany or its strong chancellor. Photograph: Christian Hartmann/Reuters
Here are some of the key flashpoints around the globe

United Nations
Trump is deeply hostile to the UN. It embodies the multilateralist, globalist policy approaches he most abhors – because they supposedly infringe America’s sovereignty and inhibit its freedom of action. Under him, self-interested US behaviour has undermined the authority of the UN security council’s authority. The US has rejected a series of international treaties and agreements, including the Paris climate change accord and the Iran nuclear deal. The UN-backed international criminal court is beyond the pale. Trump’s attitude fits with his “America First” isolationism, which questions traditional ideas about America’s essential global leadership role.

Germany
Trump rarely misses a chance to bash Germany, perhaps because it is Europe’s most successful economy and represents the EU, which he detests. He is obsessed by German car imports, on which protectionist US tariffs will be levied this autumn. He accuses Berlin – and Europe– of piggy-backing on America by failing to pay its fair share of Nato defence costs. Special venom is reserved for Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, most likely because she is a woman who stands up to him. Trump recently insulted another female European leader, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, after she refused to sell him Greenland.

Israel
Trump has made a great show of unconditional friendship towards Israel and its rightwing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has skilfully maximised his White House influence. But by moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, officially condoning Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, and withdrawing funding and other support from the Palestinians, the president has abandoned the long-standing US policy of playing honest broker in the peace process. Trump has also tried to exploit antisemitism for political advantage, accusing US Democrat Jews who oppose Netanyahu’s policies of “disloyalty” to Israel.

Russia
Trump’s evident liking for Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has been the cause of endless puzzlement, given Moscow’s hostility to Nato and the western democratic alliance, its support for Bashar al-Assad and alleged Syrian war crimes, and its illegal intervention in Ukraine. Trump’s attitude may stem from Putin’s meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, which benefited him. But the affinity between them may be better explained by shared autocratic tendencies. Putin is an authoritarian nationalist, like similar rightwing politicians in China, Turkey, Brazil and India whom Trump admires – and would like to emulate.

China
During his presidential campaign in 2016, Trump provocatively declared China a bigger problem than jihadi terrorism. He claims that China has enjoyed unfair advantages in two-way trade for decades due to its notional designation as a developing country, supposed currency manipulation, and America’s own failure to protect manufacturing industry. He has levelled similar accusations at the EU, Japan, Canada, India and other trading partnersothers. But his remedy – unilateral punitive tariffs and sanctions – has disrupted international commerce, shaken global economic confidence and strained political relations with Beijing without demonstrably improving US fortunes.

Venezuela
Trump’s clumsy efforts to engineer regime change in Venezuela and impose a Washington-approved version of democracy mark a regression to the bad old days of the cold war when the US regarded Central and Latin America as its “backyard” and exclusive sphere of influence. So far, Trump’s attempt, masterminded by John Bolton, to replace the regime of Nicolás Maduro with a pro-American technocrat, Juan Guaidó, has failed miserably. Undeterred, he continues to sanction Maduro’s ideological allies in post-Castro Cuba and to exacerbate the Central American migrant crisis, meanwhile enthusiastically embracing Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president.

Saudi Arabia
Trump made his first overseas trip as president to Saudi Arabia, signalling the importance he attaches to close relations with the energy-rich, autocratic Gulf kingdom. He has since strengthened the alliance in opposition to Iran, deploying troops to Saudi Arabia and supplying advanced weaponry for its war in Yemen. The Saudi connection has also come to symbolise Trump’s indifference to human rights abuses, whether in the Philippines, Russia or on the US-Mexico border. When the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, was murdered by Saudi agents, Trump defended senior figures in Riyadh such as its crown prince who allegedly ordered the killing.

Kashmir
When Imran Khan, Pakistan’s prime minister, visited the White House recently, Trump boasted he was ready to mediate in the long-running dispute over divided Kashmir. It was a vainglorious gesture, reflecting Trump’s ignorance. When, shortly afterwards, India imposed direct rule on Kashmir, effectively detaining its population, Trump did nothing. Whether the issue is the Delhi-Islamabad nuclear standoff, the unending Afghan war, Chinese attempts to gain strategic leverage in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, or the Rohingya refugee tragedy in Bangladesh, Trump’s south Asia policy, like that in sub-Saharan Africa, is ineffectual and near non-existent. Maybe they are lucky.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...onfrontational

Originally Posted by Humbert

Trump must realize by now that his foreign policy with respect to Iran and North Korea has been a dismal failure.

In contrast to the foreign policy of his ingenious predecessors (and their kind advisers)...

Originally Posted by Humbert

Both Iran and N. Korea are content to wait things out until after the 2020 elections.

What's the business of anyone else than the named countries, anyway?

Originally Posted by Klondyke

In contrast to the foreign policy of his ingenious predecessors (and their kind advisers)...

indeed, it's not like previous POTUS were champion of peace and negotiations

Obama totally failed on that too, even though we could argue it wasn't entirely his fault, he had stupid Hillary and that fraud of Kerry to run foreign policies for him

look what we have been missing if those 2 had ever became POTUS