They think they're "gonna get their jobs back"...how long do you think it'll take them to realize they've been conned? ^^^That's tongue-in-cheek but seriously, Trump has lied about more or less everything to more or less everyone. I don't understand how some Trump voters can think "sure he lies all the time but he'd NEVER lie to us!"
If he lies so much why is everyone scared he's going to deport the brown people and send the gays to internment camps? Just wait until he starts getting into it daily with his own cabinet.
You guys are still pouting about the people who wouldn't vote Hillary? He'll probably fail on at least half of his campaign promises. A candidate who over promises and doesn't deliver? Yeah, totally never seen that before. /yes we can Every election there's people who are convinced their guy is a savior. I'm sure these people will be sorely disappointed when doesn't fix every problem in the universe, as he puts it "quickly QUICKLY!". In fairness he already did save some jobs. It's not much in the grander scheme of things, but it's something. Personally, I look at the last two administrations and ask "How could anyone do worse?" Maybe Trump can drag that standard even lower, but we're not going to know until he's been in office for awhile. There's been so much crazy shit said about the incoming administration, people should compile a list of their predictions and match it with what happens by the end of his term.
With the backing of the GOP he actually has the ability to enact some pretty awful policies. The non-hysterical fear is that Trump rubber-stamps GOP domestic policy and fucks up international relationships by Trump being Trump.
Going by what he ran on and has said since the election, the only really bad domestic issue that concerns me is the abortion/PP one. The democrats may be weak across the board, but they can still filibuster in the senate if they have to. They can block quite a bit that way, if they want.
As long as he un-fucks my insurance and doesn't get us into another war, I'll consider Trump a success. That's all I'm asking really. Is it too much?
So Trump declared NATO "obsolete" in an interview earlier. What country do we think Russia is going to go into first, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Belarus, Ukraine (further), or Norway (that would be super ballsy)?
Oh for sure Ukraine. Im going Norway just for the entertainment factor. Or Sweden. No one invades there and survives.
Norway's got that delicious Arctic claim, but they are the toughest nut to crack of the Russian border nations.
I think Trump will let Putin do whatever he pleases. As for the congress, the Democrats and some of the more cold-warrior types in the GOP (McCain, Graham, etc) will raise hell, but unless the target is a full NATO member (Estonia, Norway, Latvia) and Russia's deniability is weak, there will be too much waffling within the larger GOP to force the president's hand. What I expect is bolder action by Russia in Ukraine, and lower level proxy activity in the Baltics until Putin meets meaningful resistance.
Perhaps, who knows? Maybe this is a good time for Europe to start pulling their own weight. Better yet, we should charge Europe, KSA, SKorea and everyone else for "services rendered"
Well, yeah, and it's worth noting that one of those private citizens was one of the richest and most powerful people in the country, and one of Putin's closest allies, who is basically in charge of all the oil in Russia, who had profited wildly off of the recent deal with Exxon and took a giant hit (along with the rest of the country, financial crisis and all) after they were no longer able to do business together. I wonder what the new Secretary of State thinks about that, you know the one who got the Order of Friendship from Putin for making that deal.
Now that Obama is done his 8 years, I've been thinking about his job in office. I never voted for him, but I want to review him as fairly as possible without basing my opinions based on how I voted. This isnt comprehensive, but just off the top of my head: The Good: -There is no doubt that he conducted himself with the dignity as President and is a fantastic role model. He deserves credit for his conduct and respect for the office. Michelle Obama also deserves credit. She might be the best First Lady since Nancy Reagan or even Jackie Kennedy. -He orchestrated the operation that took out Bin Laden -International Climate Change Agreement -His presidency is free of personal scandal. -Bailing out the auto industry might not have been the best-case strategy, but it was the right one to execute at the time. -Repealed "Dont Ask, Dont Tell" -Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act -Omnibus Public Lands Management Act -He kept Gitmo open The Bad: -He campaigned on being transparent, but went after whistleblowers more than any Republican ever has. -He ruined every shred of good will and political capital on the handling and implementation of the ACA. This will be the biggest black mark on his legacy. Rammed it down the throats of the American people, who were largely against it at the time. And passed it under secrecy so no one knew what it included until after its passage. Critics had said it would never last and would cause a downward spiral of the Democratic Party. Well look what happened. They lost 900+ state legislature seats, 12 governors, 69 House seats, 13 Senate seats. The Republicans are now more powerful than they have been in over 80 years. Come the 2018 midterms they could win enough seats to have enough power to starting changing the Constitution. -He handed his foreign policy to Hillary Clinton, which directly lead to the rise of ISIS. Whether or not we should have been in Iraq is relevant, but it doesnt excuse the huge changes in the ME from when he took office compared to now. His foreign policy has been anemic to say the least. The Russia Reset didnt work. Syria called his bluff with the "red line in the sand." -He didnt get us out of the Recession, that would have happened regardless. His Wall Street policies froze the credit markets and likely slowed the recovery that would have naturally occurred. -I would argue that his ardent support of TPP contributed to Hillary's loss. -Race relations are pretty terrible.
In the bad column I'd take off race relations (there's no way I'm hanging anything to do with race at the feet of a black president who was treated as openly awful as he was from the very start), and put on the expansion of the surveillance state.
The idea that Obama and his presidency are responsible for worsening race relations is so fucking childish and short-sided. This rhetoric and manipulation that's been carried out by the right has just been blowing my mind, and the fact that people are so quick to fall for it - smart, educated, otherwise reasonable people too and not just hicks - has been blowing my mind even further. Somehow speaking out about actual racism and elevating it to a national conversation and acknowledging that it's real has become what's racist and stoking race relations and not, you know, actual fucking racism. It's insane. Yes, I'm sure 58,000 people voted for David Duke because they hated hearing Obama talk about cops in any way that wasn't 100% positive and fawning. That was totally the reason. And of course no one wants to believe or admit that things that are actually racist are racist because, oh, the person said they're not being racist so clearly they're not. So, yeah, sure, let's blame the backlash temper tantrums against the symbol that black people are becoming more and more equal to white people and have more and more of a chance to gain power - our first black president - on that symbol itself and not those people lashing out against him. That makes so much sense. We have had to confront racism a lot more over the past eight years, yes, but that's because people are having to talk about it and leaders aren't pulling wool over its eyes. It's always been there. If you think it's gotten worse because you actually have to think about it and talk about it and listen to black people talk about it more often at a higher level and maybe come to some uncomfortable conclusions about yourself or people you know, and not that it was worse when more bad things were happening to more black people then I do not feel sorry for you at all. I know that getting extremely defensive about racism and shifting the blame from anyone but yourself or white people as a whole is the thing to do, but to have shifted it onto Obama is so fucking shameful. It's embarrassing how quickly people are clinging to any explanation besides the one where maybe they're part of the problem, even in the most indirect way possible. And I know, I just know, that the same people will be bending over backwards and executing impressive feats of contortion and distortion to paint Trump as anything other than racist, and his policies and the legislation of his administration as anything other than bad for black people, no matter what they are. Thank god we now have a president who spent the MLK long weekend picking a petty as fuck Twitter fight with a civil rights hero he clearly never cared to know anything about or else he might've realized all of the "no action" he was doing while Trump and his dad - who had been arrested at a KKK rally when he was younger - was being sued for racial housing discrimination, and then couldn't even be bothered to show his face as a PR stunt at the Museum of African American History that even George "doesn't care about black people" Bush greenlit. I can't wait until he squashes all national conversations about race so racism can be over again.
Well, to be fair, it's both. Although, when Trump and his supporters were talking about potentially not considering the election legitimate, they were claiming that Hillary herself would be sabotaging the election at best, suggesting everyone rise up and overthrow the government regardless of whether or not there was any evidence or suspicion of foul play at worse. I know whenever someone brings that up they're wishing that was the same kind of thing as a possibility of foreign interference attempting to handpick our president for us that was brought forth by the intelligence community, but it's not.
This is part of why I don't buy the idea that Trump is some chess master. It would have been so easy to keep the focus on Lewis's statements and get an easy PR win out of it, and yet he instead goes off on the guy's historical record (which makes Trump's look like a joke) and attacks his district (which is in a potential battleground state in 2020).
You think that people questioning whether or not Trump's a legitimate president is not being covered by the news?
I didnt say the current state of race relations is Obama's fault in totality. Certainly there are a myriad of factors contributing to it, right wing nationalism being a big one. I said that the state of race relations has gotten worse under his stewardship and the Democratic Party at large is completely incapable of having an honest discussion about it. And as the President is the de facto leader of his political party while hes in power, he bears a degree of responsibility. Blanket condemnation of police officers in shootings of black civilians, no matter the circumstances and without giving due process a chance to occur (and even when the officers were acquitted) was a major error on his part. He threw his support of Black Lives Matter when that movement directly contributed to large scale violence and mayhem in Ferguson and Baltimore and said nothing except brief platitudes on how rioting was bad. When cops were shot in Dallas, he went to the memorial not to discuss race, which was the clear motive for the shooting, but used it as soapbox for gun control. On terrorism, he refused to refer to it as Islamic terrorism unless he arm was pulled just to make sure it didnt sound racist. . Perhaps the majority of the situation is the result of the issues coming to the surface during his Presidency and granted he didnt wade into the filth as many of his supporters had, but I think he could surely have fostered a more honest and constructive discussion.