The Trump observations thread

Politics and other such topical creams.
Howard Beale
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Re: The Trump observations thread

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gkbill wrote:
15 Aug 2022, 9:13pm
Hello,

Another one bites the dust...will he cooperate and nail the big guy?

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ma ... 1660611947
No. Weisselberg cooperating is nothing new. He was already granted immunity in 2018. Nothing seemed to come of that, just as nothing is likely to come of this.
Flex wrote:
17 Aug 2022, 12:38am
I guess leaving aside whether trump is actually guilty of espionage, I'm skeptical of this. Not for any high minded reason from the DOJ or anything, but because with Trump as the target you essentially have half the country already baked in to regard any action take against the guy as an illegitimate false flag.

Maybe you win over more of the country if it turns out he was actually shopping nuclear codes to the highest bidder or something, but anything short of that I don't think it moves the needle on anything.
I actually disagree with the original tweet's characterization of the Espionage Act as needing to be rehabilitated—it's already been used plenty in recent years by the Obama Administration to go after journalists and whistleblowers.
Flex wrote:
17 Aug 2022, 10:25pm
Mark^Bastard wrote:
17 Aug 2022, 9:36pm
They've been trying to find a 'gotcha' moment for Trump the entire time he was president and they're keeping on doing it now. It's all theatre. It's to distract people from the overall pitfalls of the capitalist system by providing an allusion of choice. Marvel movie levels of good vs evil morality.
I don't disagree that some (much) of it is a distraction, but I do think Trump is actually a fascist and if they have to nail him on some equivalent of tax evasion or whatever, I'd be fine with that.

I guess the Trump presidency made me rethink the notion that both parties and all candidates are the same and that any differences are purely illusory. Trump is extremely bad. That doesn't make everyone else good, but Trump is notably bad even by the usual standards.
I'm with Mark on this one—do we really have to keep pretending Trump is Hitler even though he's actually the Three-Card Monte guy on the boardwalk in Atlantic City? "Fascist" implies that Trump has some kind of coherent political ideology and plan. He doesn't. His ideology is "More people should give more of their money to Donald Trump and Donald Trump should be on TV more."

As for everyone still waiting with baited breath for the 10,356,325,678,456,334,678th time that we're being told that this really is the big one that's finally gonna put ol' Donnie in that prison cell once and for all, well... we've seen this movie before. A few dozen times. And it always has the same ending.


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Re: The Trump observations thread

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He led a bunch of a nazis and other white supremacists to try to storm the capitol to hang the vice president and take over the government. That's pretty fashy shit.
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Re: The Trump observations thread

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Flex wrote:
17 Aug 2022, 11:02pm
He led a bunch of a nazis and other white supremacists to try to storm the capitol to hang the vice president and take over the government. That's pretty fashy shit.
Most of us watched this in real time. It was a bunch of losers and weirdos, and an old granny. They got in and then did fuck all, because they weren't organised and probably didn't even really expect to get in any way.

You also can not take over the government by occupying a building. It is being given way too much credibility.

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Re: The Trump observations thread

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Mark^Bastard wrote:
17 Aug 2022, 10:35pm
I don't think he's any worse than Bush Jr. He's just bad at being a politician, doesn't follow the usual rhetoric standards. If you look at the underlying intention of them all, they're all bad. Democrats too. Maybe even worse because we should hold them to a higher standard.
Yeah, I don't buy this anymore. I used to, but Trump amped up the drone war to unprecedented heights and got out of the iran nuclear deal which may still end us up with nukes flying around. By contrast, Biden has stopped 95% of drone strikes and ended the war in afghanistan. They're not the exact same and Biden hasn't been worse than Trump on these incredibly vital, life and death issues.

bush jr was extremely bad and should be in prison or executed for iraq. when you're the head of state you still shouldn't try to rally a bunch of nazis to execute your vice president and take over the country by force, tho. that would have much worse results for the world than iraq did! thank god, i guess, that a bunch of people around him who are degenerate scum in their own fashion stopped him from doing this. if they were all the exact same they would have let 'er rip, i think.
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Re: The Trump observations thread

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Mark^Bastard wrote:
17 Aug 2022, 11:06pm
Flex wrote:
17 Aug 2022, 11:02pm
He led a bunch of a nazis and other white supremacists to try to storm the capitol to hang the vice president and take over the government. That's pretty fashy shit.
Most of us watched this in real time. It was a bunch of losers and weirdos, and an old granny. They got in and then did fuck all, because they weren't organised and probably didn't even really expect to get in any way.

You also can not take over the government by occupying a building. It is being given way too much credibility.
you're being a nazi apologist. fuck off.
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Re: The Trump observations thread

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Sorry, that's mean and untrue. I do think it's badly minimizing the nature of right wing militancy trump gives patronage to tho.
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Re: The Trump observations thread

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Flex wrote:
17 Aug 2022, 11:02pm
He led a bunch of a nazis and other white supremacists to try to storm the capitol to hang the vice president and take over the government. That's pretty fashy shit.
Flex wrote:
17 Aug 2022, 11:11pm
when you're the head of state you still shouldn't try to rally a bunch of nazis to execute your vice president and take over the country by force, tho.
1/6 should certainly be condemned, but I don't see a bunch of idiots wandering around the Capitol for two hours as some existential threat to our "Democracy" (which we already lost a long time ago). The chances of them "taking over" the government/country was never more than 0%, and they wouldn't even have been able to do as much as they did if they hadn't been aided and abetted by sympathetic cops.
Flex wrote:
17 Aug 2022, 11:11pm
Yeah, I don't buy this anymore. I used to, but Trump amped up the drone war to unprecedented heights and got out of the iran nuclear deal which may still end us up with nukes flying around. By contrast, Biden has stopped 95% of drone strikes and ended the war in afghanistan. They're not the exact same and Biden hasn't been worse than Trump on these incredibly vital, life and death issues.
I don't disagree, but we could easily cherry-pick to make either one look worse. For instance, Biden hasn't gotten us back into the Iran Deal, which he should have done immediately. Or, Biden sending troops back into Somalia after Trump pulled them out, and the Biden Administration's meddling in the Horn of Africa in general. Ending horrors in one area just to ramp up horrors in some other region doesn't make Biden any better.

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Re: The Trump observations thread

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Flex wrote:
17 Aug 2022, 11:11pm
Yeah, I don't buy this anymore. I used to, but Trump amped up the drone war to unprecedented heights and got out of the iran nuclear deal which may still end us up with nukes flying around. By contrast, Biden has stopped 95% of drone strikes and ended the war in afghanistan. They're not the exact same and Biden hasn't been worse than Trump on these incredibly vital, life and death issues.
Trump was bad but Obama escalated drone warfare more than Trump did. He did it with a smile. People like that. You just need to have charisma and say the right things while being a "nazi" these days.

I hope Biden is actually anti-war. Who am I kidding, he doesn't even know what he ate for breakfast, and the war machine is pivoting to Russia and China. We've always been at war with Eastasia after all!

Have a nice day man. No need to get angry.

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Re: The Trump observations thread

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Mark^Bastard wrote:
17 Aug 2022, 11:32pm
Trump was bad but Obama escalated drone warfare more than Trump did. He did it with a smile. People like that. You just need to have charisma and say the right things while being a "nazi" these days.
Obama deported way more people, so that's also worth noting.
I hope Biden is actually anti-war.
He isn't.
the war machine is pivoting to Russia and China.
Hey, good point—Biden is the one who got us into a proxy war with a nuclear-armed country. The Democrats are the ones currently taking insane, suicidally provocative trips to Taiwan actively trying to start World War III.
No need to get angry.
Plenty of reason to get angry, but it should be at those who are actually in power. We shouldn't be at each other's throats over political differences.

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Re: The Trump observations thread

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Howard Beale wrote:
17 Aug 2022, 11:29pm
I don't disagree, but we could easily cherry-pick to make either one look worse. For instance, Biden hasn't gotten us back into the Iran Deal, which he should have done immediately. Or, Biden sending troops back into Somalia after Trump pulled them out, and the Biden Administration's meddling in the Horn of Africa in general. Ending horrors in one area just to ramp up horrors in some other region doesn't make Biden any better.
Right, but who pulled us out of the Iran deal? You can't just snap your fingers and reinstate a deal. I agree with your other criticisms of Biden, although I still think it's been to the aggregate benefit of the world, but the Iran deal seems an unjustified criticism to me. Iran very riightly has no reason to get back into a deal with us... precisely because of trump. It's weird to me that Iran is counted against Biden but not trump. This is where norm stuff matters, annoyingly. countries just unilaterally pulling out of agreements like that damages the chances of getting back into them in the future. I'm afraid it's a genie trump let out of the bottle that isn't going back in (which pains me considerably, I think I've said on here before that the Iran deal was probably the only genuinely good foreign policy thing the u.s. has done I my lifetime). If your iran, you're completely insane to agree to anything with the u.s. now knowing it could just get flushed down the toilet again in 4 years.

Nobody (well, not me, anyways) is going to say any president has great foreign policy. And I'm not arguing anyone should swear allegiance to the Democrats, but trump was a lot worse on foreign policy than I think he's given "credit" for on the left a lot of times, and Biden actually delivered some wins that I've spent a lifetime protesting about, and i think it's odd not to acknowledge it.

I'll say this tho: any elected official tracking how Biden's even modest moves towards dovishness have been met with indifference on the left and hostility among the general public has probably learned (if they didn't know already!) there's no political capital to peace. A bad result, imho.
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Re: The Trump observations thread

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Flex wrote:
17 Aug 2022, 11:46pm
Right, but who pulled us out of the Iran deal? You can't just snap your fingers and reinstate a deal. I agree with your other criticisms of Biden, although I still think it's been to the aggregate benefit of the world, but the Iran deal seems an unjustified criticism to me. Iran very riightly has no reason to get back into a deal with us... precisely because of trump. It's weird to me that Iran is counted against Biden but not trump. This is where norm stuff matters, annoyingly. countries just unilaterally pulling out of agreements like that damages the chances of getting back into them in the future. I'm afraid it's a genie trump let out of the bottle that isn't going back in (which pains me considerably, I think I've said on here before that the Iran deal was probably the only genuinely good foreign policy thing the u.s. has done I my lifetime). If your iran, you're completely insane to agree to anything with the u.s. now knowing it could just get flushed down the toilet again in 4 years.
Yes, fair, I should have been clear on that—pulling out of the deal in the first place was 100% Trump's doing and he deserves the blame for that. I just meant that Biden and the Dems were very mealy-mouthed when coming into office about their intentions with regard to getting us back in the deal as they seem to prefer the usual playbook of escalating provocations/sanctions toward Iran.
Nobody (well, not me, anyways) is going to say any president has great foreign policy. And I'm not arguing anyone should swear allegiance to the Democrats, but trump was a lot worse on foreign policy than I think he's given "credit" for on the left a lot of times, and Biden actually delivered some wins that I've spent a lifetime protesting about, and i think it's odd not to acknowledge it.
I'd agree that some on the left give Trump too much credit for espousing anti-war/isolationist rhetoric (without much follow-through) and "not starting any new wars," while also ignoring completely insane things like the attempted coup in Venezuela or the Soleimani assassination. I'm definitely not in that camp.
I'll say this tho: any elected official tracking how Biden's even modest moves towards dovishness have been met with indifference on the left and hostility among the general public has probably learned (if they didn't know already!) there's no political capital to peace. A bad result, imho.
Sadly, that's very true. :disshame:

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Re: The Trump observations thread

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Howard Beale wrote:
17 Aug 2022, 11:29pm
1/6 should certainly be condemned, but I don't see a bunch of idiots wandering around the Capitol for two hours as some existential threat to our "Democracy" (which we already lost a long time ago). The chances of them "taking over" the government/country was never more than 0%, and they wouldn't even have been able to do as much as they did if they hadn't been aided and abetted by sympathetic cops.
Just breaking this up a little by topic.to say it with less kneejerk unconstructive shittiness on my part, I think you and mark are understating some of the real deal nazis in that crowd. You had proud boys among others coordinating to assault the capital. Those are like, actual white nationalist terrorists.

Would it all have worked? I guess not. Because the cops and military would stop it, I guess. The same ones helping the crowd, as you say. I agree trump is an indolent sloth, but he spent four years encouraging white nationalists to prepare for a race war. That seems really bad to me! I guess it makes me a lib or something, but I think a president who encourages domestic terrorism and seems fine with seizing control of the government by force and eroding whatever shitty standards of "democracy" we have is both fashy and notably worse with potentially much worse consequences for the world if some of the few restraints on u.s. imperial behavior are fully cast away in favor of an explicit white imperial theocracy.

Robert Wright makes a point on foreign policy that actions the increase an extremely bad outcome by even an extremely small percentage are uniquely worthy of avoiding. His example is the potential for nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine. Not a likely outcome but result would be so devastating that even a .01% increase in the chances of it happening are worth avoiding. Trump is similar. What are the chances he (or his political followers) actually foments an armed insurrection of white nationalists? Probably not high, but it's such a bad outcome that even an extremely small increase in that chance is worthy of unique condemnation.

Again, my premise isn't that Biden and the Dems or are great, it's that Nazis are insanely bad and we don't want to increase the chances of them getting their hands on the keys to the American imperial car by even .0001% or whatever. And it's honestly hard for me to understand someone looking at trump and whats been going on to the Republican party and not think those odds are ticking up ever so slightly.
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Re: The Trump observations thread

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Also, I may just be an idiot but I'm not seeing the data that Obama was responsible for more drone strikes deaths than Trump. He was pacing comfortably ahead of Obama until 2019 when he rescinded the Obama era rule requiring reporting out deaths and the trump administration loosened up the already very modest restrictions on the use of drones: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/22/ob ... ngs-count/

On deportations, given some of the nuances I suppose I'd hesitate to call one administration worse than the other (trump was more deliberately cruel but that left to some major inefficiencies, thank God. Obama and Biden are taking an approach that some people argue is more humane but also has a higher volume of deportation as part of it). FWIW, I've worked with a DREAMER advocacy group across the trump and biden admins now and we haven't been too happy with either but I don't think anyone I work with wishes trump was back in office.

Like "dovish" foreign policy, there's seemingly no immediate electoral reward for seeming "soft" on the border or immigration, unfortunately, so no one is gonna stick their neck out. An issue where capital tends to favor what I think we'd broadly consider more humane policy, too.
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Re: The Trump observations thread

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Who is soft on borders? Certainly not Biden. He is finishing sections of the wall.

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Re: The Trump observations thread

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Flex wrote:
18 Aug 2022, 12:15am
Howard Beale wrote:
17 Aug 2022, 11:29pm
1/6 should certainly be condemned, but I don't see a bunch of idiots wandering around the Capitol for two hours as some existential threat to our "Democracy" (which we already lost a long time ago). The chances of them "taking over" the government/country was never more than 0%, and they wouldn't even have been able to do as much as they did if they hadn't been aided and abetted by sympathetic cops.
Just breaking this up a little by topic.to say it with less kneejerk unconstructive shittiness on my part, I think you and mark are understating some of the real deal nazis in that crowd. You had proud boys among others coordinating to assault the capital. Those are like, actual white nationalist terrorists.

Would it all have worked? I guess not. Because the cops and military would stop it, I guess. The same ones helping the crowd, as you say. I agree trump is an indolent sloth, but he spent four years encouraging white nationalists to prepare for a race war. That seems really bad to me! I guess it makes me a lib or something, but I think a president who encourages domestic terrorism and seems fine with seizing control of the government by force and eroding whatever shitty standards of "democracy" we have is both fashy and notably worse with potentially much worse consequences for the world if some of the few restraints on u.s. imperial behavior are fully cast away in favor of an explicit white imperial theocracy.

Robert Wright makes a point on foreign policy that actions the increase an extremely bad outcome by even an extremely small percentage are uniquely worthy of avoiding. His example is the potential for nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine. Not a likely outcome but result would be so devastating that even a .01% increase in the chances of it happening are worth avoiding. Trump is similar. What are the chances he (or his political followers) actually foments an armed insurrection of white nationalists? Probably not high, but it's such a bad outcome that even an extremely small increase in that chance is worthy of unique condemnation.

Again, my premise isn't that Biden and the Dems or are great, it's that Nazis are insanely bad and we don't want to increase the chances of them getting their hands on the keys to the American imperial car by even .0001% or whatever. And it's honestly hard for me to understand someone looking at trump and whats been going on to the Republican party and not think those odds are ticking up ever so slightly.
I'll preface my comments here by making it absolutely clear that I think we should remain vigilant when it comes to neo-Nazi and other white supremacist groups and never stop fighting them and everything they stand for. Having said that, I'm much more concerned about the institutional racism in America that ruins the lives of vulnerable people on a much broader scale than fringe hate groups could ever dream of doing—and there's simply no denying that there are few figures in contemporary American politics that have done more damage on that front than Joe Biden.

Image



First off, it's not as if Biden doesn't also have a long, long history of racist demagoguery.



That's him bragging about his notorious 1994 Crime Bill, which would turn America into the most incarcerative society on the planet and disproportionately effect minority communities.



Biden is also arguably the architect of the post-Nixon era iteration of the inherently racist War on Drugs. When even Ronald Reagan rebuffed Biden for hs overzealousness in wanting to ramp up the drug war, Biden enlisted Strom Thurmond to help him craft even more Draconian legislation.



Thurmond was, of course, one of the most unrepentant racists of the 20th Century—which I'd say places one pretty high in the running for being the racist GOAT—in addition to being such a BFF to Joe Biden that he even gave the eulogy at Thurmond's funeral.

Biden's palling around with ultra-racists doesn't end there, as he bragged about having worked with segregationists as recently as the 2020 campaign.


Mark^Bastard wrote:
18 Aug 2022, 1:56am
Who is soft on borders? Certainly not Biden. He is finishing sections of the wall.
Not only that, but he (and Hillary Clinton) had the idea of a border wall...er, sorry, I mean, "fence"... a decade before Trump even ran for president.




Plus, there are even more kids in cages now.



We've established that Trump isn't good on being anti-war like his supporters and even some on the left often claim, but it's no contest as to whose record is worse here: at least as early as 1998, Biden was pushing for a war with Iraq. 1998. That's about a year before most of us became aware that a second George Bush existed.



When the Bush Administration did launch their disastrous war in Iraq, Biden was its biggest cheerleader on the Democratic side of the aisle. Anyone who was serving in congress in 2003 who voted in favor of the war should be a pariah afraid to show their face at the local carwash or grocery store. Instead, we put them in charge of the country.



Biden has also repeatedly bragged that the the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995 that he authored with Tom Daschle was basically the Patriot Act six years before the actual Patriot Act. And yet he's somehow not a fascist?



And, as previously mentioned (and discussed extensively in another thread a few months ago), under Biden's watch we're now bogged down in a proxy war with Russia. A proxy war in which we're actively arming... neo-Nazis. As a result, we now have liberals openly chanting their support for Nazi battalions in the streets of major American cities.





While we're at it—like Trump, Joe Biden is also a rapist and decades-long pathological liar (and plagiarist).







In the decades that Joe Biden was destroying the lives of millions of black and brown people (plus murdering a million+ Iraqis), Donald Trump was mostly just fucking over other equally-sociopathic businessmen. When the protests and riots exploded in the wake of the George Floyd murder, yes, Trump certainly poured gasoline all over that fire—but the country was reckoning with a lot of problems that Biden either exacerbated or outright created.

Trump only had four years to destroy the country. Biden had four decades.

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