Absolutely. The last report I read was that he’s generated 180 million so far from his suckers. He’s going to keep that cash flowing for as long as he possibly can without any regard for the damage he’s doing to everybody else including all those people giving him money. He’s not going to run again unless it’s the only way to stay out of jail. He’ll posture as if he is until the next election cycle and collect as much money as possible along the way. Privately he’ll tell his inner circle that it’s the easiest money he’s ever made.
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It would not surprise me one bit…
It has become very apparent to me that the term “TDS” was completely misdirected and applied to the wrong people.
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It’s amazing how gullible people are. I guess that’s why con men are so successful.
I hear noise about presidential pardons being investigated, is it just noise or is there substance?
I’ve read about the pardons for bribes investigation going on but a lot of the documents are heavily redacted so I don’t think any conclusions could be drawn yet. What it looks like is there are people acting like they’re agents for Trump saying they can get pardons for past and/or future contributions. Whether or not these people are actually connected to Trump for real, or are rogue grifters isn’t clear.
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Actual presidential pardons are not being investigated. They might be blatantly political and also be attacked politically, but he is the highest executive and it is within his powers to pardon pretty much anyone he wants.
People acting like agents for Trump on the other hand… That’s probably investigation worthy. No idea what’s happening since I haven’t been following. But that could also potentially be a corruption crime if they are actually linked to Trump and he is literally selling influence. Which would be absolutely comic gold after the Biden laptop-gate thing.
I wouldn’t bet on these people actually being connected to Trump though, and like I said I know nothing about that topic.
Well, I am pretty sure there is no such thing as a “simple razor”. There is Occam’s Razor, which it what I assume you meant by the simplest explanation being the likely correct one.
If I were making a philosophical argument, falsification might matter matter. As it stands I posed a question not an inductive argument.
It isn’t a problem of seeing Trumps flaws. He’s got them in spades. But these accusation of scandal or immorality during his tenure as president is simply not true. If it were you would have been able to easily list them. I can list Obama’s scandals easily. For example, Number one, the Syrian Red-line debacle. Bombing the ever-living shit out of Lybia who up until that time was actually a U.S. ally.
So if Trump is the most scandalous president, his scandals should be easy to recite.
If you just want an admission that Trump has done some bad things and fucked somethings up, I have no problem agreeing. Where the facts actually line up, I have no problem agreeing. But if the accusation is made of scandals, I expect there to be scandals galore, being the most scandalous president ever.
He’s not the person I wanted in 2016, but regardless, he came through on policy, which is the most important thing to me. I actually liked Ben Carson the best of the bunch.
The whole point of a razor is its (relative) simplicity; it allows one to discard weak arguments and claims.
Dude, if that’s your definition of scandal he’s got them in fucking spades. What you listed was policy decisions and debacles that Obama made. I don’t term those scandals for the most part. You also changed the goal posts from “immoral” to something else. Please make up your mind.
Of course you did.
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I don’t think pat understands that scandals are things that people try to keep quiet. Like Iran contra.
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You sure about that? Even before that, Libyans were the bad guys in the Back to the Future for a reason…
Do you recognize the erosion of that right or do you think Biden is going to stand up for free speech? He’s promised to lock the country down again. Many of his cabinet members have decried free speech publicly and have been experts at suppressing it since many of them come from big tech.
What’s your plan for dealing with it?
People argue about a lot of things they don’t care about, just to argue. So just having argued against street level violence is no guarantee that you care about it all that much.
And it seems you believe that these were random attacks of opportunity, when there is plenty of evidence suggesting that these were coordinated, planned and well funded. And they are not going anywhere. Violence works. It worked for the Bolsheviks in 1917, it worked for Mao and it is working here. The groups involved in the attacks are getting everything they asked for and more. More violence is planned. We haven’t even begun too see the depths of depravity that are being planned. And I have zero faith in the government now to be able to stop them.
This feeds into another conversation about gun rights and the people vs. the state. But it’s sufficed to say that the violence has cause states and municipalities to give in to de-funding police and removing law and order from certain areas. The (potential) new administration has promised to work with the terrorists, not decry them. But it’s a low priority to you. At what point does it become a high priority? I mean, 35 people have been killed, how many more have to die to count as ‘enough is enough’? Then there is the over $2 Billion in damage, estimated only by insurance. At what point does it matter enough?
Well, I vehemently disagree here. I am not happy with the alignment with the house of Saud, but that’s been a U.S. policy for decades. Every president I can remember had an exceptionally close relationship with the Saudi’s. Becoming energy independent was the single greatest move deliver us from unfair energy policy from the ME. Getting out of the Paris agreement I couldn’t agree with more. Getting rid of TPP was a net gain.
I don’t know what national security briefings you are talking about, but he did manage to sign 4 international peace deals having Israel recognized by 3 ME countries was an all around win for everybody involved which also managed to put pressure on both Saudi Arabia and Iran, especially the peace deal with Sudan which brought to an end actual conflict. The Iran deal was in fact a trash deal and is currently in freefall. Getting all this done while reducing our foot-print in the ME has been a spectacular success. Our ‘allies’ also were not holding up their agreed to end of the bargin with their funding of the UN, relying mostly upon our military might, while not paying their agree to portion for their security apparatus.
Outside of John Bolton, during his first year in office, his foreign policy has been exceedingly effective. I thought his tarriffs were going to harm us economically, until they didn’t. They worked really well.
It’s these things and more that turned me from being luke warm towards him, to being a fan. The job he did and is doing has been mostly good and a net gain all around for the country.
So you would rather do worse on the domestic policy front, for a nice even tone? Stuff like that does not compute. I am not into cutting my nose to spite my face.
Of course it was hyperbole, but the sentiment still stands. I don’t sweat the small stuff. I respect results, not talk. I don’t care about twitter and I don’t care about the veneer, nor do I care what talking heads in panel discussions think. I care primarily about substance, if the substance happens to come in a nice package too, I’ll take it. Barring a miracle, I am expecting 4 years of going in reverse. Jobs leaving the country again, tribunals held for Trump’s cabinet and supporters. Much higher taxes, group-think, critical race and gender theory being taught in schools, etc.
That’s not the point of Occam’s Razor at all. It doesn’t allow you to discard anything. It’s merely a rule of thumb that doesn’t always work out. All Occam’s Razor suggests is that between two or more unknown quantities with regards to explanations, is that the simplest one is usually the right one. IT does not mean a more complex explanation is invalid, especially if there is evidence for it.
In the old days, Occums Razor would suggest demon possession is the simplest explanation to disease. Much simpler than, you are exposed to a virus, that hosts itself and the replicates in your body, resulting in you suffering a disease where that virus metastasized.
Trump has attacked the first amendment throughout his presidency and you haven’t cared at any point it’s been brought up to you.
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Kind of fixed that one for you, @pat
If by “erosion of that right” you mean lockdowns and masks are erosions of free speech, then you are out of your mind. And on the wrong side of history as regards government authority (at state and fed levels) in pandemics.
That’s not free speech.
Yeah there you go putting words in my mouth. What the everloving fuck did I JUST SAY? “the response concerns me more”. As in, the response to the violence on the part of politicians and other leaders.
Fine. I don’t care that you disagree. You asked me for policy reasons I dislike Trump and I gave you policy reasons.
No, I’d rather someone that ACTS LIKE A FUCKING ADULT. I said nothing about “nice even tone”. Trump is an absolute aberration in (public) behavior for any US president in history as far as I can think back.
Well you should. One of the things that lasts longer than an administration is culture (both in government and in the population at large) and either increased or decreased trust in both leaders and institutions. Trump has been an unmitigated disaster in those areas, pouring gasoline on the fire instead of water.
That should scare the shit out of you if you care for the long term health of the country’s institutions, stability, the decrease of polarization, the country’s influence and respect abroad among both allies and enemies, and the ability for us to retain the global leadership position long term.
OPTICS MATTER. Culture matters. Respect in other areas of the world matters if our national interests and aims being successful matter to you.
Taxes maybe, but everything else you just listed has been growing consistently for more than a decade, so you can’t blame Biden or his cabinet. And Trump has been absolutely instrumental in solidifying “group-think”
into tribes even farther at the party and national level.
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This…x 100.
Let me add this, @Aragorn…tough decisions…many of which simply end up being FUBAR despite careful consultation with the Professional’s around you and weighing all of the geopolitical ramifications of those decisions. (@loppar could give us more perspective…but WW-II…despite being a War we “won”…was so full of terrible Policy decisions that one would be appalled by the number of unnecessary American Deaths that occurred).
Pat has listed these “scandals” of President Obama “ad nauseum” for some time now. The one that just irritates me to no end is that the “red-line” proclamation lead to the slaughter of millions of Syrians. No. The slaughter of millions of Syrians was the result of the ruthless nature of a dictator with Daddy issues being backed my the full-force of the Soviet War Machine.
With that said. President Obama has stated that this was one (among many) of his regrets…whereas Trump has none.
Also; as @zecarlo has pointed out…people attempt to hide scandals behind slogans, tweets, rhetoric, bullshit and lies (ala Trump).
FUBAR Policy decisions are often open for the World to see.
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