monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

@tony5732,

Quote:

He's not going to do half the stuff he said he would. Neither did Obama, neither would Hillary. You have to say x amount of BS. Just to get into office.

There's some truth to that but:
1) you'd have to show a basis for the "less than half" as being typical or the case with Obama. You are pulling that out of the air.
2) the fact checkers there are not including campaign speech promises, they are using a formal document laid out by Trump's campaign which he signed

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@blatham,

Seems Obama broke 25% of his promises.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/

1 Reply

@revelette1,

Well, it's not that I don't WANT the stuff Trump promised ( save maybe the wall, I definitely don't agree with the wall), I just don't EXPECT it. I EXPECT him to be better economically than Obama was or Hillary would have been. I also expect him to be better on domestic issues, like riots. I don't think he will be bad for relations with Russia either.

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@revelette1,

Wow.

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@blatham,

OK the term half was a figure of speech, like half ass, or glass half full

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@cicerone imposter,

Thanks ci

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Quote:

Stanford, CA – December 13, 2016 – In the midst of the ongoing debate and a potential shift in the U.S. approach to education, the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) is pleased to introduce new research-based evidence and analysis that supports investment in public schools as a better alternative than the privatization of education.

“This book shows how public investment in education outperforms privatization across three continents, addressing this critical question as President-elect Trump’s appointee, Betsy DeVos, considers shifting U.S. education to a voucher scheme,” said Frank Adamson, PhD, the primary editor, chapter author, and Senior Policy and Research Analyst at SCOPE. “This book offers reasoned evidence to policymakers, communities, and families about how investing in public schools produces better and more equitable outcomes than voucher programs"

link

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@revelette1,

How does information that is public knowledge qualify as being "leaked"?

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Wowsers. Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism" has sold out at amazon. That's a very promising sign.

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John Cleese ‏@JohnCleese 2h2 hours ago
Five for Trump's cabinet : A Cage-Fighting promoter,Putin's aunt,a fanatic Flat-Earther,a billionaire Goebbels impersonator and Ann Coulter

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I almost never post political cartoons here (I think this is the first, actually) but this is very good (and I always loved the rear view mirror gag from Jurassic Park)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cz-uValWIAsSxgd.jpg

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Four years ago, Putin said that the electoral college was "illegitimate". and there's this now

Quote:

Steve RosenbergVerified account
‏@BBCSteveR
Russian state tv accuses CIA of planning "a coup" against Trump, accuses NYT of being "in front row" of those wanting to overthrow him

Ya get the feeling Putin and Trump are going to continue helping each other hold power and make lotsa money?

1 Reply

@Debra Law,

Debra Law wrote:

Simply providing links to Wikipedia material doesn't disclose your knowledge or understanding of any particular subject matter.

Providing Wikipedia material listing incidents of civil unrest, including unrest among left wing and right wing factions, does not support your argument that rioting has been continuous for 8 years under Obama's watch and liberals are growing more and more violent.

Your initial argument was no better than Chicken Little's argument that the sky is falling because an acorn dropped on his head.

Your alleged condemnation of Obama also changes when you are cornered on your unsupported accusations.

Despite your unsupported assertions, Obama has in fact made statements condemning violence. A cursory search discloses that your condemnation was false so you shifted your sands from a general condemnation of Obama over a course of 8 years to a specific condemnation over a criminal act committed on one occasion.

Now your argument is no longer the sky is falling, but rather one acorn fell from a tree on one particular day and Obama is bad.

Someday, you might be able to put forth an argument that is both valid and sound. But I don't think it will be any day soon.

Poor Tony. He apparently sincerely took Blatham's bait about a debate with the terms of proof, reference and allowable arguments subject to his whim. Now the apparently equally authoritarian Debra joins in the arbitrary dismissal of the material you offer: both have given Tony failing grades. What a surprise !

Obama has indeed "made statements condemning violence". He has also made many more frequent statements suggesting that police are "stupid", "racist" and in other cases "insensitive to the concerns of minorities", and in addition has sicked his racist "Justice" department on many local law enforcement agencies. He has done this in cases involving serious crimes and assaults by Blacks without much evident consideration for the challenges police face in the execution of their responsibilities. He and his Justice department have consistently advanced the absurd notion that any statistical disparity in law enforcement actions involving blacks, must necessarily be considered as a result of disparite and unlawful actions by the police, and cannot be consitered the proper result of any other factor. Indeed he advanced this principle as well in the administration of disciplinary procedures in public schools. This is doubly interesting in that both the schools and law enforcemnent are the perogatives of the states, and not the Federal government . It doesn't take much insight to realize that many people will take that as an invitation to civil disorder, and, perhaps more importantly, lead them to conclude that their problems are in no way the result of their own actions or inaction but rather someone else's fault.

In any event, your evidence was declared irrelevant, your logic dismissed out of hand, and you got a failing grade (from them) . Was there any other possibility? These folks are so accustomed to controlling the agenda and terms of reference here that their prejudices and misrepresentations cannot be revealed for what they are in an argument subject to their definition of the issues to be discussed, or the terms of reference that are acceptable - they have mastered that art and the slavish elements of their audience doesn't appear to know better.

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You've all surely read about the Stuxnet virus that was covertly placed into Iran's uranium enrichment plant computers, quite possibly via a flash drive.

Now, consider the broad relationships between people around Trump and Russia and the potential for infected flash drives

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Seems Donna Brazile is blaming Obammy for the Russian hacking...She feels she's been individually harassed by the Russians.

Poor little cheese eating crybaby. Maybe instead of a therapy dog we can get her and the other snowflakes a stockbroker to cash in on the Trump recovery.

https://s.yimg.com/lo/api/res/1.2/Z2fabSeKOBzg3eBWdWbxEQ--/YXBwaWQ9eWlzZWFyY2g7Zmk9Zml0O2dlPTAwNjYwMDtncz0wMEEzMDA7aD0zOTA7dz02OTA-/http://truthfeed.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/BOSTON-HERALD-01.jpg.cf.jpg

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@georgeob1,

Lol it's all good. I kinda beat this horse dead. By not making any point at all given a ton of opportunity I feel as if they sorta proved my point. There isn't much of an argument for Obama on that particular issue.

The point I was making was for independent thinkers, or people whose minds were not made up before the conversation even started.

Blatham kinda dodged out and Debby law just talked herself in circles. The only kinda point made was by cicero, with the article about Obama saying "no excuse for riots". Take from it what you will.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

If I'm not mistaken Trump carried about 40 of our 50 states.

Well, no. Trump carried 30 states; Clinton carried 20. Why do you think your impression of this was so far off?

georgeob1 wrote:

I 'm not curious enough to investigate, but I suspect there's more disapproval of Obama out there than is indicated in these polls. Indeed he factors behind it may well be related to those behind the rather pervasive wide disparity observable between the preelection Presidential polls and the voting results in nearly every state.

The polls were off in several states, for sure. The national polls were pretty much spot-on though. They ended up having Hillary up by 3%, according to the RealClearPolitics (RCP) polling average. The actual result: Hillary up by 2%. No great reason there to suddenly assume that a 55% approval rating for Obama is really nothing like that.

Even the worse state polls weren't off by anywhere enough to justify such an inference. Still using the RCP averages, the polls had Clinton up by 3 in Michigan; she lost it by 0.2%. So the polls were off on the margin by all of 3 points. The polls had Clinton up by 2 in Pennsylvania; she lost it by 0.7%. So the polls were off by 3 points. The polls had Trump up by 3.5 in Ohio; he won it by 8%. So the polls were off by 4.5%. Not all polling errors went the same way: the RCP polling average actually had Trump winning Nevada by 1%, whereas he lost it by 2.4%; so the polls were off by 3 points there. Two states that stand out as polling failures are Iowa and Wisconsin, where the polls were off on the margin by 6 points and 7 points, respectively. Conversely, the RCP polling average was exactly on the dot in states like Arizona, Georgia and New Hampshire. Which is pretty impressive considering that there is a margin of error on both candidates' results.

So no, all in all there is little reason there to believe that Obama's "real" job approval widely diverges from 55%.

georgeob1 wrote:

The very wide Republican majority in the House of Representatives where all of 435 seats were contested and in the Senate where about 33 seats were contested reveals a very decisive (and large by historical standards) popular majority for the Republicans.

The GOP certainly did win an impressive majority of seats in the House, and a majority in the Senate to boot. All the emphasis being paid to Trump's surprise win, and to analyzing which new 'Trumpian' swing constituencies provided him with that victory, obscures the fact that the Republican congressional candidates did even better.

Don't mistake the sizable GOP majority of House seats for a "very decisive .. popular majority for the Republicans," however. You know what percentage of the House vote the GOP candidates received, nation-wide? 49.1%. Not even a majority. The Democratic candidates received 48.0%.

In practical terms, there is little consequence to this narrow margin. Hell, in 2012 *more* people voted for Democratic House candidates than for GOP ones, but the GOP still got an ample majority of seats. It's how the system works. But what it does mean is that you don't get to claim a "very decisive .. popular majority".

(In the Senate, the GOP gained a majority despite Democratic Senate candidates actually getting a whopping 11 million more votes this year - but that number doesn't mean as much as it seems because not all states had Senate elections, and there was no GOP candidate in California's run-off election.)

1 Reply

@nimh,

Of the 3141 counties in the U S, Trump won 3084...That's 57 for Clinton.

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@blatham,

Trump won power for the next four years, and it's my opinion he did it fairly. He does not and should not need help from Putin to stay in power. If the CIA was planning a coup, than I hope Russia would tell us so we could stop it. At this point in life it seems like the Russian government has been more honest with the American people than the Democrats have.

Don't mistake that for me being in love with Russia either. I am just saying if some of these claims are true, than Russia exposed lies that the Democratic party would have left buried and covered up if given the chance. Who's the bad guy in that situation?

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@giujohn,

Nice bit of trivia!

Of course Los Angeles county had 2.5 million voters, whereas, on the other end of the scale, Loving County in Texas had all of 64 voters.

So maybe not the most enlightening measure.

(Clinton got 4 votes in Loving County, by the way. But you would like nearby King County, TX, even better: 159 votes total cast; 149 for Trump, 5 for Clinton, 5 for Gary Johnson. There's a video impression from 2012 of King County's politics here, because the result was similar then.)

1 Reply

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