monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

I don't see how "think for yourself" really plays out in a message board format.

I appreciate links to well-written articles of any political perspective. I don't care who brings them to my attention or why.

But there’s one explanation that chills me even more than a foreign power’s potential blackmail over an American president. And it is that Trump and Putin are natural allies in their fight against the postwar, U.S.-led international order that has kept the peace for 70 years. Putin and Trump, after all, share a Bannonite foreign policy: a robust defense of nationalism; a view that NATO is obsolete; support for far-right parties throughout Europe; and the goal of smashing the European Union so that Russia can once again extend its tentacles into Eastern Europe, and the U.S. can play one European power off another. I have no idea if Putin has kompromat on the president, but Trump’s actions need no such motivation. Trump and Putin want to form a pincer movement to destroy what we have known for a long time as the West.

Judging on the polls, plenty of Americans who agree. Gallup now has Trump's job approval at 38% approve, 56% disapprove. That's as bad as the very worst rating Obama ever got during his presidency.

[Inb4 "but the polls were proven all wrong in the election!": the national polls captured the popular vote pretty well. And even the worst of the state polls weren't off by as much as the kind of negative spread Trump's now facing. So not much ground there to hand-wave away numbers like these.]

Real Clear Politics list 11 polls and you chose to post the one with the lowest score. Rasmussen showb Trumps approval at 55% approve and 45% disapproval. How about we use those scores instead?

But there’s one explanation that chills me even more than a foreign power’s potential blackmail over an American president. And it is that Trump and Putin are natural allies in their fight against the postwar, U.S.-led international order that has kept the peace for 70 years. Putin and Trump, after all, share a Bannonite foreign policy: a robust defense of nationalism; a view that NATO is obsolete; support for far-right parties throughout Europe; and the goal of smashing the European Union so that Russia can once again extend its tentacles into Eastern Europe, and the U.S. can play one European power off another. I have no idea if Putin has kompromat on the president, but Trump’s actions need no such motivation. Trump and Putin want to form a pincer movement to destroy what we have known for a long time as the West.

Change scares some people.

Change is coming nonetheless.

Brandon9000 wrote:

2. It doesn't happen to be true.

A true shame, that, eh, Brandy? The tanks should be rolling in the streets right now.

Your argument seems to depend on lies. No one contemplates using tanks to deport illegal immigrants. Presumably, if you had a valid argument, you would have made it.

Just curious, but on Real Clear Politicsthey list 11 polls and you chose to post the one with the lowest score. Rasmussen showb Trumps approval at 55% approve and 45% disapproval. How about we use those scores instead?

Sorry, media

Amid feverish reports of chaos on his team and with Democrats fantasizing that Russia-gate is another Watergate, Trump took center stage to declare that reports of his demise are just more fake news.

Far from dead, he was positively exuberant. His performance at a marathon press conference Thursday was a must-see-TV spectacle...Next time, the White House ought to sell popcorn. The president proved once again that he is the greatest show on Earth.

Yet those determined to bring him down won’t give up, and the insidious leaks of secret material suggest some opponents are members of the permanent government who are willing to use their position and the media to undermine him.

Trump, first, last and always, matches the mood of the discontented. Like them, he is a bull looking for a china shop. That’s his ace in the hole and he played it almost to perfection.

CNN contributor Jeffrey Lord, reacting to scathing reviews: “Lord, I think we saw two different press conferences," he said, per Raw Story. "From my perspective, I thought he was relaxed, he was funny, he was on point. He took the whole issue of the media, and he had a very candid conversation."

Yes, he was "combative," observes Mara Liasson at NPR, "but he was also funny and charming like he was with the press during all those years in New York as a fixture in the tabloids. ... I think that he will get a lot of credit for doing this. I think it will thrill his supporters."

Alice Stewart also found a few things to praise in Trump's performance. "You can't say he's not responsive to the press," she tells the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "He answered all the questions from all over the press corps and put to rest the long-standing dialogue that he shuts down certain news outlets."

"My guess is he did it because he's mad and he just wanted to blow off some steam," Jimmy Kimmel said. "The tone of the press conference was like if your dad found a pack of cigarettes under your mattress."

75 Percent Positive Response to Donald Trump Speech — So CNN Trashes Its Own Poll

The CNN article, “World Reacts to Donald Trump’s Acceptance Speech,” reads:

Quote:

El Pais, Spain’s highest circulation newspaper, said Trump’s speech offered a “grim vision of America.” While the UK’s Daily Telegraph described the speech as “deeply pessimistic” and said fact-checkers were “highly critical,” it highlighted a CNN instant poll that found that 56% of Americans who watched the speech responded positively.

But CNN’s report is flawed: the 56 percent number was actually the lower of two numbers. The instant poll actually showed that 75 percent of Americans had a positive view of the speech, and that 56 percent would be more likely to vote for him following the speech.

CNN apparently thinks so little of its own instant polling service that it buries the results in the bottom paragraphs of a tedious article citing the newspapers in Spain.

Terrifying Trump

When the most unpopular and least prepared president-elect in modern history took the oath of office on January 20, most of Washington, like most of the country and the world, had little idea of the turbulence and disruption that he intended to bring to the job. Nonetheless those who’d watched him closely over the past year and a half were aware that he was manifestly unfit for a job that’s beyond the capacities of most people.

Anyone who was still expecting a heretofore hidden inner statesman to emerge from the bombastic, crude, talkative candidate was harboring illusions. After the election, we had new evidence that Donald Trump wasn’t up to the position; during the transition that reality crept out of the cracks in the defensive wall thrown around him by protective advisers. An article in the New York Post on January 15 said that Trump was showing far more interest in trivialities about the inauguration planning than in preparing to govern. Tom Barrack, chair of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, told the Post, “He’s into every detail of everything. I beg him all the time to go back to running the free world and let me focus on setting the tables.”

..Pence and Sessions were mainly responsible for the selection of the most ideological cabinet in memory..

Quote:

Just curious, but on Real Clear Politicsthey list 11 polls and you chose to post the one with the lowest score. Rasmussen showb Trumps approval at 55% approve and 45% disapproval. How about we use those scores instead?

First, Rasmussen consistently skews Republican. If you book passage on a Weekly Standard cruise to hear and hobnob with conservative celebs, there's a good chance Rasmussen will be on board as they do these cruises regularly.

Second, if you look again at the RCP polling list you linked, you'll see only 3 of the 11 polling operations listed found a positive spread for Trump job approval: +1, +1, and Rasmussen at +10

On the other hand, 8 have Trump in the negative: -3, -4, -12, -10, -9, -8, -9. and Gallup at -18.

Both Gallup and Rasmussen are outliers but Rasmussen is way out.

Quote:

GOP finds fix for chaotic town halls: Don’t hold them

WP
Absolutely correct to not hold them. These people are fake patriots!

The direction Trump would go on the environment was made clear in the campaign when he called climate change a “hoax,” and he named a prominent climate change denier, Myron Ebell, as head of the transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency. Ebell ran a libertarian think tank financed by the coal industry and the Koch brothers. Though they didn’t back Trump for president and didn’t speak highly of him, the Kochs invested in Trump’s election—their political organization was active in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—and their influence in the Trump administration was guaranteed by having been, along with other fossil fuel industrialists, strong backers of Pence, who has been a climate change denier.

After the election, the vast Koch network was only too happy to help Trump fill numerous job openings and develop policy proposals. Koch allies have turned up in various administration positions. They include Marc Short, the White House legislative director, who had worked for Pence and had headed the major organization that raised funds to promote the Kochs’ far-right, pro-corporate, anti-environmental agenda, including their opposition to the Affordable Care Act. The Kochs also want to see the end of numerous federal programs, though their hand in getting that done may remain invisible. They have another strong ally in Paul Ryan, who’s been a featured speaker at many of their gatherings.

The use of "fake" here is a propagandist bastardization of language.