monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

The White House budget office has drafted a hit list of programs that President Trump could eliminate to trim domestic spending, including longstanding conservative targets like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Legal Services Corporation, AmeriCorps and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities.

...Most of the programs cost under $500 million annually, a pittance for a government that is projected to spend about $4 trillion this year. And a few are surprising, even though most if not all have been perennial targets for conservatives.

...One surprise for some close watchers of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign is the inclusion of the Export-Import Bank on the O.M.B.’s list. Other Republican candidates had promised to eliminate the bank, a favorite target of House conservatives like Mr. Mulvaney. Conservatives, led by the billionaire Koch brothers, have run a multimillion-dollar campaign to kill the bank, which guarantees loans for overseas customers of American corporations, by denouncing it as “crony capitalism.”

Apparently, you feel obliged to continue this one. Let me put some questions to you.
1) can you link me to a post pre-election where you predicted Trump would win?
2) can you cite anyone other that Moore who made that prediction?

Obama just blew all of his political capital in this futile assault against the NRA, and now he's got nothing left to do anything at all with his second term.

after four years of an ineffective do-nothing presidency, the voters are going to put a Republican in the White House in 2016.

Chris Christie will go down in history as the man who made Trump president. Rubio was the only one who had enough appeal to both conservatives and moderates to allow him to beat Trump.

Robert Gentel wrote:

I don't think even he would be stupid enough to do the things he says on trade. It would destroy the economy. That is something that would legitimately cause a revolution.

Mr. Trump is setting himself up as someone who is going to do what he says, as opposed to a typical politician who will pander and then change their minds.
I think he really does mean to do what he says.

It's going to be worse for the Democrats than for the Republicans. Trump is going to reshape the Republican Party to fit his views, but I'm upping my electoral predictions now to say that the Republicans are guaranteed to win the next five presidential elections.

I'm basing it on logic, not on wishful thinking. My logic may be wrong. I don't claim infallibility. But it is more than wishful thinking.

Let's compare notes after each of the next five elections. Maybe I'll be wrong. It's happened before. But I've also been right before. We'll see.

First, Rasmussen consistently skews Republican.

Good editorial in the Times this morning. I'll just note one part here:
Mr. Trump’s vaunted $1 trillion infrastructure spending program, by contrast, doesn’t yet exist, because the president confuses executive orders with achievements.

Look at McConnell's eight years of obstruction — the country can go to hell as long as we can pin it on Obama.

As Republican lawmakers prepare to leave Washington for a weeklong congressional recess, liberal groups and Democratic Party organizers are hoping to make their homecoming as noisy and uncomfortable as possible.

But national organizers concede they are playing catch-up to a “dam-bursting level” of grass-roots activism that has bubbled up from street protests and the small groups that have swelled into crowds outside local congressional offices.

Protests against the Republican agenda have become routine since President Trump took office, with momentum building through widely shared videos of lawmakers being confronted by constituents angry over efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Now, national groups see the recess as the chance to capitalize on that local activism, with a show of might aimed at declaring the arrival of a new, and sustainable, political force — barely three months after their humiliating defeat in November.

A funny thing happened in Russia this past week: President Trump’s face, once ubiquitous on the talk shows and evening news programs that tack closely to the Kremlin’s political agenda, was suddenly absent. Gone.

“Like they flipped a switch,” said Alexey Kovalev, a journalist at the Moscow Times who covers Russian state media.
It’s not hard to guess why. Engulfed in scandal over contacts between senior aides and Russian officials, the Trump administration has sought to put daylight between itself and the Kremlin.

In a single week, Washington has complained that Russia is violating a 1987 nuclear treaty and accused the Kremlin of meddling in various foreign elections. Scandal has forced out a national security adviser sympathetic to Moscow. Trump’s tone has seemed to harden on issues like Russia’s occupation of the Crimean peninsula.

“As a mother and as the First Lady of this country, Mrs. Trump is committed to the preservation and continuation of the White House Gardens, specifically the First Lady [Michelle Obama's] Kitchen Garden and the Rose Garden,” Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, senior adviser to the first lady, said in a statement to CNN.

‘What the hell is he doing on Twitter and watching cable TV all the time?': Eight independents talk Trump

[While in Munich] John McCain said on Friday that Donald Trump’s administration was in “disarray” and that Nato’s founders would be alarmed by the growing unwillingness to “separate truth from lies”.

But if not for the 2013 gun control debacle, Mr. Obama would have had the political capital to drive a legislative agenda through Congress in 2013.

As Republican lawmakers prepare to leave Washington for a weeklong congressional recess, liberal groups and Democratic Party organizers are hoping to make their homecoming as noisy and uncomfortable as possible.

But national organizers concede they are playing catch-up to a “dam-bursting level” of grass-roots activism that has bubbled up from street protests and the small groups that have swelled into crowds outside local congressional offices.

Protests against the Republican agenda have become routine since President Trump took office, with momentum building through widely shared videos of lawmakers being confronted by constituents angry over efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Now, national groups see the recess as the chance to capitalize on that local activism, with a show of might aimed at declaring the arrival of a new, and sustainable, political force — barely three months after their humiliating defeat in November.

Brandon9000 wrote:

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.

Who's talking about "deporting" anyone? The point is to get rid of them. Tanks should be shelling the headquarters of drug cartel gangs holing up in sanctuary cities right now, can't ya see?

President Donald Trump on Saturday doubled down on his claim that he "inherited a mess," urging his Twitter followers again to not "believe the main stream" media.

"Don't believe the main stream (fake news) media.The White House is running VERY WELL. I inherited a MESS and am in the process of fixing it." the president tweeted while his motorcade was en route to Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, according to pool reports.

So if the country had effective gun laws and the Sandy Hook massacre had never happened Obama and the congress could have worked together.

Sounds like a good reason to get more restrictive gun legislation on the books!

Seriously, I really doubt that the Tea Party would have ever allowed Obama to push through any kind of wide ranging legislation. But we'll never know.

How accurate do you find this reporting?

Quote:

The rise of Trump has led to an unexpected twist in Germany’s election: A resurgent left

WP