monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

@oralloy,

Quote:

The requirements for a Harrier-style hover jet and the requirements for air-to-air combat are incompatible.

The moment they made the F-35 have a hover jet option, they made it impossible for the plane to succeed at air-superiority missions.

Olivier5 wrote:
I found this article quite informative on the F-35:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443612/f-35-donald-trump-should-cancel-failed-f-35-fighter-jet-program

It's only a failure if you try to make it do air-to-air combat. If you use it only as a ground attack plane and leave the air superiority to other fighters, it does OK.

A flying (barely) equivalent of the Ada programming language which had to have every possible library function built into the base language and into every program ever written for anything...

It can't do ground support any better than it does anything else, it doesn't hve the low speed flying ability or maneuverability or linger time for ground support.

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@hightor,

DT writes all his own speeches and could as easily have given that one from memory or off hand. The guy who couldn't speak coherently without a teleprompter is Bork Obunga.

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Quote:

Trump just moved the GOP’s health care consensus permanently to the left
It’s a post-Obamacare world, and Republicans are learning to live in it.

...With Obamacare and Trump’s speech, the debate on health care has moved from whether it should be the government’s responsibility to insure young, able-bodied people to how the government should insure young, able-bodied people, and how comprehensive the insurance should be.

Vox
I think Ezra gets this pretty much right. As he notes elsewhere in the piece, the devil is in the details. He also correctly notes that Republicans are in a battle among themselves with the Freedom Caucus people (with huge money behind them) and these guys are a real problem in getting any bill passed.

But Obamacare is now in place ans will mostly remain in place. Republicans cannot get rid of it as they've promised over eight years because electoral consequences would be devastating. This is what Bill Kristol predicted in '93 with Hillarycare.

But they have a dilemma here. First, it simply won't do to admit in any public way that a Dem administration might have produced some desirable and beneficial large-scale social program because that violates a/the fundamental GOP idea or claim. Second, because any such admission is 180 degrees away from what they've been screaming for eight years - that the ACA is nothing but badness which is destroying citizens' healthcare and bankrupting everything in two or three solar systems, etc.

So they are going to have to run a serious propaganda program now to pretend they've "fixed" Obamacare and saved it and America from total disaster - because only Republicans can make good legislation. What they'll do will be rather like presenting a Toyota Camry but with the Toyota insignia removed and replaced with something shiny that says "Dodge Rampage". But only because they are complete assholes.

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@gungasnake,

RIIIGGGGHHHHTTTT. Weve already heard Trump speak. He delivers with an ADD pattern. He obviously, had been coached to "Stick to the speech , dont EVER try adding words off the cuff, you are terrible at trying to be extemporaneous ". On the contrary Obama was a genius at repartee. Trump, has probably given up .

Hes not attending the Press Dinner to show his impromptu sense of humor. Obama was quite adept at handling the press or his adversaries at these events. Trump is too much of an egomaniac.

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@gungasnake,

Quote:

DT writes all his own speeches...

Obungasnake's got it wrong:

Quote:

President Trump’s inauguration speech was written by two of the president’s closest aides and not Trump himself, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

A White House official told the Journal that Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon and senior advisor Stephen Miller penned the address.

Aides claimed before the speech that Trump was writing it on his own, and Trump even posted a photo to social media of himself with a pen and a pad that he claimed showed him writing the speech.

source
Evidently he's not above lying to try to make himself look more creative. I doubt he wrote last night's speech either.

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@farmerman,

Trump backing out of the Correspondent's Dinner was funny and predictable. He absolutely cannot handle criticism and biting satire, all of which he would have got in spades, with cameras watching his facial expressions and physical behaviors throughout. There's no way he would have come out looking like anything but who he is with some of his more acute pathologies fully on display. His attitude and his words regarding the media made the decision easier or more convenient but the real reason is that other stuff.

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Quote:

@gungasnake,
Quote:
DT writes all his own speeches...

How is it even possible anyone could write something quite so stupid and uninformed as that?

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Quote:

Trump is performing the role of president, not doing the job
He doesn’t want to be president, he just wants to play one on TV.

...Trump knows a thing or two about publicity stunts.

Shorn of context, to witness a president of the United States deliver a speech so devoid of the customary humility or sense of America’s role in the world would be shocking. Just as it would ordinarily be shocking to see a president attacking the media as the “enemy of the American people” or denouncing a “so-called judge” or any of the other dozen or so bizarre things that Trump does in a given week.

His campaign was fascinating from state to finish — if at times horrifying — because of the litany of similar novelties. His business — brand licensing and real estate — succeeded by the same attention seeking. His reality TV career is the same story.

But Trump is no longer a novelty candidate, a branding magnate, or a B-List TV show host. He’s now the president of the United States. He’s the subject of constant, obsessive media attention. And like any overexposed celebrity, he’s getting tiresome.

If you take any one moment from the Trump Show out of context, it’s striking. But together, Trump’s antics are now banal. He says, tweets, and does weird things. He gets attention. He pisses people off while thrilling others. Tonight, he even managed to attract attention and garner praise for slightly dialing it down. But speeches are supposed to be tools to help do the work of actually being president — learning about the issues, making decisions about trade-offs, and collaborating to get things done.

Amid the nonstop and increasingly tedious theatricality, Trump is only ever performing the role of the president; he’s never doing the job.

Vox
I don't expect I will read anything today with which I agree more than this Yglesias piece.

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@oralloy,

Quote:

Now if you were in the MSM we'd have to say you're an enemy of the 63 million people who voted for our illustrious President

"enemy " is really a stupid loaded word for the almost 70 million who did NOT vote for him.

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Teleprompter. That machine Trump used last night. Possibly under threat of waterboarding if he did not.

Recall when the right ran a sustained program to derogate Obama for reading from a teleprompter. This was completely nuts given that the first President to use the device in its earliest form was Eisenhower in 1954. Reagan used one, Bush 1 used it as did Bush 2.

So, what was that campaign all about? Why did it gain such a broad and sustained focus by right wing media and right wing politicos?

My recollection (I might have this wrong but I don't think so) was that it first came from Limbaugh and it was right at the beginning of Obama's first term. Along with many others, I noted this completely non-sensible narrative that was being pushed early on but I didn't really begin to think seriously about it until Michael Gerson in his column at the Washington Post (this was in his loyal Bushie phase before circumstances forced him to regain his sanity) also smirkingly went after Obama for using the teleprompter. What made this so egregious and impossible to ignore was that the high point in Gerson's political life was writing speeches for Bush designed to be read from a teleprompter.

What they were trying to do with this story was to try and convince Americans that one of Obama's key strengths - he was an usually gifted orator - was not a strength at all but was just a pretense, a falsehood. There was no reason, the subtext of that story went, to think well of Obama for this talent, rather citizens ought to think poorly of him for being something of a fake. He wasn't strong, he was weak. He wasn't exceptionally intelligent, he was Coles Notes in blackface. He needed this crutch. He was just an empty suit.

And they ran with this for damned near a decade. And wherever one might be engaged on political matters (such as this site or others like it) you would find rightwing types who attended to rightwing media would regularly regurgitate the story - "teleprompter Obama". Thoughtless, stupid, poorly educated, uninformed doofi. Not my favorite people.

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@blatham,

blatham wrote:

How is it even possible anyone could write something quite so stupid and uninformed as that?

This, from someone who is unable to think for himself?

I know you're unhappy because your demented ideology has just been swept into the dustbin of history, but try to get a sense of perspective here. You guys are bad people. Your political demise counts as progress for the human race.

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@oralloy,

oralloy wrote:

Olivier5 wrote:
Well, you can approach it but it takes an great deal of design.

The requirements for a Harrier-style hover jet and the requirements for air-to-air combat are incompatible.

I never understood the point of vertical take off and landing. Seems like a waste of efforts to achieve very little.

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@madamyes1999,

I assume since you'd like to see some progress on climate change that you believe man is responsible for any temperature changes.
When those who are supposed to be scientists lie to further a political agenda it colors everything they say as suspect.

I have reviewed the science and see that man has little affect on climate change and the science I've seen shows an almost clockwork cycle over the last 900,000 years.

The problem with the left is their fanatical, "the ends justify the means" approach.

If we are to have unity, the left must learn the first rule is to allow the free exchange of opinion instead of the political bigotry they demonstrate against any who may oppose them. They believe that somehow they hold the moral high ground and are therefore justified even if their methods do not reflect morality.

Now they are shocked and bewildered by the push back they are receiving; blinded to reality by their own hubris.

We will have unity when those who seek political power understand that unity can be found not on the far left or right but only in the center.

I support Trump because he is not a Democrat or Republican. He is a a new breed of politician...He is unabashedly an American, first last and always.

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@hightor,

hightor wrote:

Pretty good speech. Thank god for the teleprompter. It's great when a guy reads the words someone else composed for him, doesn't talk about his landslide victory or threaten nuclear war, and basically fulfills the lowest expectations of presidential deportment. Twitterless, posing empathy and concern, sticking to the script — his handlers must be wondering if the best strategy might be to lock him up.

How soon they forget...Obammy couldn't string intelligible sentence together without a teleprompter...And Trump took control of the content of this speech personally...Almost all the words are his own...Anyone not desperate to make a point can see that clearly.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Quote:
But calling the crap coming out of CNN/MSNBC fake news will not topple or endanger this republic.

This was exactly the way it began in Argentina. Having a Supremo pick and choose his "favorite sources of propoganda" to the exclusions of all others is the beginning of a dictator.

Dont cry for us farmerman... we are NOT Argentina.

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@gungasnake,

gungasnake wrote:

It can't do ground support any better than it does anything else, it doesn't hve the low speed flying ability or maneuverability or linger time for ground support.

The F-35 would do ground support by dropping small laser-guided bombs on enemy positions from high altitudes.

This is not as effective as the A-10's way of doing ground support, but the bombs are able to kill enemy fighters if they hit their target.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

I never understood the point of vertical take off and landing. Seems like a waste of efforts to achieve very little.

It allows the use of much smaller aircraft carriers, such as the ones used by the US Marines.

In theory if a powerful enemy destroys your airfields, with VTOL fighters you can still get planes in the air.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

RIIIGGGGHHHHTTTT. Weve already heard Trump speak. He delivers with an ADD pattern. He obviously, had been coached to "Stick to the speech , dont EVER try adding words off the cuff, you are terrible at trying to be extemporaneous ". On the contrary Obama was a genius at repartee. Trump, has probably given up .

Hes not attending the Press Dinner to show his impromptu sense of humor. Obama was quite adept at handling the press or his adversaries at these events. Trump is too much of an egomaniac.

Handle the press??? Are you cereal??? Obammy had an 8 year pass from the press...It was ******* love fest...Could you be more disengenuous?

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@hightor,

hightor wrote:

Obungasnake's got it wrong:

He gets everything wrong, check out some of his other threads, the Earth is only a few thousand years old, there's proof the Biblical flood happened, there are Pyramids on Mars and Peruvians used to ride around on dinosaurs. All complete bollocks, nobody takes him seriously.

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@giujohn,

giujohn wrote:

madamyes1999 wrote:

I agree with former Pres. Bush who recently affirmed his belief in a strong, independent free press. Its not a good thing that Pres. Trump is encouraging the public to disbelieve the press. Its harmful to our democracy. No one should only trust 1 or 2 news sources that they agree with. I think its good to get news from a wide variety of sources and keep an open mind. I read the NYT, WSJ, NY Daily News, Star Ledger, Time mag, The Atlantic mag, PBS, CNN, NBC, BBC America and FOX. A fully informed electorate is essential to maintaining a successful and well functioning democracy imho.

I'm intelligent enough to know when the news is being reported or when Im seeing fake news/propaganda. When Trump sends the 82nd Airborne to shut down a broadcast station or confiscate a printing press I'll agree the 1st Amendment is in danger. But calling the crap coming out of CNN/MSNBC fake news will not topple or endanger this republic.

Remember, it's only free speech when they do it.

1 Reply

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