I'd be furious if I were a Trump supporter, or Republican.
One news podcast I was listening to had a couple of Trump supporters on while talking to some other people and the absolute worst they could say was that these things are taking longer than they'd hoped, but that Trump will get everything done, it's just getting started.
Rationalization, sunk cost, etc.. ignoring or glossing over the bad and focusing on the good of one's chosen candidate is human nature.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
Agreement over govt funding till September agreed on, doesn't have a heck of a lot for Trump. Including:
1. There are explicit restrictions to block the border wall.
2. Non-defense domestic spending will go up, despite the Trump team’s insistence he wouldn’t let that happen.
3. Barack Obama’s cancer moonshot is generously funded.
4. Trump fought to cut the Environmental Protection Agency by a third. The final deal trims its budget by just 1 percent, with no staff cuts.
5. He didn’t defund Planned Parenthood.
6. The president got less than half as much for the military as he said was necessary.
So what's it going to take for his brainwashed supporters to actually start getting angry, or even mildly disappointed? Or is that just impossible at this point? At his rally in Pennsylvania on the weekend, they were actually holding signs that said "Promises made, promises kept."
You can't get any more delusional than that. We're talking rock bottom levels of intelligence and reasoning here. It's quite fascinating.
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So what's it going to take for his brainwashed supporters to actually start getting angry, or even mildly disappointed? Or is that just impossible at this point? At his rally in Pennsylvania on the weekend, they were actually holding signs that said "Promises made, promises kept."
You can't get any more delusional than that. We're talking rock bottom levels of intelligence and reasoning here. It's quite fascinating.
The # of people crossing the border is waaaay down (due to fear probably), so in a way that's a promise kept. The rest is still in progress
It's got less to do with intelligence, it's a function of belief and the way our brains work, the deck is stacked against changing one's core beliefs. Doing so is difficult and usually takes commitment to change, and most people just lead regular lives instead of spending that much effort and commitment to finding a more "true" answer.
Otherwise elections wouldn't always be decided by get-out-the-vote efforts combined with a few percentage points of available swayable voters.
One of the benefits of a more-than-two-party system I guess, harder to get generationally entrenched into partisanship.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
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It's got less to do with intelligence, it's a function of belief and the way our brains work, the deck is stacked against changing one's core beliefs. Doing so is difficult and usually takes commitment to change, and most people just lead regular lives instead of spending that much effort and commitment to finding a more "true" answer.
Or in the case of Trump supporters, willful ignorance.
It's refreshing to have a celebrity speak with clarity and knowledge about the US political and educational systems and have a tangible recommended action instead of just ratcheting up the rhetoric another notch. Richard Dreyfus speaks with Tucker Carlson.
Is there an unbiased look at the first 100 days and what was/wasn't accomplished? It feels like there's spin on all sides about it.
a list of the actual legislative accomplishments should not be too hard to find... they are a matter of government record now, so a list of that legislation to date, including EOs will be there somewhere...
just steer clear of any editorials or opinions or interpretation if that's concerning or will bias the data for you.
During the election, the Trump camp themselves issued a list of the things they were planning to do in the first 100 days, and Trump boasted that they could hold him to it.... so you can compare the two if you want as well to judge his actual performance to his promises.
Last edited by oldschoolcalgary; 05-01-2017 at 01:04 PM.
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On an historical level, Trump’s remarks are full of problems. It is difficult to know what the president means when he says that Jackson “was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War.” Jackson died in 1845, 16 years before the war began, though the challenge to national unity posed by slavery was clear by then. It’s possible Trump is referring to the Nullification Crisis, a conflict between the federal government and the state of South Carolina. The Palmetto State, outraged at high tariffs imposed by the federal government that aided industry but harmed slave states, announced it was “nullifying” the tariff—refusing to pay it. (The idea that states can nullify federal law has been rejected by courts, but keeps popping up throughout American history.)
Jackson, though born in South Carolina and an advocate for states’ rights, took a hard line, getting authorization to use military force against the state to enforce the law, though a compromise tariff ended up resolving the crisis without armed conflict.
But assuming that this type of strong leadership, leavened with compromise, would have staved off the Civil War is dubious, for reasons raised by the rest of Trump’s answer: “People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question, but why was there a Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”
In fact, of course, many, many people do ask that question. (One might imagine that Trump, as a creature of Twitter, might be aware of the endless debates about the war in that platform.) What’s more, it is a question that has been definitively answered. The Civil War was fought over slavery, and the insistence of Southern states that they be allowed to keep it. (You needn’t take my word for it: Read the statements of the states that seceded, and their leaders, making the case.)
Trump's first 100 days have been a lesson for him in what he can and cannot easily do. He's followed the authoritarian playbook in attacking those sectors of society that uphold the value of evidence (the judiciary, the press, researchers). He's purged the bureaucracy; hired family members (who thumb their noses at conflicts of interest); bullied critics on Twitter; and incited a climate of hatred toward targeted groups (Muslims, Latinos, immigrants, and more).
^Pence is President. Forget quitting, considering his obesity, exceptionally unhealthy diet and propensity for getting worked up over the littlest slights, in addition to the high stress of the job, heart attack is definitely in play.
__________________
"Think I'm gonna be the scapegoat for the whole damn machine? Sheeee......."