Lostwingman

Typical Atlantic garbage story. It wasn't her use of private email, Powell and others did that. It was the private, not secured email SERVER, that she purged before anyone could see and all the classified shit that passed through it. They quoted Micheal Moore, Trash, just total Trash. 

Trump has been remarkably consistent on the Iran nuclear deal.  Indeed, his statements on the matter from five years ago are prime examples of his, erm, nuanced rhetoric:

 
 
The Trump approach isn't to be nice to get everyone to the negotiating table.  Trump, in his heart of hearts, believes that being nice to get along with people makes you a faggot.  I'm not saying I endorse this view, but Trump clearly does.  Trump believes in a very hardball game of psychological pressure.  Bad cop/good cop.  This is all his New York real estate shenanigans writ large.
 
Step 1 is to freak the other party the fuck out.  This may include large military exercises right outside their country, letting the Israelis and Saudis off the leash a bit, or buying up all the property around the property that Trump wants to buy and talking about building a bunch of ugly high-rises on it.  Step 2 is to wait for the other party to crack under a volley of twitter insults, and then Trump sends in some subordinate to work out the details of a new dispensation.
 
The world is ready for this new sort of diplomacy.  What the world learned from the Obama Administration was that the USA will backstab longstanding allies for no reason at all, see Egypt.  The idea that Trump is trying to sell, both here and abroad, is that any arrangements made in the Obama years are suspect, and the work of a fundamentally incompetent and unstable bureaucracy (he's more than a little right).  Whereas the Obama Administration was concerned about very abstract concepts like Democracy, Change, and Movements, Trump cares about the fucking bottom line.  Obama needed to sell the idea that his legacy would be turning the entire world into America.  Trump needs to sell the idea that his legacy will be opening the world to American business.  One is a lot easier to measure.

Let us not forget that the Obama administration also tried to call unemployment a good thing. It was an opportunity to spend time with the family, or pursue hobbies that you had let slip by without all the stress of having to work all the time. I believe they used the term "funemployment". Also, in that article they finally point out the bullshit numbers manipulation that was happening under Obama, but claim that it's happening under Trump (and it might be, too, who the fuck knows). I'm not surprised by any of this, though, considering how much the left accuses everyone else of exactly what they themselves are doing.

Two things spring to mind on reading this:
 
1)  There is a cogent and internally coherent argument to be made that a falling unemployment rate isn't necessarily a good thing.  Low unemployment rates per se are not always an indicator of optimal economic health.  They might indicate that a lot of people are stuck in jobs that aren't the most productive ones possible, and future businesses might have a harder time getting going because there is no pool of available workers to draw on.  That's assuming things are on the up and up; the numbers could be gamed in a number of ways, like adjusting the number of people who are considered to be "looking" for jobs, or by placing people in economically meaningless make-work jobs.  However, this does need to be balanced against the fact that employment has substantial pro-social externalities.  The optimal employment rate for keeping everyone sane and happy is probably a lot higher than the optimal employment rate for best economic growth.

2)  I don't fucking care lol.  The economics spokesman under Obama tried to claim that the recession wasn't as bad as it looked by trying to pass off the first derivative of the unemployment rate vs. time as the unemployment rate.  Trump drumming up buzz based on ambiguous economic indicators that are at least actually true is peanuts compared to the bullshit that Obama would spout that everyone was supposed to just accept.  The establishment is a pack of murderous liars and thieves, and they've proven their incompetence over decades.  If they're bitching and moaning that Trump is going to burn everything to the ground, then fucking good.  They're in closer proximity to Trump than I am, they'll catch on fire first.
 

Have fun with this friends.

I will agree that the war on drugs, like the war on poverty, has done at best nothing to solve the problem, and realistically has exacerbated it.
 
Most problems in society can be tied directly to the existence of prol scum. We have multiple wars against the symptoms of the problem, but nothing that addresses the problem itself.
 
The a fair number of lefties like to point out how the war on drugs and banning certain substances only creates an unsafe environment for it's consumption and a black market for it's trade, but somehow they think that banning guns isn't going to have the same outcome?

Not all rectangles are squares, but all squares are rectangles, you know?
 
Not all Muslims are terrorists, but quite a bit of terrorism is perpetrated by radical Islamists.
 
Not all lefties are crazed gunmen, but a fair number of crazed gunmen happen to be on the left side of the spectrum. The shootings are usually not politically motivated, either. The issue that comes into play here is that every time there is a shooting, the vast majority of main stream media comes out with conjecture and misinformation as to the perpetrators political alignment and affiliations. After the theater shooting in Aurora, the media went digging through Tea Party records and found someone with a similar name to the shooter, picked it up and ran with it. Turns out, it was some fucked up college kid who went off his meds (which is a trait that shows up more than once, by the way). Then they play the blame game and go on parade pointing fingers at every conservative and pro gun organization that they can find. The left leaning media paints anyone who disagrees with them on gun control with the broad brush of things such being complicit with or even guilty by association of murdering children on national TV. If you want to talk about intellectual dishonesty and blanket discrimination, start there.
 
PS, more examples.
 Ebay, Google, and other major players on the online world harassing, banning, blocking, demonetizing, censoring or in other ways suppressing opinions that dissent from their left leaning world view. I know of businesses that have had their Ebay account frozen because there we selling slings that could be used on AR-15s. That was the day that I learned that, according to Ebay's customer service department, it is AGAINST THE LAW!!!! to sell slings for "Assault Rifle 15s" on Ebay. Dating sites have shadow banned people who have pictures of firearms in their profile. Google suppresses search results that are against their ideology. Twitter is confirmed to be shadow banning conservatives based on certain algorithms. YouTube constantly goes after conservatives, and they have started shutting down channels that feature firearms. These are companies that have no business bringing up politics, but it seems to be at the very core of their modus operandi. Do you need more examples? The right has some bad apples for sure, but the left has orders of magnitude more, and they hold influential positions in society.
 
Also, do we know how many death threats Trump and his family have received?

To come to Jeeps' defense a bit, there are of course extremists on both sides of the political divide. Part of the frustration that law-abiding Conservatives feel is that the general media and cultural narrative is that the extremism is coming SOLELY from our side.
 
A Bernie bro stabs a bunch of people in Portland and all of a sudden it's the fault of Trump voters.
 
A mosque burns down (twice) in Bellevue, WA and it's Trump's fault that he's "created an environment where extremism can flourish. Well, no, it was a homeless dude (and a teenage squatter the second time) who lit the match. 
 
A guy shoots up a congressional baseball practice and clearly it is a right-winger... oops... no, it was another lefty. 
 
Now don't get me wrong, Conservatives have their own Jump to Conclusions mat that we hop on. But other than a few blogs, websites, talk radio and Fox News (which I'm not a fan of and which is staffed by people faking being a Conservative for financial gain) the preponderance of the media consisting of network news, newspapers, blogs, YouTube/Facebook/Twitter, Hollywood and the music industry, and even sports leagues are pretty far on the Left of the spectrum. 
 
So if Conservatives act like we've been put upon, it's because we have. Particularly when we manage to get "OUR" guy elected and he's being thwarted in ways previous Presidents have been immune to such as the confirmation process where EVERY single cabinet appointment has been "Borked". Or how every single Executive action taken by the President - even though it is clearly Constitutional - has been challenged in court via a campaign of blatant judge shopping. 
 
This stuff did not happen in the previous Administration. 

When people say Pence is for Conversion Therapy, they are not reporting the facts,  and you haven't, but the left sure has, that's what I was talking about. I'm surprised you haven't heard it, surely in the circles you run in, someone whined about how he wanted to convert teh gays? 
 
Gay rights are not going anywhere, the people on the right don't give a shit anymore, the world didn't end when they got Gay Marriage, they moved on. 
 
I see you are aware of a few the lefty problems but what about denying biology and pushing to normalize pedophiles both are real things. What about the lefts blatant attack on Free Speech with pushing the LGBQ "say my pronoun bitch or go to jail law", or Hate speech laws, that are an even more blatant attack on the First Amendment. Are you concerned about the push to ban guns, since that's what their Semi-auto ban will do? Well, anything fun anyway. 
 
 
I mean yeah I get it, Trumps an Asshole, and not presidential, and a jerkface,  but he's not the one attacking two of my fundamental rights, so it gets kinda old to hear all this talk as if he has done anything all that bad, but the abortion of a budget he signed. He is also getting a ton of good stuff done, so I can ignore him being an asshole. I won't ignore the left in this country corrupting the government to force him out of office while saying straight up they want to limit my rights. 

Bingo. Again, I will reiterate, the child is a lost cause. But it is no one's call but the parents of said child to determine what treatment he receives. 
 
Because boy howdy, any other way sets a very dangerous precedent.

You're missing the point. I'm fine with the state cutting funding to a dieing kid. 
 
I'm not fine with the state not allowing the parents to move the child to another hospital of their request.
 
The responsibility for the child's life should be with the parents, not the hospital.

When the Press goes after Trump for doing something that's his right as President because they don't like him or the policy is just one area. Disputing a fair election is another. When you attack the foundations of American society, with fake problems, that's unamerican.  

You're wrong man, If Obama had put this guy up, the press would have acted like he was the only possible choice for the Job, while giving Obama a handjob just to show their love.  The level of hate sperg for all things pro trump in the mainstream press was shocking, at first, and now just serves to further drop their credibility with the US people who don't buy the blatant anti American Propaganda the press spews. Obama being the worthless Cunt he was, did nothing for the VA, but he gets a free pass on that too. 
 
 
So you don't think the Whitehouse Doctor for several Admins was vetted?  That seems pretty unlikely. It seems far more likely, anti-Trump staffers or press are making shit up to fuck with Trump, like they've been doing from the start, and they already had it in for this Doc because he disappointed them by saying Trump was healthy and sane. 

Everything is sharper and more defined with our info-boxes dumping stuff at us 24/7. 
 
I'm not arguing that the political climate is a bit different from the previous 30 years. I just feel as though context is crucial. 
 
I feel like half the time articles, journalists, talking heads, twitter feeds, etc are trying to convince me how close we are to a radical violent split akin to a civil war.
 
And the rest of the time I can't help but notice how small the loudest contingent is, and how large the moderate and delightfully tolerant contingent is. 

This line has always been there.

If Obama had nominated him you wouldn’t have seen the flurry of slander.

Yeah, I don't see the personnel turnover as some sort of sign for anything other than the fact that Trump is the first president in a long ass time to come into office without a cabal of political figures and favors amassed from a life of work as a political figure.

The president’s doctor getting drunk and wrecking a car would be scandalous. Strange that no one seemed to care during the Obama admin.

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/media/trump-campaign-responds-to-frivolous-dnc-lawsuit/

https://www.techniques-ingenieur.fr/actualite/articles/route-solaire-normande-electricite-51088/
 
>French ecological ministry says the Normand 1km solar roadway would produce 17,963 kW per day
>Immediately forced to backtrack and then it becomes 767 kW per day
>Actual production numbers come in and it is only 409 kW per day for 2017
>Efficiency is horrible and it would be better in the South but its vulnerable to heat and so it would literally melt
>It cost 5 million euros to build and it'll produce 2.2 million kWh throughout its expected service live of 15 years, so 2.27 euro per kWh while French electricy costs are .19 euro per kWh.
>But it gets even better, it might only last 7 years, amazingly there is "unexpected" stress and wear on the joints of solar panels on a highway
 
Don't worry, solar roadways will be working any day now!

I saw the bitching about Trump's tarriff on solar panels, and it immediately set my fake news alarm off.  Something about how it was being reported seemed off.  So I did some digging, and found this article.
 
 
So here's the first thing that the bitching over the past couple of days has completely failed to mention; the US solar panel manufacturing industry are the ones who agitated for this tarriff in the first place!  This is pretty straightforward trade protectionism; Trump is trying to keep US PV manufacturers (what few are left after the Obama Administration bloodbath) from getting annihilated by cheap Chinese imports.  Whether this will work and whether this is a desirable thing to do at all are definitely debatable points, but what is not debatable is why Trump is doing this.  A lot of outlets implied or outright claimed that Trump has an enormous hate-boner for green energy because he hates the environment or something equally stupid.  This is a case of Trump following through on the protectionist platform he was elected on.
 
But wait, if US PV panel manufacturers are the ones who wanted this tariff in the first place, then why are people bitching about it?

 
 
Because only 3.2% of all US "solar jobs" involve actually making solar panels!  The other people with "solar jobs" are installers or wholesalers or middle men or advocacy groups or... actually, who the hell knows how they're bulking those numbers out, but it's very clear that this "industries association" represents interests that are decidedly not industrial if they are net hurt by trade protectionism.

I mean since this got skipped I'll toss it in, just for clarification:
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution I think wikiped is reasonable for this though I'd be happy to find another.
 
We can attack without declaring war for 60 days. Not that this is followed for dicks though, since it's hard to determine where an individual conflict starts and ends. This act, along with a lot of what we've done in Syria is a potential violation AFAIK (I'm not sure if there as actually been a Authorization for Use of Military Force). With that said, yes, the president can do this if the previous attacks were not considered part of the same military action (?). Nobody appears to be stepping up to the plate calling this out either, since it seems to be acceptable to Washington as a whole. Also the law in and of itself is controversial, as described on the page.
 
But yeah, I think this situation is pretty bloody lame as we still have absolutely no confirmation of chemical weapon attacks that is reliable. Furthermore, perpetrators of previous chemical weapon attacks are still disputed, to the point where I'm not only unsure, but personally do not believe that Syria has gassed its people at all during this conflict. Not only are UN reports unable to confirm whether or not the government was actually involved in chemical weapon use, it doesn't make any sense for them to do it in the first place. Why the hell would you jeopardize your success in the region with something so pathetic, and with the US stating it wants to pull out. Even if it had happened earlier on in the conflict, this instance looks to me like a false flag (though I'm definitely not an expert in this situation).