US Politics Thread |OT| SAD TRUMP

[kingv]

The stock market is wild.

Up 1000 after being down 11000 followed by being down 500.

Are people covering options positions, or are the algorithms going nuts?

Because there’s no way the actual fundamentals are changing that much in the last four days

[brawndolicious]

The stock market is wild.

Up 1000 after being down 11000 followed by being down 500.

Are people covering options positions, or are the algorithms going nuts?

Because there’s no way the actual fundamentals are changing that much in the last four days

Oh I'm sure everything has been overvalued for a few years.

[agrajag]

https://thehill.com/policy/international/middle-east-north-africa/422962-following-trump-visit-iraqi-lawmakers-demand-us

Iraqi lawmakers demanded one day after President Trump made a surprise visit that the U.S. remove its troops from the country.

Politicians on Thursday slammed Trump's visit as arrogant and a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and called for a vote to expel any U.S. military presence, according to The Associated Press.

 

[Nintex]

Meanwhile CNN is at Defcon 1 because Trump signed some hats
https://twitter.com/KateHydeNY/status/1078302227142463489

 

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1078045917138354178 

[agrajag]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1078260814157701121

 

[agrajag]

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

 

[CatsCatsCats]

Is he trying to look like king hippo?

[pgtl_10]

I'm not a fan of any politician but the political groupies like those for Hillary/Beto are just awful.

[Nintex]

Melania is a feeder

[kingv]

The stock market is wild.

Up 1000 after being down 11000 followed by being down 500.

Are people covering options positions, or are the algorithms going nuts?

Because there’s no way the actual fundamentals are changing that much in the last four days

I fully agree with that, P/E ratios have been basically at historical highs for a few years, and it seems relatively obvious that stock buybacks fueled by a unsustainable tax cut does not really signal long term growth.

It’s just weird to me just how much volatility there is. Really big swings. GDP growth is still pretty good, but the stock market is acting like we are in recession. It’ basically has to be political risk.
Oh I'm sure everything has been overvalued for a few years.

[agrajag]

DOW is trying to erase its historic surge from yesterday. 

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/AliABCNews/status/1078055941319335936

[agrajag]

can we have, like, another six months

 

[shosta]

Remember when Obama said that defeating ISIS could take decades and Trump and his goon squad mocked him?

[Nintex]

What's weird is that ISIS hasn't really responded to Trump's claim that they are defeated. In fact it seems awfully quiet from ISIS PR as a whole.

Anyway I remember that time Trump trashed the Pope and said that if he wasn't elected ISIS would come and attack the vatican.

[agrajag]

https://twitter.com/bradheath/status/1078395493032644608

 

[Nintex]

It seems that the Russians are fishing at a way to find out which methods Mueller is using to gather data by having him disclose in which manner he managed to obtain a nude selfie of someone involved in the case.
So they ask how would revealing the manner in which Mueller obtained a selfie threaten national security.

So from that point forward there's two scenario's on why this would threaten national security
1) Knowing which method was used would give the Russians a chance to better hide their data
2) The person pictured on the selfie could be important for national security reasons

At this point it's kinda hard to know because of the evidence Mueller collected (such as phones and hard drives) from Manafort, Cohen and even the likes of Anthony Weiner.

Anyhow, the Cohen story is developing as well. "sources" claim Mueller has evidence that Cohen's phone was outside of Prague when he was supposedly meeting the Russians.
But in a tweet Cohen again denies he was in Prague but added: "Mueller knows everything".

[CatsCatsCats]

This whole thing is like a show I’d rather let finish so I can just watch the whole thing on Netflix

[benjipwns]

It seems that the ...

Lawyer is attempting to get a broad dismissal over evidence handling. The documents are 3+ million unclassified pages of his clients own e-mails/etc. but the government is claiming they're too important to national security to tell his clients which ones are the evidence against them.

Using expanded discovery to fish for intelligence collection methods is one of the least effective methods "the Russians" could undertake to find out. Especially since they already should know from the other million documents if they were bad enough to already not know how.

[benjipwns]

Pedro Gonzalez has faith in Donald Trump and his party.

The 55-year-old Colombian immigrant is a pastor at an evangelical church in suburban Denver. Initially repelled by Trump in 2016, he’s been heartened by the president’s steps to protect religious groups and appoint judges who oppose abortion rights. More important, Gonzalez sees Trump’s presidency as part of a divine plan.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Gonzalez said of the president. “He was put there.”

...

The stability of Republicans’ share of the Latino vote frustrates Democrats, who say actions like Trump’s family separation policy and his demonization of an immigrant caravan should drive Latinos out of the GOP.

“The question is not are Democrats winning the Hispanic vote — it’s why aren’t Democrats winning the Hispanic vote 80-20 or 90-10 the way black voters are?” said Fernand Amandi, a Miami-based Democratic pollster. He argues Democrats must invest more in winning Latino voters.

The VoteCast data shows that, like white voters, Latinos are split by gender — 61 percent of men voted Democratic in November, while 69 percent of women did. And while Republican-leaning Latinos can be found everywhere in the country, two groups stand out as especially likely to back the GOP — evangelicals and veterans.

Evangelicals comprised about one-quarter of Latino voters, and veterans were 13 percent. Both groups were about evenly split between the two parties. Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist in California, said those groups have reliably provided the GOP with many Latino votes for years.

“They stick and they do not go away,” Madrid said. Much as with Trump’s own core white voters, attacks on the president and other Republicans for being anti-immigrant “just make them dig in even more,” he added.

Sacramento-based Rev. Sam Rodriguez, one of Trump’s spiritual advisers, said evangelical Latinos have a clear reason to vote Republican. “Why do 30 percent of Latinos still support Trump? Because of the Democratic Party’s obsession with abortion,” Rodriguez said. “It’s life and religious liberty and everything else follows.”

Some conservative Latinos say their political leanings make them feel more like a minority than their ethnicity does. Irina Vilarińo, 43, a Miami restauranteur and Cuban immigrant, said she had presidential bumper stickers for Sen. John McCain, Mitt Romney and Trump scratched off her car. She said she never suffered from discrimination growing up in a predominantly white south Florida community, “but I remember during the McCain campaign being discriminated against because I supported him.”

The Dimms, the left's cohorts on Wall Street, the Koch brothers, the Business Roundtable, and the Chamber of Commerce annihilated.

[benjipwns]

For the first time in 17 years, a woman other than Hillary Clinton has been named by Americans as the woman they admire most. Former first lady Michelle Obama, who finished second to Clinton three times and is currently touring to promote her recently released autobiography, won by a significant margin this year. Oprah Winfrey was second, with Clinton and Melania Trump next.

just according to keikaku

[agrajag]

I refuse to believe there is another woman more admired than abuela.

[benjipwns]

Most Admired Man   
Barack Obama   19
Donald Trump   13
George W. Bush   2
Pope Francis   2
Bill Gates   1
Bernie Sanders   1
Bill Clinton   1
Dalai Lama   1
Joe Biden   1
Elon Musk   1
Mike Pence   1

margin of error plus or minus 3 grimes

[benjipwns]

where's wrath,

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[curly]

Most Admired Man   
Barack Obama   19
Donald Trump   13
George W. Bush   2
Pope Francis   2
Bill Gates   1
Bernie Sanders   1
Bill Clinton   1
Dalai Lama   1
Joe Biden   1
Elon Musk   1
Mike Pence   1

margin of error plus or minus 3 grimes

Xi Jinping robbed

[Tripon]

Most Admired Man   
Barack Obama   19
Donald Trump   13
George W. Bush   2
Pope Francis   2
Bill Gates   1
Bernie Sanders   1
Bill Clinton   1
Dalai Lama   1
Joe Biden   1
Elon Musk   1
Mike Pence   1

margin of error plus or minus 3 grimes

Xi Jinping robbed

You will refer him by his real name Winnie the Pooh.

https://twitter.com/cnnphilippines/status/1064787248338501632

[HardcoreRetro]

Snake Man is my most admired man.

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/1077272154788581377

https://twitter.com/NancyPelosi/status/1077277927002251264

on message

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Now we have proof that the current ostensible leaders of the Democrats’ party are often just actors reading from scripts supplied to them by people hidden from public scrutiny.  Christmas Eve saw the presumptive new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi issue a tweet that was identical, word-for-word, to one issued 23 minutes earlier by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Needless to say, the mainstream media takes no interest at all in the process by which Democrats achieve what is euphemistically called “message discipline.” The notion that there is a command center that instructs Democrat office holders what to say each day is certainly an important subject, for the identities of those staffing the command center determines a large portion of our national political dialogue. Who pays these people, whoever they are? Who selects them to put words in the mouths and twitter accounts of people that supposedly represent their constituents?

[close]

[benjipwns]

President’s Trump’s foreign policy follows no firm ideology but is often a combination of his long-held personal views and the influence of whoever currently has his ear. These days, Trump is listening more than ever to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who is quietly steering U.S. foreign policy in a new direction.

...

Several U.S. officials and people who have spoken directly to Trump since his Syria decision tell me they believe that Paul’s frequent phone conversations with Trump, wholly outside the policy process, are having an outsize influence on the president’s recent foreign policy decisions. The two golf buddies certainly are sounding a lot alike recently.

Paul told CNN on Dec. 23 that he had talked to Trump about Syria and was “very proud of the president.” That night on Twitter, Trump quoted Paul as saying, “It should not be the job of America to replace regimes around the world… The generals still don’t get the mistake.”

...

Criticizing past U.S. policy at a campaign rally is one thing. The commander in chief telling U.S. soldiers in a war zone that he has lost faith in their generals, and is therefore changing their mission, is another. Trump’s Iraq trip moved U.S. foreign policy one big step in Paul’s direction.

Officials told me that, throughout the national security bureaucracy, everyone is aware that Paul’s voice is one to which the president is paying increasing attention. The existing concern over Paul’s influence on Russia policy has now boiled over with respect to Syria.

...

But the Trump-Paul bromance is troubling because Trump may be taking Paul’s word over that of his own advisers. Moreover, Paul has a history of pushing false claims and theories, especially with regard to the Middle East.

Paul regularly says the GOP hawks “created” the Islamic State. In 2015, he apologized for repeating a debunked claim that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had met with Islamic State members inside Syria. Paul has said the United States could become the “air force for al-Qaeda” in Syria, misrepresenting the cooperation between U.S. and local Syrian forces against the Islamic State. He doubts U.S. intelligence assessments that Bashar al-Assad gassed his own people.

To paraphrase Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Paul is entitled to his own opinions but not his own facts. If a senator the president trusts is feeding him bad information, that’s a huge problem.

Fans of the president’s Syria policy will argue that Trump and Paul are simply responding to the American people’s war weariness after two decades of failed U.S. interventions in the Middle East. But the implications of Trump following Paul on foreign policy extend beyond Syria.

Trump has already decided to slash the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan, which Paul has long pushed. Is South Korea next? Trump often says he wants to bring U.S. troops there home, too. Paul’s idea is to swap out U.S. soldiers with Chinese troops, which would be a huge blow to U.S. leadership in Asia.

...

Ideally, Trump will soon realize that adopting Paul’s vision for the future of U.S. foreign policy is not only dangerous for our national security but bad politics as well.

  r.i.p. in pieces American foreign policy leadership (1789-2018)

[Nintex]

If Democrats want a foreign policy vision fit for a superpower, they should ignore Sanders and Warren and, instead, read the Atlantic article written by former Hillary Clinton foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan. He argues for a policy of “American exceptionalism”: working for the common good as well as our own self-interest. The big problems facing the world — whether from Russia and China or from the spread of weapons of mass destruction, cyberattacks and climate change — require American leadership to address. International cooperation “does not happen spontaneously,” Sullivan noted. "It requires some actor to step and lead,” and if the United States doesn’t do so, who will? Neither the progressive Democrats nor the Trumpified Republicans have a good answer to that important question.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/12/19/democrats-need-new-foreign-policy-one-that-doesnt-sound-like-trumpism-left/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.39cab4c83d84

[benjipwns]

Seriously, the Washington Post is putting out these "The New Washington Consensus" foreign policy op-eds against Trump, the GOP and the Dimms like every other day if not every day since the decisions leaked out.

[VomKriege]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/world/middleeast/syria-kurds-turkey-manbij.html

The 4D Checkers Involuntary Master.

[Mandark]

Seriously, the Washington Post is putting out these "The New Washington Consensus" foreign policy op-eds against Trump, the GOP and the Dimms like every other day if not every day since the decisions leaked out.

How you going to be a libertarian and not know what the Washington Consensus is?

[benjipwns]

Seriously, the Washington Post is putting out these "The New Washington Consensus" foreign policy op-eds against Trump, the GOP and the Dimms like every other day if not every day since the decisions leaked out.

How you going to be a libertarian and not know what the Washington Consensus is?

that's why I said "The New"?

[Mandark]

still wrong

this is like a catholic calling the creation of jesus the immaculate conception

[benjipwns]

Explain it like I'm Nintex because I have no clue what you're even attempting to say.

[Mandark]

The Washington Consensus is not the "internationalist consensus of the postwar period" (NATO, the long telegram, containment, anticommunist military interventions, etc.) that Max Boot refers to and is trying to suggest a replacement for.

It's the set of economic policies that developing countries were expected to adopt to get in the good graces of the IMF and World Bank, especially circa the 1980's-90's, similar to the austerity imposed on the European periphery during the Great Recession.

[agrajag]

Explain it like I'm Nintex because I have no clue what you're even attempting to say.

Trump went full beast mode this holiday season.

The Q and Fox News are saying that Trump is secretly Kris Kringle and will be recruiting elf labor to build the wall. There may be some truth to it.

[benjipwns]

The Washington Consensus is not the "internationalist consensus of the postwar period" (NATO, the long telegram, containment, anticommunist military interventions, etc.) that Max Boot refers to and is trying to suggest a replacement for.

It's the set of economic policies that developing countries were expected to adopt to get in the good graces of the IMF and World Bank, especially circa the 1980's-90's, similar to the austerity imposed on the European periphery during the Great Recession.

Yes, I know that. That's why I affixed the "The New" tag to "Washington Consensus" (in quotes throughout on purpose because to pick one, it's not "new") for the WaPo's publishing a bunch of op-eds the last two weeks complaining about the "loss of American leadership" if there is any form of military disengagement or disagreement with the bench's "consensus" on how the hegemon should play power politics in the outlying regions.

Why would I think it's anything to do with Max Boot or George Kennan? Is that who Nintex quoted? I only read the quoted part, not follow the link. My bad.

[Mandark]

The piece you linked to has nothing to do with a new Washington Consensus either. It's all military and natsec stuff.

You just happened to throw out the wrong term for what you were talking about. It's no biggie.

[benjipwns]

The piece you linked to has nothing to do with a new Washington Consensus either. It's all military and natsec stuff.

A colloquial "Washington Consensus" as in a consensus held by people in Washington, not as in a literal policy set replicating features of an earlier one with the title. Referencing multiple WaPo (I believe without doing an actual check) op-eds I had seen published over the period, not singularly the Rand Paul one from yesterday.

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/USOPM/status/1078309890832166912

 

[kingv]

Explain it like I'm Nintex because I have no clue what you're even attempting to say.

Q means cum in ancient Hebrew

Need a gloryhole where the hole is a q

[Nintex]

Yesterday: Kurds are in deep trouble we must help them in case our NATO ally Turkey attacks!

*Kurds ally with Assad and Russia*

Today: "SMH Kurds siding with Putin now Turkey can't go in and control the areas the US vacates  "

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/Mikel_Jollett/status/1078789635428368384

Literally walking into the endzone untouched. I would have also accepted the Trail of Tears.

[Nintex]

(poor) White people weren't put in camps.

They were put in in helicopters and dropped on HILL 45, DA NANG and the HO CHI MIN TRAIL as the USAF accidently dropped Napalm and chemicals on them.
 

[shosta]

Literally walking into the endzone untouched. I would have also accepted the Trail of Tears.

Click the tweet, that's a larger image.

[Tripon]

Literally walking into the endzone untouched. I would have also accepted the Trail of Tears.

Click the tweet, that's a larger image.

Oops.

[benjipwns]

Often forgotten are German Internment in both World Wars, the totally not internment but arrest for their protection of Left/Communist/anti-war activists, and similar actions taken against the Mormons to make them move west.

also, the last one on his list being "private prisons"

[benjipwns]

this guy gets it

Christof Sieksbi
GO AWAY, HILLARY BRO.
.
You cons LOST.

LIBERAL Trump is in charge now, ha ha!

("he ain't a lib! he's still on his first marriage, goes to church faithfully, hates abortion, is fiscally conservative etc!")

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Christof Sieksbi
Hey Jimmy, let's see you PROVE A LIBERAL WRONG:

WE SAY you cons are HARDCORE LEFTISTS.

EX:
you say you BLINDLY WORSHIP Big Govt military and police.

THAT'S COMMUNISM.

So prove me wrong.

TELL US you hate the communism of police and military.

See?

You will have to deflect b/c you just realized you're a LEFTIST.

Ha ha!

Christof Sieksbi
I LITERALLY WROTE THAT YOU WOULD DEFLECT.

YOU THEN LITERALLY DEFLECTED!!!

HOW did I know you couldn't TELL US whether you worship COMMUNISM (USSA Military, police, etc).

HOW DID I KNOW YOU'D CHOKE on denying you are a hardcore COMMUNIST LIB LEFTIST?

"Lucky guess!"

NOPE.

ALL CONSERVATIVES are hardcore communist leftists.

(We libs hate weapons. Leftists love them. CHECKMATE.)

ALSO: LIBERAL means LIBERTY, does it not?

You cons ALWAYS boast of your hatred of liberty.

WE LIBERALS:
"You cons HATE liberty!"

YOU CONS:
"We HATE liberty-liberalism!"

Um... I think we're done here.

Christof Sieksbi
OBAMA should HANG for millions of war crimes.

OUCH: starting in 2004 (!), I warned society that O was another GOP Trojan Horse like the Clintons.

Y'all called me crazy.

Obama then EXPANDED most Bush-Cheney policies.

WHO could've foreseen this??

Christof Sieksbi
HA HA!!

YOU JUST ADMITTED ALL CONS ARE MORONS, again!

YOU:

"obama was a muslim! A VERY CONSERVATIVE anti-liberal!"

ME:
Um... that was MY ARGUMENT ya moron!

EITHER O is a MUSLIM (they hate liberalism more than anyone!)... or he's NOT a con.

WHICH IS IT?

Don't worry, everyone knows you're about to choke again.

[close]

Christof Sieksbi • 2 days ago
HA HA.

YOU literally just called the LEAST right wing human EVER, right wing!

(I've said for 30 years we MUST jail every single con b/c they admit to being anti-LIBERty and are a threat to public safety with their murderous police, murderous Big Tobacco / Big Pharma, etc.)

YOU:
"JUST CUZ I'M AS DUMB AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE DON'T MEAN I IS DUMB!"

Um, that's precisely what it means, Tardo.

[benjipwns]

Do you really hate him more than me?

spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's just...I thought we had something.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

And he's Russian.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[close]

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[agrajag]

I refuse to believe there is another woman more admired than abuela.

I swear I've never encountered a bigger piece of shit than you on the entire internet. Or in the physical realm.

You flatter me.

[kingv]

Who even knew who Obama was in 2004 other than “the guy that gave that one speech”?

He wasn’t even a senator yet, so how did this guy have any opinion on whether or not he would be a conservadem President.

[Nintex]

Democrats:
Our Presidential candidate needs to be respected, well versed in international diplomacy, not a pacifist like Bernie but have a foreign policy that can handle todays multipolar world and be real patriot that stands up for us and our allies.
Unite the country not divide it. Have a sensible economic plan for the middle classes but not give long winded speeches. Connect with millenial voters and black women voting blocks especially. Oppose Russia but still seek diplomatic solutions.
Preferably the candidate is part of a minority group or a woman and not over 60 years of age or a billionaire. Perhaps all four for bonus points. Shouldn't have any record of wrongdoing in the past.
Support LGTBQ+ rights, open borders, free education, intervention in the Middle East and a redistribution of wealth. But not too much as we still need to keep Wall Street on our side.
Basically we need the perfect person to lead us and inspire us going forward. But not too perfect because this person must be humble and good looking but not arrogant.

Republicans:
Donald Trump 

[Tripon]

http://amp.timeinc.net/time/5490169/paul-manafort-victor-boyarkin-debts

When the U.S. government put out its latest sanctions list on Dec. 19, the man named at the top did not seem especially important. Described in the document as a former Russian intelligence officer, he was accused of handling money and negotiations on behalf of a powerful Russian oligarch. The document did not mention that the man, Victor Boyarkin, had links to the 2016 campaign of President Donald Trump.

A months-long investigation by TIME, however, found that Boyarkin, a former arms dealer with a high forehead and a very low profile, was a key link between a senior member of the Trump campaign and a powerful ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In his only interview with the media about those connections, Boyarkin told TIME this fall that he was in touch with Trump’s then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in the heat of the presidential race on behalf of the Russian oligarch. “He owed us a lot of money,” Boyarkin says. “And he was offering ways to pay it back.”

[Tripon]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/29/politics/trump-executive-order-federal-workers-pay-freeze/index.html?utm_term=link&utm_content=2018-12-29T16%3A00%3A21&utm_source=fbCNN&utm_medium=social

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump issued an executive order Friday freezing federal workers' pay for 2019, following through on a proposal he announced earlier in the year.

The move, which nixes a 2.1% across-the-board pay raise that was set to take effect in January, comes as hundreds of thousands of federal employees are expecting to begin the new year furloughed or working without pay because of a partial government shutdown.
Trump told lawmakers he planned to scrap the 2019 pay bump for federal workers in August, saying the federal budget couldn't support it. In addition to the 2.1% pay increase, the executive order also cancels a yearly adjustment of paychecks based on the region of the country where workers are posted, called the "locality pay increase," that was due to take effect in January.

 

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1079127333120954368

[agrajag]

thanks for keeping us posted benji

 

[james]

You flatter me.

Things would be great if you would just get raped by an elephant. The elephant's dick plowing through your digestive tract without regard for biological arrangements while its trunk rips off your dick and stuffs it down your throat. That would be fantastic.

The fuck is wrong with you bro