The Never-President Trump

[kick it off 1,952]

1 hour ago, Rock The Boat said:

A great night for democracy. The combined forces of Democrats, Hollywood, mainstream media, Facebook, Youtube, CNN, SJWs, Universities, Obama and the Clintons couldn't get the landslide they were predicting. All the Democrat senators who voted against Kavanaugh lost their seats. Trump for 2020 let's MAGA, buttercups.

 

HAHHAHAHA - Oh yes, it's all one big anti-Trump conspiracy for no apparent reason. Not the fact he's an odious shyster incapable of an honest sentence who dupes the terminally idiotic. Yep, definite conspiracy as to why he is so unpopular.

 There were no landslides predicted - there was a requirement to overturn 23 seats to gain control of the house. They succeeded. Any numbers above that are just window dressing anyway as they make little material difference - Dems would control the house either way. The GOP got hosed in a lot of counties where Trump won comfortably 2 years ago.

The fact Trump had a tantrum at his press conference tells you everything you need to know about what a great night it was for the Republicans. If you're too dim to understand that, then it's your issue.

As for the Russia collusion... Let me break down the last 24 hours. Democrats take control of Congress. Trump fires Jeff Sessions in a bid to shut down the Mueller investigation within 18 hours. I know you're not too bright, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see there is a parallel here.

Trump will get trounced in 2020, if he lasts that long without being impeached/imprisoned.

Edited November 7, 2018 by kick it off

[Surfer 1,547]

Mueller's new boss has indicated that Mueller's investigators are a “lynch mob," mused about reducing Mueller’s budget to "grind" him to a halt, called Trump finances a "red line" & shared an article exploring the process by which Trump could fire Mueller.

To be fair these are not comments from him today, but he has said these things previously.

[Surfer 1,547]

Updated Nov 08 with latest results and map:

Putting this whole "invasion by illegals" into context, the areas that ought to be worst affected - Pacific coastline and Mexican border - voted as follows: Republicans for 1 House seat each in Washington and Texas; all the other 28 seats voted for Democrats. Of the 2 for R's, the vote split in Texas is within 0.5%, so an outside chance it could still go Democrat. The New Mexico seat that was close did eventually go Democrat.

Also bear in mind that lots of the red (Republican) areas on the map are desert, mountains or tundra, so lots of sand, grass and trees but very few people. Those areas in Arizona that are red also tend to be dominated by retirement towns, with populations from other parts of the country, that's also true in Florida, and so the "immigrants = crime" lie can win a lot of votes when the lie is repeated often enough. 

Also note: since the election all TV coverage of the "Immigration Caravan" has stopped. So if it was not clear then that it was a manufactured scare story, now it is perfectly clear it was. The scare story factory has moved on to a new one about a CNN journalist.

 

Edited December 19, 2018 by Surfer
Smaller file size map

[Surfer 1,547]

And this is the way the House seats distribution looks post-election if you use constituency densities not geographical area. Some of the geographically big red states only have one constituency as their entire population is less than Norfolk's. All US States have two Senate seats though, which is why depending on which portion of the Senate is up for re-election in any given 2 year window they can elect more Republicans as Senators if low density and diversity rural States continue to trend Republican, while much denser and diverse metropolitan States trend Democrat. The political and economic power in the US is really out of alignment the moment, perhaps deliberately so from the structure of the political system, and this is what president Trump and his allies are exploiting. 

On this map Ohio is a classic case of Gerrymandering (where politicians create their own electoral maps) The state is approximately 50 / 50 for votes cast Republican v Democrat, but because Republicans won the Ohio State elections years ago, they wrote the electoral boundaries to their benefit. The idea is you pack the other party's likely voters into a few constituencies so they win those by large margins, while your voters are spread out across more constituencies. As a result with 2,237,000 R votes v 2,013,000 D votes the R's win 12 of 16 House seats.

Happens at the State Assembly level too - for example Wisconsin - more votes cast for Democrats (54% v 46%) results in many more seats won by Republicans (63% v 36%) 

Gerrymandering and minority voter suppression are IMO the biggest issue in US politics -- yes the Democrats do it too, albeit to a lessor amount; so several States have started to use an independent commission to set the electoral boundaries as the local politicians can't be trusted to do it without bias (not a big surprise there)

 

 

Edited December 19, 2018 by Surfer
Add Wisconsin data

[Surfer 1,547]

Updates: These two races feature black Democratic candidates in the Deep South...

Florida: BREAKING: The Governor's race in Florida may be headed toward a recount. Great news for Gillum.

Georgia: “We know our opponent has had the secretary of state’s office declare he's the winner. We don’t accept that.”  "Only 23,800 votes would push the race to a recount. There are 22,000 outstanding provisional and 3,000 outstanding mail ballots" “There has been no data offered... no detail whatsoever” about the outstanding ballots, Abrams campaign says. Campaign manager says majority of roughly 25,000 outstanding ballots are in Democratic strongholds"

 

Below is graphic illustration of vote swings - lots of Blue, much lower amounts of Red. 

 

Edited October 8, 2019 by Surfer

[Rock The Boat 1,332]

3 hours ago, kick it off said:

 

HAHHAHAHA - Oh yes, it's all one big anti-Trump conspiracy for no apparent reason. Not the fact he's an odious shyster incapable of an honest sentence who dupes the terminally idiotic. Yep, definite conspiracy as to why he is so unpopular.

 There were no landslides predicted - there was a requirement to overturn 23 seats to gain control of the house. They succeeded. Any numbers above that are just window dressing anyway as they make little material difference - Dems would control the house either way. The GOP got hosed in a lot of counties where Trump won comfortably 2 years ago.

The fact Trump had a tantrum at his press conference tells you everything you need to know about what a great night it was for the Republicans. If you're too dim to understand that, then it's your issue.

As for the Russia collusion... Let me break down the last 24 hours. Democrats take control of Congress. Trump fires Jeff Sessions in a bid to shut down the Mueller investigation within 18 hours. I know you're not too bright, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see there is a parallel here.

Trump will get trounced in 2020, if he lasts that long without being impeached/imprisoned.

The only terminally idiotic are people like you. Everybody else knows that in mid-terms elections there is always a reaction against the incumbent party. It even happens in the UK during by-elections and local elections. As I pointed out Barak Obama bin Laden lost an all time record 63 seats in Congress in 2010. The Democrats did not take control of Congress, that's just you telling lies. Trump increased his majority in the Senate and that will make the judicial processes much easier for the Republicans.

The rest of your post is the leftie wet dream that your ilk has been spouting for the past two years, and you can find plenty of evidence for your leftie-addled brain thinking on this very thread. You've been wrong for the past two years and you'll continue to be wrong for the next two years.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/07/charts-show-donald-trump-called-midterms-tremendous-success/

[Surfer 1,547]

4 hours ago, Rock The Boat said:

As I pointed out Barak Obama bin Laden lost an all time record 63 seats in Congress in 2010. The Democrats did not take control of Congress, that's just you telling lies. Trump increased his majority in the Senate and that will make the judicial processes much easier for the Republicans.

His name is President Obama, or Barak Hussein Obama if you prefer. He was the President who's special forces killed bin Laden.

The claim was not that Democrats took control of Congress, but of the House - which they did. So nobody lied about that point.

I have explained why the Republicans could pick up Senate seats while losing House seats. It was in fact the most favorable Senate map that Republicans could have wished for. Yes it will help President Trump with judicial appointments, but does not help him at all on taxes, budget, trade or immigration and enables House committee investigations into claims of corruption by his administration.

The next few days will reveal just how worried the Trump administration is....

[Badger 2,405]

On 08/11/2018 at 01:28, Rock The Boat said:

The only terminally idiotic are people like you. Everybody else knows that in mid-terms elections there is always a reaction against the incumbent party. It even happens in the UK during by-elections and local elections. As I pointed out Barak Obama bin Laden lost an all time record 63 seats in Congress in 2010. The Democrats did not take control of Congress, that's just you telling lies. Trump increased his majority in the Senate and that will make the judicial processes much easier for the Republicans.

The rest of your post is the leftie wet dream that your ilk has been spouting for the past two years, and you can find plenty of evidence for your leftie-addled brain thinking on this very thread. You've been wrong for the past two years and you'll continue to be wrong for the next two years.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/07/charts-show-donald-trump-called-midterms-tremendous-success/

Whilst you are correct in asserting that there is normally a reaction against the incumbent party, RTB, you still tend to exaggerate the success that Trump claims. This is not surprising, this is the aim of what he does - by repeating a few phrases he able to delude those without fully developed powers of analysis.

A recent example was you repetition of Trump's mantra of his "economic success." Just so you don't dismiss this as "leftie" rambling or conspiracy, I have included a recent right wing analysis of Trump's profound economic failure. It comes from the Daily Telegraph, although having read some of your recent ponderings, I suspect that you may even dismiss the Telegraph as the leftie establishment!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/11/07/trumps-reckless-economic-gamble-has-failed-political-noose-tightening/

[Rock The Boat 1,332]

1 hour ago, Badger said:

Whilst you are correct in asserting that there is normally a reaction against the incumbent party, RTB, you still tend to exaggerate the success that Trump claims. This is not surprising, this is the aim of what he does - by repeating a few phrases he able to delude those without fully developed powers of analysis.

A recent example was you repetition of Trump's mantra of his "economic success." Just so you don't dismiss this as "leftie" rambling or conspiracy, I have included a recent right wing analysis of Trump's profound economic failure. It comes from the Daily Telegraph, although having read some of your recent ponderings, I suspect that you may even dismiss the Telegraph as the leftie establishment!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/11/07/trumps-reckless-economic-gamble-has-failed-political-noose-tightening/

Hi Badger, yes I read that article and found it quite interesting. To add some context, this is written by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard the chief economist at the DT. In the comments section he gets jeered by his readers as he's been writing cataclysmic articles about the imminent demise of the Euro for the past ten years and readers never miss an opportunity to remind him. So the tone of this Trump article is not so surprising coming from the keyboard of AEP. To be fair there is a lot structurally wrong not just in the US economy but throughout the west and it is fair comment to say we seem to be supercharging the global economy with more debt and QE just to keep economic activity running at the same level and there is very little wriggle room to protect against a downturn. I personally think some modest rises in interest rates now are a good thing as they offer a weapon in the future to deal against a downturn situation, and I don't really buy into AEP's doomsday sceanario that rising interest rates are the harbinger of stagflation as he claims. With the US economy growing at 3-4%, the US a net exporter of energy, rising wages and full employment there are some decent indicators out there. But if you want to put up counter-indicators such as the level of debt then I agree with you there are problems, but I wouldn't go so far as to describe the situation as 'profound economic failure'.  

[kick it off 1,952]

Just putting it out there but Beto O'Rourke will 100% be President of the USA one day.

[Surfer 1,547]

Meanwhile president Trump continues to embarrass the US by finding a way not to visit any of the American WW1 cemeteries (he's officially in France for 100th anniversary of the Armistice). Because it's raining he won't go because he can't fly from Paris by helicopter. Sending a spokesperson and the Secretary of State instead.

(BTW 18 months into his Presidency he still hasn't visited any US troops on active duty outside US either) 

I have no idea why he believes that this is to his political advantage. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 8, 2019 by Surfer
Added Images

[Surfer 1,547]

Today (Monday) is Veteran's Day. President Trump is in already back in Washington.

Arlington Cemetery is just across the Potomac River. But apparently he won't go there today either. 

I have no idea why he believes that this is to his political advantage. 

 

 

Edited October 8, 2019 by Surfer

[Surfer 1,547]

Also this weekend we've had more major fires in California - to the North of Sacramento and in greater Los Angeles. 

Multiple deaths and hundreds of homes lost, but no presidential leadership - and major pushback from the firefighters, at least near Los Angeles, there are no forests to be "mismanaged" as he's claimed, and most of the forests in California - like most Western States - are managed by the Federal Government. 

(one of the the biggest issues in the recent fires is the electrical infrastructure is mainly above ground - i.e. power lines strung on telegraph poles, so in high winds trees can bring them down and create sparks - this may turn out to be the cause of the LA fire, it was determined to be for earlier this Summer. Maybe is time for a re-evaluation of the relative costs to put infrastructure underground v costs from the resulting fires?)  

Again, I have no idea why President Trump thinks comments like this are to his political advantage. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 8, 2019 by Surfer

[Herman 9,767]

Surely not going to the cemeteries is a poor political move? Won't this pee off veterans and the military?

[Surfer 1,547]

25 minutes ago, Herman said:

Surely not going to the cemeteries is a poor political move? Won't this pee off veterans and the military?

Commentators here have suggested that President Trump is OK with any news coverage as long as it's about him.

Edited November 12, 2018 by Surfer

[Herman 9,767]

Yeah fair point, I suppose anything, good or bad, that keeps him at the top of news feeds is great for an extreme narcissist. Man, your country really deserves better.

[Surfer 1,547]

This is not a spoof commercial, it's for sale - although I think the creators have done a great job of exploiting the humor of it all.

https://gettrumpybear.com.  The bear is made in China of course.

 

Edited October 8, 2019 by Surfer

[Rock The Boat 1,332]

On 10/11/2018 at 15:23, Surfer said:

Meanwhile president Trump continues to embarrass the US by finding a way not to visit any of the American WW1 cemeteries (he's officially in France for 100th anniversary of the Armistice). Because it's raining he won't go because he can't fly from Paris by helicopter. Sending a spokesperson and the Secretary of State instead.

(BTW 18 months into his Presidency he still hasn't visited any US troops on active duty outside US either) 

I have no idea why he believes that this is to his political advantage. 

 

The American Security Services took the decision not to allow the helicopter to fly because of poor visibility. Trump suggested they drive there but that was vetoed by security services as well. 

[Rock The Boat 1,332]

LETS'S MAKE FRANCE GREAT AGAIN!

[Surfer 1,547]

1 hour ago, Rock The Boat said:

LETS'S MAKE FRANCE GREAT AGAIN!

France is already great again. Has been since about 1453. It has overrun its rival Germany since then a couple of times, and been overrun a couple of times, now both are core members of the second largest economic bloc in the world. 

And America is already great again, has been since about 1865, and it's the core member of the largest economic bloc in the world. 

[Surfer 1,547]

Oh my word.... Hindus, Hindus, Hindus...  the others listed also celebrate Diwali, but it's a Hindu festival.

And it was last week - 5 days from Nov 07. So Nov 13 is a Dollar (or two) short as they say over here....

 

 

 

Edited March 4, 2019 by Surfer

[Surfer 1,547]

1 hour ago, Rock The Boat said:

 

The American Security Services took the decision not to allow the helicopter to fly because of poor visibility. Trump suggested they drive there but that was vetoed by security services as well. 

A military helicopter, I see. Even if that's a valid reason, the cemetery is 50 miles away from Paris. You don't think the American Secret Service and French Military Police can't secure safe passage of a bullet and bomb proof presidential limo through Paris and back?

[Surfer 1,547]

Meanwhile back at the fires. These images show the country around LA. There are no forests "to be managed" - it's grassland, scrub and trees where they have been planted by towns and cities - i.e. in developed areas. So nothing to be cut down / thinned. The simple fact is it has not rained this Autumn, so everything is bone dry. A spark can start a fire, electrical power lines seem to be a common cause, as is unfortunately arson. 

In the northern fire, now 44 confirmed dead, 200 are still missing. No deaths reported to date in the fire near LA thankfully.

Our sincere thanks to Mexico, and sixteen other States in America that have sent their firefighters to help.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 8, 2019 by Surfer

[Surfer 1,547]

Meanwhile about the north of Sacramento fire. To be fair there certainly are forests "to be managed" - that's a Federal Government agency responsibility primarily, so the President's earlier comments about withholding funds make no sense, but much bigger issues again are - a lack of rain and building towns adjacent to those forests. Many people like to retire to the less expensive parts of the California, but areas that look lush and green in Spring will often become dried up tinder by Autumn. These recent fires have spread extremely quickly due to high winds, but these were also areas that in the past had only a few log cabins, now they might have hundreds of houses, yet still have a very poor ability to evacuate quickly. So along with all the other suggested solutions, a major overhaul of planning permission and building material codes are needed. 

The President seems to be softening his position, I do hope that is a sign of Federal support that continues. 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 4, 2020 by Surfer

[Herman 9,767]

Why does he lie so much and why do people still support someone so obviously corrupt? I'll never figure out the people that cheer for this crap.

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/analysis/2018/11/15/815-false-claims-the-staggering-scale-of-donald-trumps-pre-midterm-dishonesty.html

[Surfer 1,547]

New subject - the voter fraud claims. 

If politicians (mainly Republicans) really wanted to resolve this claimed issue rather than use it as wedge issue - then the Federal Government could update the Federally issued Social Security Card to include biometric data - just as they mandated an update to State issues driver's licenses. To be compliant with law that would have to be free of charge to individuals, but well worth the $$$.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 8, 2019 by Surfer

[Surfer 1,547]

Back to the fires. The President is visiting California today. 

No approval surveys since the mid term elections, will be interesting to see how well he does in the next one. 

 

 

 

Edited October 8, 2019 by Surfer

[Herman 9,767]

What a truly immoral scumbag he really is. No wonder the worlds despots feel happier with him in charge.

[Surfer 1,547]

Well this will make for some spirited conversation around the Thanksgiving table tomorrow.

There may be a 5-4 majority of Republican appointed Justices on the Supreme Court (two appointed by this President) but if the Chief Justice is getting fed up with accusations of judicial bias and Federal Court decisions are putting the security of the country at risk, there could be some interesting developments over the next few weeks and months.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/21/supreme-court-chief-justice-john-roberts-calls-out-trump-for-his-attack-on-a-judge-1011203

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 4, 2019 by Surfer

[Surfer 1,547]

It is Thanksgiving Day - when Presidents traditionally visit troops to show them respect - as their Commander in Chief - by helping serve a Thanksgiving dinner .... but thisPresident visited the local Coastguard station for 20 minutes. So another topic to discuss round the dinner table as we reflect on what we are thankful for. 

 

 

 

Edited October 8, 2019 by Surfer