The Trump presidency

[Johnny Canuck3]

Trump's 'Irish proverb' confuses the internet on St Patrick's Day

Trump's 'Irish proverb' confuses the internet on St Patrick's Day

 

[Idris2002]

Completely irrelevant though as he failed to convince crucial voters at the heart of the Democratic Party, so he wasn't picked to run.

Yes, and he had such a clear run, on such a level playing field, and all.

 

[Pickman's model]

Completely irrelevant though as he failed to convince crucial voters at the heart of the Democratic Party, so he wasn't picked to run. Romney, Rubio, Cruze, any of the other "also rans" of the Republican Party would also have probably handled this situation better than the Trump Administration, but they didn't cut it either.

when you say "crucial voters at the heart of the democratic party" do you mean "party hacks and apparatchiks"?

 

[Pickman's model]

White, Irish, and undocumented in America

An estimated 50,000 undocumented Irish immigrants live in the United States -- they make up a small percentage of the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living there, the majority of whom were born in Mexico.

"It is easier being illegal here when you're white," Shauna, an undocumented Irish immigrant, tells CNN. "It's not easy, of course, you have that paranoia but there isn't the racial element. It's a bit easier to stay under the radar."

Something tells me these folks won't be very high on the list for a rap on the door from ICE.

out of curiosity, how do they know the majority of undocumented immigrants were born in mexico?

 

[CRI]

Yes, and he had such a clear run, on such a level playing field, and all.

Level playing field? Since when have any elections ever occurred on one of these?

He wasn't a Democrat, hadn't done any of the party grunt work like turning out for down ticket candidates, but blew in wanting to rip the joint apart. Many long-standing party supporters sniffed an opportunist and didn't like it, regardless of whether they thought he had good ideas. Where he really blew it was failing to understand or genuinely engage with African American voters, so they didn't show for him in the primaries.

 

[CRI]

when you say "crucial voters at the heart of the democratic party" do you mean "party hacks and apparatchiks"?

I mean long time party members who put in the time registering people to vote, staffing Democratic stalls at county fairs, knocking doors, doing fundraisers who didn't take kindly to someone coming in out of nowhere who wasn't even a party member and dissing about everything that came before.

I get why people in the UK thought Sanders was the best thing since sliced bread. After a lifetime of head scratching about the policies of what's meant to be the more left wing party in the US, it must have been refreshing to see a potential candidate that looks and talks almost like someone from the left in the UK. Americans, and crucially registered Democrats (because in the primaries, you have to be registered with a party to vote for the candidate who will run for the party come November), just weren't thinking like that. Some were, but clearly not enough.

 

[CrabbedOne]

White House apologizes to British government over spying claims - CNNPolitics.com

In The Daily Mash He spouts exactly the same bollocks in private, GCHQ confirms

Oddly convincing.

 

[CRI]

out of curiosity, how do they know the majority of undocumented immigrants were born in mexico?

You can be undocumented, but still registered as an alien or have some kind of paper trail. For example, people who came in on temporary visas and overstayed, but there's no evidence they left - there would be a record of them. Others are on the radar of the authorities - perhaps given notice that their application for leave to remain has failed, then there's the DREAMERS scheme for people who came as children. There are many people who are in a kind of limbo, but generally they've been left to do their own thing. Now, people are being rounded up and deported on the basis of minor offenses like speeding tickets, and some of those who came as children are having their status revoked and are being shipped off to countries they left as toddlers and where they have no family or other connections.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

This article attempts to explain why Trump voters voted for Trump, despite the apparent effect on their own wellbeing:

When it seems like people are voting against their interests, I have probably failed to understand their interests. We cannot begin to understand Election 2016 until we acknowledge the power and reach of socialism for white people.

Americans with good jobs live in a socialist welfare state more generous, cushioned and expensive to the public than any in Europe. Like a European system, we pool our resources to share the burden of catastrophic expenses, but unlike European models, our approach doesn’t cover everyone.


Like most of my neighbors I have a good job in the private sector. Ask my neighbors about the cost of the welfare programs they enjoy and you will be greeted by baffled stares. All that we have is “earned” and we perceive no need for government support. Nevertheless, taxpayers fund our retirement saving, health insurance, primary, secondary, and advanced education, daycare, commuter costs, and even our mortgages at a staggering public cost. Socialism for white people is all-enveloping, benevolent, invisible, and insulated by the nasty, deceptive notion that we have earned our benefits by our own hand.

Unspeakable Realities Block Universal Health Coverage In The US

Socialism for "us." Capitalism for "them."

 

[CRI]

This article attempts to explain why Trump voters voted for Trump, despite the apparent effect on their own wellbeing:

Unspeakable Realities Block Universal Health Coverage In The US

Socialism for "us." Capitalism for "them."

Good article - one of the clearest, most succinct explanations of Trump's support among blue collar white voters, including the un and under employed (and why it's pointless for Democrats to coddle, cajole or pander to such folks in the vain hope of gaining a vote or two.)

More nuggets . . .

By funding government programs with tax credits and deductions rather than spending, we have created an enormous social safety net that grows ever more generous as household incomes rise. It is important to note, though, that you need not be wealthy to participate. All you need to gain access to socialism for white people is a good corporate or government job. That fact helps explain how this welfare system took shape sixty years ago, why it was originally (and still overwhelmingly) white, and why white Rust Belt voters showed far more enthusiasm for Donald Trump than for Bernie Sanders. White voters are not interested in democratic socialism. They want to restore their access to a more generous and dignified program of white socialism.

White socialism played a vital political role, as blue collar factory workers and executives all pooled their resources for mutual support and protection, binding them together culturally and politically. Higher income workers certainly benefited more, but almost all the benefits of this system from health care to pensions originally accrued to white families through their male breadwinners. Blue collar or white collar, their fates were largely united by their racial identity and employment status.

When Democrats respond to job losses with an offer to expand the public safety net, blue collar voters cringe and rebel. They are not remotely interested in sharing the public social safety net experienced by minority groups and the poorest white families. Meanwhile well-employed and affluent voters, ensconced in their system of white socialism, leverage all the power at their disposal to block any dilution of their expensive public welfare benefits.

(Edited to chop the first para, already included in Yuwipi Woman's post above.)

 

[J Ed]

White socialism

You total fucking idiot

 

[8den]

Yeah yeah twitter, but the expression on Merkel's face, also, when has the White House press core mockingly laughed at a President.

 

[J Ed]

White socialism, that thing that appears to be describing positions within corporations that exist as part of a wider capitalist economy. Jesus Christ.

Clintonites have lost the fucking plot. I used to think that it was hyperbole to compare their hysteria to the racist rantings about Obama being a Kenyan Muslim but they've actually managed to match that.

 

[J Ed]

Private healthcare insurance in a private sector company within a wider capitalist economy. Nothing more socialist than that!

This is why we must defeat the evils of Trumpite socialism, Putinite communism and Bernie Sanders' white socialism. This derangement is only made possible by journalists having their minds warped by twitter and needing to see the world as a fight between good, which is their neoliberalism, against the combined forces of people who are rude to them online who of course are all the same when it comes down to it.

This is seriously the stupidest thing posted on this thread yet and there is some real competition for that.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

White socialism, that thing that appears to be describing positions within corporations that exist as part of a wider capitalist economy. Jesus Christ.

Clintonites have lost the fucking plot. I used to think that it was hyperbole to compare their hysteria to the racist rantings about Obama being a Kenyan Muslim but they've actually managed to match that.

I have to wonder if you read the article. It talks about government support for things like health insurance, discounted home ownership, and retirement programs such as 401Ks, etc. Its all subsidized by the government and available to you only if you're relatively well off. It's a little pocket of socialism within a capitalist system.

In addition, the article didn't have anything to do with Clinton. It's from Forbes, hardly a magnet for liberal views. I'm beginning to wonder if you, like Casually Red, suffer from Clinton derangement syndrome.

 

[gosub]

Yeah yeah twitter, but the expression on Merkel's face, also, when has the White House press core mockingly laughed at a President.

They had a body language expert on BBC4 news who slightly mis read things. he greeted her at her car eager to make a good impression, then 5 mins later in the oval office body language was fuck why can't this be over. Body language expert wondered what had happened between them, but it wasn't, it was the presence of the press; he's completely given up on tying to keep them on side and seems almost under siege by them. On a plus side (for him)he's started trusting his speech writer a bit more and didn't sound as moronic, apart from the 'very,very' to show the speech writer he's still the boss I suppose.

Its going to take something drastic for things to turn around though.

 

[J Ed]

It's a little pocket of socialism within a capitalist system.

No it isn't.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

No it isn't.

Well, I can't argue with that logic.....

 

[J Ed]

Well, I can't argue with that logic.....

OK, what is socialism?

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

OK, what is socialism?

Just make your point.

 

[J Ed]

Just make your point.

There is no serious definition of socialism that means 'tax subsidies for health insurance for employees of corporations within a wider capitalist economy'. This is just crap cobbled together by neoliberals to legitimate further rollbacks on the last vestiges of decent society by portraying their opponents as being racist.

White voters are not interested in democratic socialism. They want to restore their access to a more generous and dignified program of white socialism.

Is a truly vile and profoundly dishonest characterisation of millions of good people, most of whom are not racist.

 

[CRI]

They had a body language expert on BBC4 news who slightly mis read things. he greeted her at her car eager to make a good impression, then 5 mins later in the oval office body language was fuck why can't this be over. Body language expert wondered what had happened between them, but it wasn't, it was the presence of the press; he's completely given up on tying to keep them on side and seems almost under siege by them. On a plus side (for him)he's started trusting his speech writer a bit more and didn't sound as moronic, apart from the 'very,very' to show the speech writer he's still the boss I suppose.

Its going to take something drastic for things to turn around though.

Um "he's completely given up on trying to keep them (the press) on side and seems almost under siege by them." Really?

They seem to still be handling him with the softest of kid gloves, not asking him questions about "difficult" issues, not challenging him on his bald faced lies, still being vilified by him as being the enemy.

I seem to recall there were sharp intakes of air and some shocked looks when a British journalist asked a question that wasn't from the "box of fluffy things."

Then, today this.



Journalists in mainstream media in the US, with a few exceptions, are cowardly custards. More concerned with kissing ass than kicking it.

 

[J Ed]

We can't have universal benefits because people with some vestiges of bigotry will get some money. Better instead to carry on our current trajectory of concentrating wealth into the hands of vanishingly small numbers of people while pretending that the most important thing is to ensure that the 0.01% is demographically representative of whatever identity politics standard is popular today but not actually doing anything even towards this modest and pointless end.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Is a truly vile and profoundly dishonest characterisation of millions of good people, most of whom are not racist.

Here is the bio of the person who wrote the Forbes article:

For almost thirty years I was active in Republican politics. Most recently I spent ten years as a Republican precinct committeeman in suburban Chicago. I am a Texan in exile. In college I met a young Rick Perry, fresh off his switch from the Democratic Party, while I was an intern at the legislature. As a donor and volunteer for a Republican PAC in Houston I volunteered for Republican state and local campaigns. From 2009-2016 I wrote the GOPLifer blog. My book, The Politics of Crazy, is a distillation of many ideas from the blog. After the 2016 Republican National Convention I resigned my position as a precinct committeeman and left the Republican Party. I now maintain a new blog, PoliticalOrphans.com.

I've never seen your bio: but I'm prepared to accept as fact, that he is more qualified to give a reasoned opinion on the nature of the American electorate, than you are.

 

[J Ed]

Here is the bio of the person who wrote the Forbes article:



I've never seen your bio: but I'm prepared to accept as fact, that he is more qualified to give a reasoned opinion on the nature of the American electorate, than you are.

I wonder what someone like that could have to gain from characterising resistance to neoliberalism as racist, a real mystery that one.

 

[J Ed]

Reminds me of that fucking idiot on twitter who campaigned for Newt Gingrich and against the ACA and Obama in 2012 and now is a paid Democratic operative whose main job seems to be calling Sanders supporters racist on twitter.

 

[redsquirrel]

I'd say that bio shows precisely why he's not someone to expect to talk intelligently about socialism, white or otherwise.

 

[J Ed]

I'd say that bio shows precisely why he's not someone to expect to talk intelligently about socialism, white or otherwise.

Literally the same people who called Obama a socialist are now calling XYZ socialist (and racist) and are being cheered on by Democrats. Astonishing.

 

[CRI]

So, at the traditional moment when US Presidents shake the hands of visiting foreign leaders, Trump sits ignoring his guest, like a sulking kindergartener who didn't get a second cookie at milk break.

He really, really does hate women, doesn't he?

 

[J Ed]

So, at the traditional moment when US Presidents shake the hands of visiting foreign leaders, Trump sits ignoring his guest, like a sulking kindergartener who didn't get a second cookie at milk break.

He really, really does hate women, doesn't he?

Who gives a shit they're both scum