Nick's Collingwood Bulletin Board Forum Index
 The RulesThe Rules FAQFAQ
   MemberlistMemberlist   UsergroupsUsergroups   CalendarCalendar   SearchSearch 
Log inLog in RegisterRegister
 
Post inauguration Trump:

Users browsing this topic:0 Registered, 0 Hidden and 0 Guests
Registered Users: None

Post new topic   Reply to topic    Nick's Collingwood Bulletin Board Forum Index -> Victoria Park Tavern
 
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 76, 77, 78 ... 220, 221, 222  Next
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne

PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2018 11:00 pm
Post subject: Reply with quote

The trouble with that line of thinking, Skids is that they might “win” and choose to crush you. Civility and tolerance is the only wise course. Trump is as boorish as the snowflakes and he is really on their side in that regard.
_________________
Two more flags before I die!
Back to top  
View user's profile Send private message  
MJ23 



Joined: 28 Feb 2011
Location: Sydney

PostPosted: Thu Mar 22, 2018 7:49 am
Post subject: Reply with quote

Mugwump wrote:
^ MJ23, You make valid points, but I was just responding to Stui’s comment that none of the last 4 POTUS have any achievements. I would certainly not argue that Obama’s record was flawless - important change in a complex system is always mottled - but the things I mentioned were important (directionally positive) achievements full of political gumption. I think history will judge Obama fairly kindly.

I must comment on the economic question. You are right that many people have experienced great difficulty across the 8 Obama years. However, every commentator agrees that the impact and recovery from severe financial/banking crises is far more difficult than ordinary business cycle recessions. I think we underestimate just how lightly we got off after a 1929 scale collapse. The last time the US experienced a crisis of that magnitude, unemployment peaked at 25% and stayed above 14% for ten years. Real GDP per head had dropped 30% by 1933 (vs a maximum of 5% in the 2008 crisis), and arguably the chain of events that followed 1929 led to world war.

In the ten years since 2008 some price has had to be paid, but Bernanke, Geithner and Obama all deserve undying gratitude for their policy settings. We were very lucky.

You have made some interesting and informed posts recently. I hope you continue.


Cheers. Im certainly not a "Blame Obama" for everything and agree with you in that his admin did some very good, smart things particularly in his first term. I think one of his biggest faults is that he got caught up in the politics of playing politics if that makes sense ? Especially in his last term.

One thing Im certain of, Hilary was a flawed candidate more so than Trump. She would have been a disaster and I think Obama's admin knew it. She was the wrong choice by the Dems and everything including her service history, the Clinton foundation issues, how her nomination was won and her campaign issues suggested to Americans that she couldn't be trusted.

In the end, thats how they voted. Im not sure we in Australia were presented that picture because at the time of the election I thought she was a certainty.

_________________
"Even when Im old and gray, I wont be able to play but Ill still love the game"
Michael Jordan
Back to top  
View user's profile Send private message  
Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne

PostPosted: Thu Mar 22, 2018 9:39 am
Post subject: Reply with quote

^ she was a terrible candidate on many grounds, but she won the primary vote, which suggests that Trump was at least as flawed.. In the ruthlessness of her politicking and her inhabitation of suspect American centres of power, I doubt she was worse than Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, Bush, or her husband. Her biggest fault was simply that she struggled to connect with ordinary people and their concerns, cleaving to various self-seeking, sectional interest groups because of a preference for abstractions over people.

By comparison with Hillary, Trump is surely more mendacious, more nepotistic, more exploitative, more corrupt and more reckless. Despite all this, a lot of ignored people hear their own worries in his programme. It is the first art of politics, but it has been forgotten by almost all Western politicians. Their craven tolerance of mass immigration, speculative wars, insecure employment, unpatriotic bile, and everyday criminality, has left them without any credibility before the people who bear the costs of these things daily.

Trump may be an emperor with no clothes, but people will listen to even a naked ruler, if he or she can at least recite their interests.

_________________
Two more flags before I die!
Back to top  
View user's profile Send private message  
MJ23 



Joined: 28 Feb 2011
Location: Sydney

PostPosted: Thu Mar 22, 2018 12:17 pm
Post subject: Reply with quote

^
Please dont go into the popular vote. Its just a flawed argument.

Yes Clinton won 2.8m more votes in total.
California alone with the largest population gave her an extra 4.2m votes. You cant have one state select the president for all others - esp California who are loosing the middle class in droves and are at odds with most of the country. New york gave her another 1.7m margin.

Clinton spent more than twice the campaign dollars as Trump at over $600 million. Thats over $300 million more.

Trump won 30 states and with it the electoral college. And yes he was a flawed candidate but he was not a politician.

America is a constitutional Republic with a Representative Democracy. This system was set-up deliberately by the founders.

Trump won more votes than any other republican candidate ever. If he is what you say he is then either Hillary was even worse - making her the worst of all time - or at least 63 million voters plus about another 99 million more who didn't vote are stupid. Id suggest this thinking is the same mistake dems are making right now in opposition.

In my leanings on Hillary across the last 12 months, she is every bit of how you described Trump, and yes worse than Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, Bush - maybe not Bill. Her biggest faults were not about connection but corruption.

Im not yet sold on Trump. Im surprised and willing to acknowledge the very good so far of his administration. I think the best and worst thing about Trump is his twitter outbursts. The best is the transparency that comes with it.

Either way as Ive said a few times it is all very fascinating and the November Mid-terms will be extremely insightful.

_________________
"Even when Im old and gray, I wont be able to play but Ill still love the game"
Michael Jordan
Back to top  
View user's profile Send private message  
Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne

PostPosted: Thu Mar 22, 2018 6:41 pm
Post subject: Reply with quote

^ the primary vote question is what it is. It does not make Trump illegitimate, and the electoral college system is there for very good reason. It is just noteworthy that a candidate as shabby as Clinton pulled in 3 million more votes on aggregate.

I long ago gave up trying to find a credible independent source on Clinton and the allegations of corruption. The mainstream reliable papers that I read, the Financial Times and the Economist, did not paint her as especially corrupt by US political standards. If you have read anything reliable which clarifies the matter, I’d be interested to read it. I have no great wish to defend her. I hold Burkean conservative views, and her politics (like that of the Republicans) is emphatically not mine. But truth is always interesting.

I decline to see mere transparency as a virtue, unless it is backed by coherence, probity, dignity and quality of thought. I see none of these in Trump. His sole virtue in my eyes is that he is doing democracy’s work by bringing the voice of the ignored and despised into politics again.

_________________
Two more flags before I die!
Back to top  
View user's profile Send private message  
pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 12:47 am
Post subject: Reply with quote

Mugwump wrote:
The trouble with that line of thinking, Skids is that they might “win” and choose to crush you. Civility and tolerance is the only wise course. Trump is as boorish as the snowflakes and he is really on their side in that regard.

And in addition to karma, there's always a risk that the "they", and the so-called problem, are almost entirely imaginary or inconsequential. That's a lot of psychic energy to simply be flinging into the ether.

_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm
Back to top  
View user's profile Send private message  
Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne

PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 1:09 am
Post subject: Reply with quote

pietillidie wrote:
Mugwump wrote:
The trouble with that line of thinking, Skids is that they might “win” and choose to crush you. Civility and tolerance is the only wise course. Trump is as boorish as the snowflakes and he is really on their side in that regard.

And in addition to karma, there's always a risk that the "they", and the so-called problem, are almost entirely imaginary or inconsequential. That's a lot of psychic energy to simply be flinging into the ether.


If you wish to speak freely and hold a job in any kind of public or public-facing employment, I assure you they are not inconsequential. As we see alomost daily, people are routinely dismissed or harmed or coerced into insincere public apology because they question the crushing orthodoxies of the twittermob.

_________________
Two more flags before I die!
Back to top  
View user's profile Send private message  
pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 5:49 am
Post subject: Reply with quote

Mugwump wrote:
pietillidie wrote:
Mugwump wrote:
The trouble with that line of thinking, Skids is that they might “win” and choose to crush you. Civility and tolerance is the only wise course. Trump is as boorish as the snowflakes and he is really on their side in that regard.

And in addition to karma, there's always a risk that the "they", and the so-called problem, are almost entirely imaginary or inconsequential. That's a lot of psychic energy to simply be flinging into the ether.


If you wish to speak freely and hold a job in any kind of public or public-facing employment, I assure you they are not inconsequential. As we see alomost daily, people are routinely dismissed or harmed or coerced into insincere public apology because they question the crushing orthodoxies of the twittermob.

But now you're introducing things like mob justice, bullying, sacrificial lambs and scapegoating into the discussion. That would seem to be a different conversation about behaviours that Donald Trump embraces, not opposes.

Consider the following sentences:

    1. Donald Trump has vowed to bring an end to the "political correctness" of "snowflakes".
    2. Donald Trump has vowed to bring an end to mob justice.
    3. Donald Trump has vowed to bring an end to the "political correctness" of "snowflakes" by [doing whatever].
    4. Donald Trump has vowed to bring an end to mob justice by [doing whatever].
    5. Donald Trump has vowed to incite mob wrath as required to decentre serious political discussion.

The first sentence lacks meaningful definition; at best it's an expression of vague wrath against some group considered over-sensitive and over-concerned with language offensive to others, whatever those things mean, and whoever they specifically identify, doing what ill, in practice.

The second sentence is obviously ironic given Donald Trump is a notorious inciter and user of mobs. However, at least we're more likely to be able to define "mob justice" to an agreeable extent. (The irony here is for your amusement; I do know you're no fan of Trump).

The third sentence highlights the absurdity of trying to do something tangible to intangible entities.

The fourth sentence doubles-down on the irony of the second sentence. Perhaps he might even try to introduce legislation to protect people from being "routinely dismissed or harmed or coerced into insincere public apology because they question the crushing orthodoxies of the twittermob"!

The fifth sentence pays homage to Trump's intuitive grasp of politics.

_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm


Last edited by pietillidie on Fri Mar 23, 2018 8:26 am; edited 1 time in total
Back to top  
View user's profile Send private message  
Wokko Pisces

Come and take it.


Joined: 04 Oct 2005


PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 8:25 am
Post subject: Reply with quote

Back to top  
View user's profile Send private message  
HAL 

Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.


Joined: 17 Mar 2003


PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 8:28 am
Post subject: Reply with quote

Where are you located?
Back to top  
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website  
Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne

PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 8:41 am
Post subject: Reply with quote

^ ptid, you suggested “they” (ie “snowflakes” ) were “imaginary or inconsequential”. I just explained that they were not, and why. You can use that for a game of pinball if you wish, but we probably both have better things to do.
_________________
Two more flags before I die!
Back to top  
View user's profile Send private message  
pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 9:27 am
Post subject: Reply with quote

^Yes, indeed.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm
Back to top  
View user's profile Send private message  
Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne

PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 10:26 am
Post subject: Reply with quote

And now HR McMaster is gone as NSA (on the same day as Agent Orange declares a trade war with China), to be replaced by the bellicose John Bolton. Almost all of the grown-ups have now left the building. This chaotic man-child could not manage one of his own hotels. It’s very concerning, as the pieces are falling into place for some very maverick and dangerous behaviour.
_________________
Two more flags before I die!
Back to top  
View user's profile Send private message  
Wokko Pisces

Come and take it.


Joined: 04 Oct 2005


PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 10:40 am
Post subject: Reply with quote

Bolton makes McMaster look like a gender studies majoring arts student. I can see a big war incoming.
Back to top  
View user's profile Send private message  
Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne

PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 10:47 am
Post subject: Reply with quote

^ yes. Very worrying.
_________________
Two more flags before I die!
Back to top  
View user's profile Send private message  
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    Nick's Collingwood Bulletin Board Forum Index -> Victoria Park Tavern All times are GMT + 11 Hours

Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 76, 77, 78 ... 220, 221, 222  Next
Page 77 of 222   

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum



Privacy Policy

Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group