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The Official Former President Trump thread


banana

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21 minutes ago, banana said:

I'm hearing that Putin forced Chillary into not campaigning in Michigan and Wisconsin, orchestrated her fixing of the primaries, lobbied the MSM into a seemingly endless anti-Trump/pro-Shillary onslaught, made her collapse and be thrown into her mobile ambulance-home, demanded she declare half the population as deplorable and irredeemables, run a campaign on outright divisiveness, etc etc etc etc etc etc. Nothing of the outcome was her and her campaign's doing, of course, it was Russia.

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This is actually more plausible than the reality.  Worrying times.

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The Russian link to Trump is tentative at best. They might have hacked the DNC but it hasn't changed the outcome of the election.

There are reports of significant voter suppression in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina. That is more likely the reason Clinton lost.
Rather than blaming "Russians" how about focusing on the complete sham that is the democratic election process in the US.

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The Russian link to Trump is tentative at best. They might have hacked the DNC but it hasn't changed the outcome of the election.
There are reports of significant voter suppression in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina. That is more likely the reason Clinton lost.
Rather than blaming "Russians" how about focusing on the complete sham that is the democratic election process in the US.

My understanding was that they hacked both the Democrats and the Republicans but only leaked info on the Democrats - in that sense there was interference in the US elections.

Anything else is tinfoil hat territory.
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5 hours ago, Alan Stubbs said:

Lobbyists for multinational corporations with massive conflicts of interests.....bad. Putting the CEOs of these organisations straight into positions of power....brilliant idea :wacko: Which doesn't take into account the fact that career lobbyists are also getting gigs under Trump. 

Not in the least bit surprised to see the likes of Deplorable defend the Donald's swamp filling activities. Nobody enjoys acknowledging when they've been mugged off.

Your first paragraph is spot on.

As for the second paragraph, I'd divide Trump supporters into three groups.

The first group is the largest; angry white folk who share Trump's disdain for others and won't really care if he flips on matters such as this.  They're more pissed off that he's not going after Clinton and are concerned that he might not build the wall.

The second group are rich and middle class Republicans who always knew that Trump would protect their interests and will be delighted with Corporate America taking over the administration.

The third group is the smallest, those who voted for Trump despite his bigotry because he believed some of the rhetoric and wanted change; they may have voted for Sanders had he been the Democratic candidate.  They will be the group that will deny Trump a second term if the Democrats put forward a credible candidate.

 

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5 hours ago, banana said:

I'm hearing that Putin forced Chillary into not campaigning in Michigan and Wisconsin, orchestrated her fixing of the primaries, lobbied the MSM into a seemingly endless anti-Trump/pro-Shillary onslaught, made her collapse and be thrown into her mobile ambulance-home, demanded she declare half the population as deplorable and irredeemables, run a campaign on outright divisiveness, etc etc etc etc etc etc. Nothing of the outcome was her and her campaign's doing, of course, it was Russia.

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Shocking behaviour from Putin, flying into a foreign country and going before the media to preach to the populace about how they should vote.

Oh wait - that was Obama.

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4 hours ago, Cerberus said:

The Russian link to Trump is tentative at best. They might have hacked the DNC but it hasn't changed the outcome of the election.

There are reports of significant voter suppression in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina. That is more likely the reason Clinton lost.
Rather than blaming "Russians" how about focusing on the complete sham that is the democratic election process in the US.

Just curious what you mean by this.

4 hours ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:


My understanding was that they hacked both the Democrats and the Republicans but only leaked info on the Democrats - in that sense there was interference in the US elections.

Anything else is tinfoil hat territory.

The RNC insists they were not hacked and says that as of two days ago the FBI said there was no evidence of a hack. Today ABC put out a story from intel sources saying the report that the RNC was hacked was really an ex-employee from several years ago whose computer had not been hooked up to their system since he left employment. They notified the proper authorities at the time of the hack and were told that it was no big deal.

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8 hours ago, Alan Stubbs said:

Lobbyists for multinational corporations with massive conflicts of interests.....bad. Putting the CEOs of these organisations straight into positions of power....brilliant idea :wacko: Which doesn't take into account the fact that career lobbyists are also getting gigs under Trump. 

Not in the least bit surprised to see the likes of Deplorable defend the Donald's swamp filling activities. Nobody enjoys acknowledging when they've been mugged off.

It's not complicated. Most of the people involved in the corrupt DC swamp are not evil. They are rational folks fighting for their own personal interests and responding to perverse incentives that have been allowed to crop up by those in power. Trump has already issued restrictions regarding future lobbying by administration officials. His allies in Congress are prepared to introduce legislation regarding the same for ex-legislators. That's certainly a first step down the right path. We will see what else he has planned. It doesn't make me a swivel eyed defender to keep an optimistic attitude considering the fact that he hasn't even taken office yet.

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3 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

Your first paragraph is spot on.

As for the second paragraph, I'd divide Trump supporters into three groups.

The first group is the largest; angry white folk who share Trump's disdain for others and won't really care if he flips on matters such as this.  They're more pissed off that he's not going after Clinton and are concerned that he might not build the wall.

The second group are rich and middle class Republicans who always knew that Trump would protect their interests and will be delighted with Corporate America taking over the administration.

The third group is the smallest, those who voted for Trump despite his bigotry because he believed some of the rhetoric and wanted change; they may have voted for Sanders had he been the Democratic candidate.  They will be the group that will deny Trump a second term if the Democrats put forward a credible candidate.

 

Nobody in the first group cares about Hillary. You are right about the rest though. I think Trump has the potential to be a great President if he really does try to govern with average working people in mind. But if all he does is secure the border, and put an end to utopian nation building / liberal interventionism abroad then it will have been worth the vote.

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Draining the Swamp!

Quote

Just over a year after Northrop Grumman won the multibillion dollar contract to build a next-generation stealth bomber, the company appointed Mark Welsh, who was serving as Air Force chief of staff at the time of the contract award, to its board.

The appointment, announced Friday, is not unusual in Washington, where former high-ranking Pentagon officials often go to work for the defense industry after their military service. But it comes as President-elect Donald Trump is highlighting the potential conflicts of interests in the “revolving door” between the Pentagon and industry, as he vows to clean up Washington.

On Monday, Trump also took a shot at Lockheed Martin’s $400 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, the most expensive in the history of the Pentagon, saying the “cost is out of control. Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th.”

Quote

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Trump said there should be a “lifetime restriction” of top defense officials going to work for defense contractors.

“The people that are making these deals for the government, they should never be allowed to go to work for these companies,” he said. “You know, they make a deal like that and then a year later, or two years later, or three years later you see them working for these big companies that made the deal.”

 

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22 minutes ago, Deplorable said:

Draining the Swamp!

 

There is literally f**k all money to be saved on the F-35 program, everyone is in far too deep with it to cancel it, and it's now at production stage - most of the capital costs have been sunk - pulling the plug now just makes each unit more expensive to produce. McNamara tried the same Omni-role fighter program with the F-111 back in the 60s and ended up with an overweight monstrosity that the Navy refused to buy. This time, there is not much choice - as the consolidation and rationalization of the defence industry means that there is little direct competition. The Navy might keep the Boeing F-18E going, and not take the F-35C, but it's gonna be obsolete in a decade or so, and the Marines would still want the F-35B in any case.

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Right, but this one program isn't the point. Trump has signaled with this and the comments on Air Force One that business as usual regarding the government is going to change. The reason most of the richest counties in America are right around DC and the richest counties in most states are right around the state capital is because our government has been misusing taxpayer money for too long, both in procurement and dealings with public sector unions. The incentives for the people charged with using taxpayer money are out of whack.

 

One proposal I hope Trump embraces is to break up the DC area monopoly on so many federal jobs.  There's no reason for so many agencies to be based in one area in the modern world. Start moving them to more depressed areas of the country.

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1 hour ago, Deplorable said:

Right, but this one program isn't the point. Trump has signaled with this and the comments on Air Force One that business as usual regarding the government is going to change. The reason most of the richest counties in America are right around DC and the richest counties in most states are right around the state capital is because our government has been misusing taxpayer money for too long, both in procurement and dealings with public sector unions. The incentives for the people charged with using taxpayer money are out of whack.

 

One proposal I hope Trump embraces is to break up the DC area monopoly on so many federal jobs.  There's no reason for so many agencies to be based in one area in the modern world. Start moving them to more depressed areas of the country.

Fair enough, just pointing out that defence spending is in a death spiral that's only going to get worse. On the one hand you need companies that are big enough to be able to afford massive research and production programs for next generation technology, on the other, you don't have enough of those companies to have genuine market competition for contracts. Even having Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman the fact is none of those companies really overlap the others in terms of expertise. Take the next gen Stealth bomber to replace the B2 - that was always going to NG, as it was NG that built the B2 and it's only NG that have the kind of experience of building stealth on that kind of bomber scale. LM have experience on smaller size fighters, but are swamped with F-35 anyway so had no bandwidth.

There seems to be very little scope for bringing those kind of costs under control, and the last few attempts ended with programs being terminated early leading to the US forces having one or two super hi-tech units: Thin F-22, Zumwalt destroyers and Seawolf Submarines.

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17 hours ago, Deplorable said:

It's not complicated. Most of the people involved in the corrupt DC swamp are not evil. They are rational folks fighting for their own personal interests and responding to perverse incentives that have been allowed to crop up by those in power. Trump has already issued restrictions regarding future lobbying by administration officials. His allies in Congress are prepared to introduce legislation regarding the same for ex-legislators. That's certainly a first step down the right path. We will see what else he has planned. It doesn't make me a swivel eyed defender to keep an optimistic attitude considering the fact that he hasn't even taken office yet.

It should be a surprise to nobody that Trump's decisions are massively contradictory. I expect he'll take an equally slapdash, flip-flopping approach to policy as he did to campaigning.

Regardless, tinkering around the edges of legislation whilst appointing CEOs with insane conflicts of interest to positions of power, is not a step down the right path. He may well reduce the number of individual people involved in it but my money is on Washington becoming a lot more, not less corrupt in the next few years.

Edited by Alan Stubbs
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On ‎12‎/‎12‎/‎2016 at 08:22, Deplorable said:

So, it looks like this "Russia stole the election for Trump" line of attack is going to be4 the Democrats Birther movement.

 

Does anybody remember when the Obama administration lobbied Ecuador to shut down Assange during the election? Does that not count as asking a foreign government to interfere with an election?

No.

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57 minutes ago, Baxter Parp said:

Beats me, Obama wasn't making claims about draining swamps.

Yes he did.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/barack-obama-revolving-door-lobbying-217042

 

The Obama administration has hired more than 70 previously registered lobbyists, according to a 2014 POLITICO review,

Edited by THE KING
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I'm sure all these Goldman Sachs, Army and Esso retirees must be on a decent pension. Why are they nicking all the best jobs? If they want something to do they should be greeting shoppers at Walmart or doing a bit of gardening.

Edited by welshbairn
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