It's an interesting thought, but I if the rampant idiocy from Trump could actually be a factor in some kind of economic slowdown. He is such a buffoon and a vast part of the economy is perception - that it seems like if people have no confidence in Trump and see signs of the economy slowing down, that it could actually cause a small recession. I don't think it would happen until late 2020 or 2021, but I think it actually is possible. And that's something I never would have considered until Trump.

I hate the "What if Another President had . . ." game.

But if Bush or Obama had just favorably quoted someone calling them the King of Israel, it would be the only thing people talked about for a week.

We'll have completely moved on by Friday.

"we have great mental illness"

By then he will have declared himself King of the First Men and Lord of the Andals.

This is kind of the thing though. For many years people who were accurate in pointing out the aims of the Republican party were accused of either "playing the race card" or grossly exaggerating things, but it turns out that the reality of things is even more absurd than any parody from a few years back could've been.

He's also bashing the PM of Denmark today over this. Such a bizarre time in history.

Someone noted that Obama has a Denmark visit planned for September, so Trump's handlers probably convinced him to cancel the meeting so he wouldn't rage over the optics of Obama's visit getting a better reception than his.

Not sure if a $1K additional would help that much but I'll take it. It may be better to spend it on new infrastructure projects.

This is exactly how much a payroll-tax cut would help the average American - MarketWatch

180-185K average per month is still fairly decent but obviously not as good as 223K. I guess this increases the likelihood of the Fed reducing rates more.

U.S. created 500,000 fewer jobs since 2018 than previously reported, new figures show - MarketWatch

The GOP is lined up behind lower interest rates, high deficit spending, and a payroll tax cut because they will all, "boost the economy."

And yet when Obama called for the same things, there was near-universal opposition from the GOP.

Everything's a con.

it continues...

Donald J. Trump on Twitter: "For the record, Denmark is only at 1.35% of GDP for NATO spending. They are a wealthy country and should be at 2%. We protect Europe and yet, only 8 of the 28 NATO countries are at the 2% mark. The United States is at a much, much higher level than that...."

Payroll tax cut would make sense if we weren't running up huge debt during the times when the economy is good. It's just going to tack on a ton more debt that will burden the next generation.

They could make it revenue neutral but that would require taxing wealthy people and that will definitely not happen.

Well, we don't have to worry about anymore for now ...

So internal discussions were already being planned for acquiring Greenland:


Damian Paletta

@damianpaletta

· 19h

Internal planning was so far along they had begun to even think about the financial cost. White House officials had discussed taking over Denmark’s $600 million annual payment to Greenland, and also giving Denmark some sort of financial sweetener. https://washingtonpost.com/politics/trump


So is the whole white house staff is insane now?

I'm lost. Can someone explain to me what this is about?

My proposal to the politically correct Automobile Companies would lower the average price of a car to consumers by more than $3000, while at the same time making the cars substantially safer. Engines would run smoother. Very little impact on the environment! Foolish executives!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 21, 2019

The Legendary Henry Ford and Alfred P. Sloan, the Founders of Ford Motor Company and General Motors, are “rolling over” at the weakness of current car company executives willing to spend more money on a car that is not as safe or good, and cost $3,000 more to consumers. Crazy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 21, 2019

I think this is about California environmental standards. Trump wants to overrule, but the auto companies are fine with the standards.

I RETIRED FROM PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL 3 YEARS AGO AND THE MSM DIDN'T COVER IT! IT'S A DISGRACE THAT THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT THE REAL TRUE NEWS OF THE US IS.



Where was all the good attention that I should be receiving at? Everything I'm doing is super important and my baseball career should be getting the same attention as RUSSIA!

So he is mad that car companies are making fuel efficient cars that their customers want? I know he's bad at business, but come on.

Yeah but voluntarily regulating yourself to help the environment goes against core republican beliefs.

So in the past couple of days Trump has:

*Tried to buy a country
*Got mad when said country turned down his offer to buy it and canceled a visit to country that oversees said country
*Told Jewish people if they don't vote for him they're not loyal
*Retweeted someone praising him as the 2nd coming of Christ
*Referred to himself as "The Chosen One"
*Said he was looking into cutting payroll taxes
*Said he wasn't looking into cutting payroll taxes
*Decided detaining children indefinitely is the cool thing to do
*Stated he's strongly considering eliminating birthright citizenship
*Attacked Auto Manufacturers for self regulating themselves for the good of the environment.

Am I missing something?

The Denmark things feels like a way to get out of a trip he doesn't want to go on. Remember that he likes sitting around watching TV.

There is talk that because Obama is going at the end of September, it would be embarrassing to him to see the difference in receptions.

Maybe, but it's also being reported that White House staff had gotten far enough to plan how to take possession and had started working out a price.

No I don't Trump can do it with an Executive order. It is being abuse. Wish we could do something about it.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/21/polit...ent/index.html

I don't buy it. I think the possibility of the economy weakening heading into the election has him looking for something he can can sell as a major accomplishment with broad support.

Trump says he wanted to give himself Medal of Honor

Well why not? He is the Chosen One after all.

I had a boss who wanted to win an award where others have to submit a nomination. She tried to get an underling to submit a nomination that she wrote herself. Maybe she should have run for President...

Tom Cotton said this morning that he had talked to the President about Greenland a while ago.

I think the much more likely explanation is that Trump wanted to buy Greenland and lashed out when a woman mocked him. That fits with everything we know about him.

Avoiding gonorrhea has to be one of the qualifying actions.

Dodging STDs was his personal Vietnam after all.

Hmmm. GOP politicians starting to lie about caring about the debt/deficit again. Makes me wonder if they are seeing some really bad internal polls for Trump.

CBO confirmed our deficit is on a dangerous trajectory. But right now, neither party seems to be focused on our debt. Inaction is beyond irresponsible. In the coming weeks, I’ll be introducing a bill to force Congress to address the drivers of our spending to avoid a debt crisis. https://t.co/QGGS91VNoP

— Senator Mitt Romney (@SenatorRomney) August 21, 2019

Are they really going to run on a promise to cut Social Security and Medicare?

At least Trump was smart enough to realize people really like Social Security and Medicare and promising to cut them is a dumb thing to do before an election.

Romney and Ryan did run on a platform of cutting future benefits for people who were under 55 at the time.

This story about the resignation of the Overstock CEO after claiming to be in the middle of the Russia/Trump investigation is nuts.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/o...p-russia-story

Joe Walsh is threatening to run in a primary against Trump. It will probably go nowhere, but I hope he does.

The faux outrage that is going to come from the GOP in the coming months and years is going to be something to behold.

Crazy is 3 Mar-a-Lago members getting involved in the VA's transition to a new EHR for no reason other than they're friends with Trump.

Emails show Veterans Affairs officials' scorn for 'Mar-a-Lago 3' - POLITICO

So the National Republican Congressional Committee is fund-raising by offering this shirt for a donation:


Got Greenland? - National Republican Congressional Committee

I'm one of the most far-left people on this board and I'd consider getting that shirt. That's hilarious and awesome.

Yeah, it seems more like making fun of Trump than supporting him. NRCC has no clue.

As I mentioned to someone else, of course there is no Puerto Rico.

I bet nobody gets punished for this.

To the surprise of no one Sarah Huckabee Sanders takes a job as a contributer on Fox News and her first apperance will of course be on Fox and Friends in September.

"Staff at the sheriff’s office explained that they had a policy of detaining all Latinx people for immigration review."

I didn't quite believe that, so I looked at the complaint. Torres claims that an unidentified administrator made that statement, but the administrator is just referred to as "Jane Doe" in the complaint. In their write-up about the complaint, the ACLU hides that fact that it's an allegation, and tries to make it sound like it's an on-the-record official policy statement or something.

Maybe someone said it, maybe that person had any authority or knowledge of detention procedures in that county, maybe they didn't. Maybe the detention was constitutional, maybe it wasn't, but this is just allegations in a complaint, the state hasn't even responded yet. But I'm skeptical that the sheriff's office in this area not only just rounds up all Hispanics and automatically puts immigration holds on them, but states this as their policy.

To be fair, it's already be precedent in the 80's during the drug wars with black men being rounded up on the streets 'just to see if they were criminals or not'.

It's not exactly a new tactic.

Maybe if it wasn’t 35$ and proceeds weren’t sponsoring the white nationalist party...

We all agree Trump wants Greenland cause of how bigot it looks on a Mercator projection, right?

I meant bigly, but spellcheck hilarious.

I would've gone with this.

Times, they be a changing. Back then the Browns could make conference champion game.

If any local or state government rounded op people based on the color of their skin as official policy then their asses would be sued off.

My point is that the ACLU isn't even really alleging that this is this agency's official policy. They just want you to assume that from the write-up. But the only person who allegedly said this is an unidentified "staff member" who isn't alleged to have any authority to actually create, state or enforce such a policy. And this person can't be investigated, deposed, etc, because they're just a Jane Doe.

And complaint allegations shouldn't be reported as fact. Just like allegations in a criminal complaint shouldn't be reported as fact. The ACLU gets around this with these write-ups that get passed around as if they're news articles.

The ACLU prefers dramatic language in their legal filings and write-ups. Including appeals to emotion, hiding the ball, invitations to make incorrect inferences. Stuff that would be considered unprofessional or unethical for most attorneys to engage in.

Loitering. Broken Taillight.

That's always been the work around.

DOJ is now just passing around articles from white nationalist websites if you're wondering how things are going.

The Justice Department Sent Immigration Judges A White Nationalist Blog Post With Anti-Semitic Attacks

-- A Passage to India (1924)

WaPo is reporting that Trump is looking at ways to boost the economy before the election, including a currency transaction tax(that the GOP won't pass) and a further reduction of the corporate tax rate(which the Dems won't pass).

UPS, Amazon, FedEx shares drop after Trump tweets: "I am ordering all carriers, including Fed Ex, Amazon, UPS and the Post Office, to SEARCH FOR & REFUSE...all deliveries of Fentanyl from China (or anywhere else!)." https://t.co/E5IJkb2nuJ pic.twitter.com/UEBeCbkR6O

— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) August 23, 2019

CNBC Now on Twitter: "UPS, Amazon, FedEx shares drop after Trump tweets: "I am ordering all carriers, including Fed Ex, Amazon, UPS and the Post Office, to SEARCH FOR & REFUSE...all deliveries of Fentanyl from China (or anywhere else!)." https://t.co/E5IJkb2nuJ… https://t.co/Ogu1I6S44q"
CNBC Now on Twitter: "UPS, Amazon, FedEx shares drop after Trump tweets: "I am ordering all carriers, including Fed Ex, Amazon, UPS and the Post Office, to SEARCH FOR & REFUSE...all deliveries of Fentanyl from China (or anywhere else!)." https://t.co/E5IJkb2nuJ… https://t.co/Ogu1I6S44q"

Reports are that he's meeting with his trade team now after that insane tweet storm. Can they talk him out of 50% tariffs??? ;)

I don't know if I was correct with my assessment that attacking the Fed is smart for Trump. But he clearly thinks it is.

Scott Adams on Twitter: "Commander in Chief. Fentanyl is an attack on the homeland.… "

oh.

Passing thought: many have thought about what an economic downturn would to to Trump's chances for re-election. What I hadn't really thought about is what it might do to his fragile ego. I wonder if we've not yet seen the depths of how unhinged this dude can get.

It's going to be a shitshow at the White House if the economy tanks and/or polling continues to show Trump behind for 2020.

August 23 2019 is the day the President of the United States hereby ordered US companies to stop doing business with and in China immediately on Twitter.

If I were the Dilbert guy, I'd be pissed I hadn't gotten a Cabinet position or a federal judgeship by now. What more does the guy need to show?

Hey, there's always time after the resignations in the coming days/weeks.

You'd think at some point it'd make sense for them to trade horses for 2020. The betting odds are shifting ever so slightly in that direction (still a big longshot). It's hard to imagine what kind of specific scenario would lead to that.

To counter the Fox hire, CNN hires Andrew McCabe as a contributer :)

I don't think so. I don't see a world where he steps down for the good of the party. Which means that even if, say, the GOP powers that be rig the Primary so that someone else becomes the nominee, you will still have Trump running as a third party and/or urging his base to not vote for Pence/Jeb/Weld/Romney/Whomever or even telling his base to stay home and teach the GOP a lesson.

They might lose with Trump as the nominee. They might even lose big. But the short-term downside risks to trying to push him out could be worse. They could go as far as them losing every Senate race or something crazy like that.

He'd have to go even *more* batshit crazy and jerk off on national TV or something

In light of the Epstein saga, the whole story (accusation) of trump raping a 13yr old girl, and the circumstances surrounding it, are so much more plausible. Add in witnesses and the language reportedly used, and it's downright sickening to think about. Still not sure how we're at the point where something like this doesn't actually bring serious questions onto him that count for anything, but we are.

He told us that a recession was fake news so I'm not sure why he is getting so worked up.

Serious question: do you think Donald Trump has ever prepared an item of food?

He had servants, etc. growing up, and he has them now. And he eats a lot of fast food. So I know he does it very very very rarely.

But over the course of his whole life? I have to think that there's been a point where he made himself a PB&J. Or boiled a hot dog. Like in college or something, right?

I'm going with yes, at some point, he has prepared an item of food.

Hell, half of the government is being run by acting secretaries now.

Do you think he could make a grilled cheese sandwich? I'm thinking he might be able to do it if you put all of the perfect components in front of him, like 2 slices of bread, soft butter, some cheese slices and a pan at medium-low....but I bet he'd lose out on a wrestling match with a new, tightly wrapped loaf of bread, or a stick of cold butter.

I don't imagine he's seen enough food being made to necessarily even guess how you do a grilled cheese. Like my mom made me food growing up, but I was often in the kitchen. I doubt Trump ever spent a moment in the kitchen, so it's all a bit of a mystery to him.

Yeah. I think grilled cheese is beyond him.

But I'm sticking by my PB&J prediction. I think he could do it.

RBG is probably going to die before the next cycle. It sounds awful. :(

Are we talking peak-Trump or current brain wormed Trump?

I think he's playing a different con. He's a serial entrepreneur for certain, and I think his play here started out as "I'm a big fan of sneaky persuasion tactics, and Trump uses some of the same stuff I have studied, so that's cool I get to talk like an expert." He sold some books and made a name for himself, politically, just by having the foresight to predict that Trump would prevail based on that. (Incidentally, I think there's substance to all this)

That said, now he's seemingly taken a full MAGA turn, and more or less worships his every move. I think he's just playing the Alex Jones angle now, more or less portraying a character, with eventual designs on selling snake oil to the huddle mouth-breathing masses who buy in based on their identity/allegiances. So, some day, he'll be able to sell his Dil-bars or Dil-dos or chicken sandwiches or shoes or what-the-f-ever it ends up being at a premium price, based on his bona fides with the gullible right. (Honestly, I suspect what he wants is to re-ignite Trump University, but in his own name and likeness... sell the "art of persuasion" and get suckers to come take classes in how to win like Trump.)

I don't think I've truly grasped the idiocracy out there after having read some of the replies to the tweet about fentanyl, I am dumbfounded by the depths of it.

And Trump just announced another 30 billion/yr of tariffs on Chinese goods.

I do think the Chinese government is involved in selling fentanyl to Americans in order to help destabilize the population and make a small profit to boot.

Is that belief too tin foil hatty?

Yet the Russians are not (more legitmately trying to destabilize the population, or is that ok now)?

Or perhaps, the Japanese are selling violent video games to cause gun deaths to rise?

Are the Mexicans and Colombians, or anyone else selling drugs to the US going for the same thing?

It's a little bit flat earth for me. That's taking a probable outcome and attaching a meaning and motive on the front end of it. Like creation and religion. I guess that's not too tin hatty for a lot of people, so....

Based on other examples (Weinstein, Cosby, etc), we are about 45 victims short before we start any serious questioning.

It's a demand thing. When China slows down, Fentanyl from India picks up. As long as we continue to create addicts here, they'll continue to look for product.

So Trump is not going to let this Greenland thing die easily:


US planning to open Greenland consulate for the first time in decades

The only reason to be interested in Greenland is if you believe climate change will open up previously unreachable mineral deposits. The climate change that's a Chinese hoax.

Everything's a con.

Trump doubles down on his threat to force American businesses to pull out of China, citing a law traditionally used to target terrorists, drug traffickers and rogue states like Iran. https://t.co/WmHCfURXpM

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) August 24, 2019

Wheeeeee

Who did Stephen Miller have to fuck to get so much pull in the administration?

Probably a bunch of 13 year old girls

Libertarians: You know (insert name... W Bush, Clinton, Obama) can't just bypass Congress with an executive order for things that can actually be legislated.

Ha ha ha, you use the roads don't you? Go back to your gold standard idiot! I know you guys love the constitution but Congress will do nothing so (insert name... W Bush, Clinton, Obama) has to do it. What could possibly go wrong with a president misusing an executive order when he is only doing it for good?



https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/24/polit...act/index.html

If this happens, much like with other controversial executive orders, there will be a court case and eventually the Supreme Court will make a determination. That would still be the ways things worked even if more people on the internet agreed with fictional libertarians.

How did the white supremacist get power working for a white supremacist? I wonder.

Are we talking about the Libertarian nominee for President who supported Obama's use of executive order on DACA? Who said he'd use executive orders to eliminate the NSA and IRS? Who would use an executive order to de-criminalize marijuana?

Heck, the Libertarian candidate for 2020 that's raised the most money so far has a platform that boils down to signing an executive order dissolving the federal government.

Not sure these are the folks opposed to executive orders.

It’s tough and weird having a “world leader” with such ignorant gaps in common knowledge. He’s asked about having “second thoughts” about recent decisions...he obviously just doesn’t understand what that phrase means but he figures it sounds good and responds yes, he has them about everything.

Then the WH Comms team has to go through this whole charade of issuing a statement about what he really meant and how it was strategic. It’s absurd that everyone just plays along.

That was my take as well. He wanted to win, so he decided he has more thoughts. Ask him about third or fourth thoughts and he'll say yes to that as well.

The short presser with Boris Johnson was funny when Boris mentioned cabotage and Trump clearly had no idea what he was talking about.

I hadn't heard about this until reading these comments. Just found the clip and watched it. It certainly appears that he thought "do you have any second thoughts" meant "will you share your thoughts again?"

Good gracious. And now looking at the media coverage of this and the White House "clarification," this is insane. No one that I can find in even the left-leaning media has had the guts (or good sense) to say "nah...he just didn't know what the question meant."

Joe Walsh attempting to primary Trump is going to be interesting, and perhaps more consequential than some are thinking at first blush. He'll fight fire with fire on the personal attacks, outflank Trump from the right, garner plenty of media attention, and potentially be the kind of disruptive force we've only seen recently in...Trump.

Most fascinating to me will be the contrast of Walsh's apologies for his past behaviors vs. Trump's utter unwillingness to do so. I'm curious to see how conservative "Christian" voters respond to repentance vs. unrepentance in the primaries. (If they do, I'll gladly remove those quotation marks...)

Where is Kasich? I had him pegged as a guaranteed challenger, given that he never gave in to t-rump and has maintained a high road, high visibility profile. Now that the curtain is up, even if just a little bit, it should make jumping in for a primary challenge that much easier.

Kasich probably realized that Republican voters have fully embraced Trumpism so it'd be a waste of time.