I'm very curious what the trump voter expectations are regarding these executive orders. A very large part of me thinks the orders themselves satisfies MAGA.
For example:
1. Going forward with the wall and even maintaining Obama's rate of deportation and crime rate would/could be painted as a success.
2. Having this immigrant ban on certain countries, and the continued success of preventing people from those countries attacking us.
3. Having global gag, pro life scotus , etc and the continued decline in abortions and teen pregnancy.

I guess, I mean, this may the greatest example ever of putting lipstick on a pig.

This is a very fair point IMO.

Horseshoe theory

Maybe I'm stating the obvious, or maybe I'm clouded by my liberal viewpoint... but I have the impression that the things conservatives got the most reactionary about (2nd amendment erosion, the election of a secrect muslim president not born in the US) were based on fearmongering and were not ACTUALLY happening. There were legitimate things Obama wanted to do (close Gitmo) that he failed at that could raise conservative ire as well, but the loudest shouts I saw from the opposite side always seemed to be about things that liberals perceived to be not actually happening. This left Obama in a weird spot where conservatives were terrified of him based on... alternate realities, and Liberals weren't exactly thrilled b/c he was not really succeeding at some of his more progressive promises (like gitmo).


On the other hand... the things Liberals are freaking out about trump doing, the response from the trump side is "you're god damn right we're doing that and fuck you"


Do the people in the middle see this the same or am I too far over on the left and delusional?

Yeah, most of the people I see bitching about college 'safe spaces' on Facebook I also recall posting statuses bitching about hearing languages other than English the first time they left small-town Iowa. And then of course the whole gun thing comes down to spending every living, breathing moment paranoid that you're going to be robbed, carjacked, subject to a liberal coup financed by George Soros, etc. A lot of scared special snowflakes out there.

Interested to see if there's any investigation into the Yemen (Yemeni?) raid. Reports are an 8 year old girl died. She's allegedly the daughter of a terrorist, but she is also American, and she's also only 8. I can only imagine the investigations if Obama approved this a few months ago.

Pretty much

Don't forget the War on Christmas!

Step 1: Unknown buyers spend billions for 20% stake in Russian state owned oil/gas company

Step 2: House resolution offered that repeals requirement for U.S. companies to disclose when they make payments to foreign governments

Step 3: Rex Tillerson confirmed as Sec. of State

Well, I'm totally smoking some state sanctioned weed at the moment, and enjoyed some free acupuncture, thanks to medicaid, yesterday, so I'll happily admit that some of the sky did indeed fall on conservative values in recent years.

Wait, I thought you liberals were saying Trump is jumping in bed with the Russians? That isnt so?

Well, I guess we go to war with China without them.

Why is everyone you talk to part of the "you liberals" group? Have you ever made a post without referencing liberals? It's a weird way of talking with people.

I'm kind of confused as to why President Bannon and others are saying that war with China is inevitable. Exactly what military threat is China posing right now, or predicted to pose in the next few years? Feels like weapons-of-mass-destruction-on-wheels 2003 all over again.

China is actually pretty pissed at Japan, where I live, right now because some Japanese political leaders visited a shrine which honors war criminals and the CEO of a Japanese hotel with properties in China denied that the Nanking Massacre happened, and I don't feel like China's gonna invade Japan anytime soon. I haven't heard of any current Chinese anger at the U.S. that comes close to that.

China are a big threat to the US if for no other reason than they are a major power that has it's own "Us First" policy (and everyone else a distant 2nd) as with the US and Russia. China is aggressively expanding its influence throughout Asia and beyond, and it's interests clash with the US.

There's no talk of war between Japan and China, but hey, let's remember what's down south in Okinawa...

Bannon talks about war a lot, but he still seems most passionate when talking about the one final religious world war between Christianity and Islam. That's where his heart is. The China stuff is just for fun.

Just a random observation from a registered independent on the total hypocrisy some of the conservative talking heads in regards to executive orders. Railing against Obama (You issued less executive orders per term than any president since 1900) for imposing imperialism and being a dictator, then praising Trump for his use of said orders during his first two weeks in office.

This just seems to obvious to me... It can't possibly be what it looks like.

We also have Mexico on the list now.

http://time.com/4657474/donald-trump...o-bad-hombres/

I guess I say "you liberals" because the board is 95% liberals.

And CHina is building those islands in the ocean. That is seen as a threat by the US. Therefore, the current administration is telling you that war is inevitable.

I highly doubt 95% of the board is liberal.

Also if we have an inevitable nuclear war with China coming over some artificial islands, we should probably stay allies with Australia.

No ‘G’day, mate’: On call with Australian prime minister, Trump badgers and brags - The Washington Post

I honestly thought things may be settling down with the SCOTUS announcement. That maybe it had been a rocky week and things were working toward some new normal which is more nationalist than I'm comfortable with but within the bounds of somewhat rational thought.

But, today we apparently put Iran on notice, ignored Russia invading the Ukraine, possibly threatened to invade Mexico and insulted a bunch of Australians.

So yeah...

Correction, they've already been built. And are already housing airfields, radar equipment, and anti-cruise missile weapons.

I've decided to dive into the idiocy of facebook news comments just to take out my frustration on idiots. Fun thing happened, I used what I assumed was extreme sarcasm and ended up getting a lot of thumbs up from Trump supporters and scolded by Obama supporters.

But Russia trying to get the old USSR band back together isn't a threat?

Funny you say that, I was thinking something similar. Evangelicals of certain sects have seemed to have had a hard on for the end times for a couple of decades. It feels like they decided to elect Trump because they were just tired of waiting for it to happen organically.

Never said it wasnt. But I doubt that will happen.

It's only a threat if China's planning to attack the U.S., which I haven't seen any evidence of. China puffs its chest a lot, but they don't seem to be war-hungry. Otherwise, they would have annexed Taiwan a long time ago, and Taiwan is what they really care about.

EDIT: I'm not trying to dismiss what you are saying. I'm just trying to understand the threat that Bannon and Company are perceiving, because I don't see it... at least at the present time.

Trumps potential Secretary of State disagrees.

So are we invading and then building the wall? Or vice-versa?

Want to make sure I invest properly.

Mr. President, your popularity is already crashing, but history shows the populace will rally around a wartime president.

Let's invade Mexico!

As much as I'm appalled that Trump is in office (actually, less him than Bannon, Conway, Flynn et al), I think the media is being a little too harsh on his speech at his African-American history month "listening session." Yeah, it was in poor taste that he brought up the erroneous report about him taking Dr. King's bust out of the White House on that occasion, because he made the occasion about himself for a short time. But:


People are saying that he must have thought Douglass was still alive, simply because he said Douglass "is an example" instead of "was an example." That's going a little too far in my opinion. I don't see anything in that quote suggesting that Trump thought Douglass is still alive. Perhaps it was a grammatical slip. Perhaps he's saying in a different way that people are starting to learn more and more about the great history of various African-American leaders, and Douglass is an example of that.

Again, I'm disappointed that Trump and his buddies are in office, but cases like this show that the media really goes overboard sometimes. Report fairly and don't produce headlines for clicks. That goes for all y'all: CNN, Fox News, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, CBGB, M-I-double S-I-double S....

Is that really true though? Countries go to war over resources and other interests all the time... not just in defense. I don't think the Viet Cong were ever a threat to attack the US. The artificial islands are not a physical threat to the US, but they are a threat to the US' interests (among others).

I mean the speech is kind of par for the course with Trump. The joke of it was that it was a "listening session" and it was made up of only members of the administration and CNN surrogates.

I had a problem with Trump making it about his war with the media again. The guy seriously seems incapable of taking the spotlight off himself to show appreciation of anyone else.

The Fredrick Douglass thing was the type of slip up that some people loved with Bush. Trump just isn't as likable as Bush and when you're declaring war on the media expect the media to take every opportunity to pile on.

Our country's hands are not clean on the topic of immigration by any stretch of the imagination, but it's good to see our PM actually try force the issue, but then our politics are a farce the last decade or so.

Could be an interesting couple of years for us because even outside of all the resources we export to China, the sheer amount of Chinese investment in this country is ridiculous. We've put ourselves in a bad situation if the US and China do come to blows.

I'm with you on that. Trump should stop making it about his war with the media, but the media should stop taking these little slips and spills and making them into major issues. That undermines their credibility when they want to criticize or support the administration on the real issues. In other words, they become just like Trump. The two parties need to make a truce.

And yeah, I used to laugh at Bush-isms like a lot of people did, but I also understood they were no more than slips and odd jargon. It was funny, but I didn't read into it any more than that.

I don't really think the major media outlets were saying he didn't know who Douglass was (or "is" if you're the President). Mostly partisan sites and people on Twitter making jokes. Maybe it was just a brain fart but it came across as if he didn't know who Douglass was.

The Douglass thing wasn't really that big of a deal. I thought the remarks he gave as a whole were fucking bizarre. Here's the full transcript of everything he said.

A Full Transcript Of Donald Trump's Black History Month Remarks

When you start adding up other stuff he's done like the call with Australia and Mexico, it just feels like something is off. I didn't follow him much prior to the campaign so maybe he's always been like this. But I think it's fair to question at his age if something more is going on.

GOP votes to end rule stopping coal mining debris from being dumped in streams https://t.co/6L5cuorEKK

— TIME (@TIME) February 1, 2017

And about damn time, too!

I hate Mike Pence, but at least he won't destroy all our alliances and let Russia run roughshod over Eastern Europe. The joke is wearing pretty thin at this point.

FWIW (and I haven't read anything about this beyond just what you posted now), it might have more to do with his use of the Present Perfect tense here: "of somebody who’s done an amazing job". You wouldn't say "who has done" about someone who is dead. The Present Perfect tense is used to describe an action or state that started in the past and has continued to the present.

Whatever Frederick Douglass was doing, he stopped doing it a long time ago.

Orrin Hatch (R-UT) on Friday, March 11, 2016:

"The President told me several times he’s going to name a moderate [to fill the court vacancy], but I don’t believe him...[Obama] could easily name Merrick Garland, who is a fine man...He probably won’t do that because this appointment is about the election. So I’m pretty sure he’ll name someone the [liberal Democratic base] wants."

The #2 Republican on the Judiciary Committee said that if President Obama were serious about filling the vacancy, he'd nominate Merrick Garland. He nominated Merrick Garland.

The Senate went "lol nah we're not going to hold hearings for anybody you nominate neener neener"

Like, we're not even talking about hearings followed by a "nope" vote. We're not talking about the Senate even pretending to exercise its constitutional duty to provide advice and consent. It was just a flat refusal to consider ANYBODY in the hopes that the Republican candidate for President could win the election and steal the nomination.

Pretty sure even if Obama had nominated a conservative, the Senate would have sat on that nomination to make sure it wasn't a seekrit librul nomination in hiding waiting to switch teams as soon as he or she was confirmed.

The biggest move China has made is being the first to truly invest in the rising economies in Africa. They've got so many programs going on throughout the continent that they don't need any actual wars to win.

Falwell Jr to lead Higher Education Task Force

Falwell hired the Baylor AD right after he resigned and his school releases this tidbit as part of the announcement of his new assignment:


I guess Jon will be happy that the new administration is making it a stated goal to make it easier for college girls to get raped with no recourse. Those poor college football players won't have to worry so much about getting duped into gang rape now.

That's a very good point about the present perfect tense. I'm still willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt here and say that he just said something that was grammatically wrong. I do it sometimes, and I teach English for a living.

Fixed :D

Drain that swamp! By putting in charcoal filters!

Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile.Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2017

I'm not sure what "formally PUT ON NOTICE" means, but I'll be glad to get the civics lesson regarding this new diplomatic process and what it entails.

I think this is basically true. But I think given what we know about Trump, he harbors no actual intellectual curiosity about such a thing as who Frederick Douglass is or was, and what "job" he does or did well. That statement is a perfect capsule of that - you fudge the details by saying someone "does a good job" when you simply don't know what a real thing to say would be... just that the person is on your "say a good thing" list. He's not the only politician to do this sort of thing by any means - but his absolute contempt for actual substance might be the most pervasive ever, with this just being emblematic of the far larger issue.

That's not at all what's occurring, and you know it, so why say it?

I can't for the life of me figure out what people want here. Just about everybody I know wants colleges to be out of sexual assault business right? So that's exactly what the new administration is doing, and said it was going to do with the republican platform. Now, after months and possibly even years of crying about how the college process was so unfair, going to the police now somehow makes it easier for college girls to get raped? How?

Or are you saying the police isn't equipped to handle this stuff, and the colleges are better at it?