Where's Kiefer!

I heard the AG from American Sonoma was bringing some great vintages for the President to try.

White House typo names attorney general of 'American Sonoma'

Did the clapping for the widow sound like it had some processing effects to it? Maybe it's my imagination but it didn't sound natural. I even flipped channels but it was still there.

I sort of accidentally room-surfed through at the part you're talking about I think. If so, it did sound a little odd & cause me to listen for a half-second or so but more like someone cranked up the ambient mics to catch the applause than any sort of processing.

maybe same you heard, maybe not, dunno.

That may have been the best speech I've heard out of Trump since his entire political career started.

(I mean the speech itself, as an artifact. We can argue about the merits of the policies/substance and whatever later.)

I mean...it was like an actual political leader giving a speech. No, he's not ever going to be a great orator, but it was a least competent in the scope of the genre.

I really hope it turns out the EPA and Department of Education are actually trillion dollar agencies or else that trump agenda might be expensive.

I was traveling this evening and didn't see it, but my wife--who dislikes Trump so much she seriously considered voting for a candidate she can't stand--conveyed a very similar sentiment to me--that he sounded like a real President and not a buffoon.

I watched the first bit and then got bored (e.g. I'm sticking to my belief its not what he says, its what he does/proposes that really matters).

But I thought he did well in the speech. Heard the vision on the Wall, Immigration Reform, $1T on Infrastructure, and lowering Healthcare costs with credits and HSA ... all sounds good to me

You just covered pretty well the reason I didn't intentionally watch any of it myself.

Don't tell me Mr. President, show me.

If he sticks to the script I'm sure he's as good as anyone else. Trump's problem is when he ad libs, especially in a Q&A environment.

repurposing from my FB. Easier to paste here than to try to rewrite the same premise

you know what I do kind of enjoy watching these days? Newt Gingrich when he talks about Trump.
I've not always agreed with Newt on everything but I've long described him as the single most charismatic & people-smart person I ever met in person. He knows how to work a small room better than anyone I've ever seen.
That's why I find him pontificating on Trump so interesting I think, I get a sense that he's a genuine fan & that there's a legitimate respect for Trump's often unorthodox yet uncannily effective communication style. Basically, I think Gingrich probably "gets" Trump about as well as anyone doing any talking.

Actions are what matters.

I love the "Buy American and Hire American" motto but he doesn't believe it.

That was a weird mix of Bannon and Ivanka.

America is a hellish landscape of criminal cartels and murderous immigrants. We must answer this challenge with universal child care!

Found the lobbying bit interesting.

5 yr delay (or "ban" as he called it) on elected officials being able to lobby. And permanent ban on lobbying for foreign governments.

Not going to please everybody with that but its a start to dismantling the oligarchy.

Except it isn't what it seems. The EO doesn't ban people from lobbying, it only bans them from lobbying the agency they worked for. It also weakens some rules from the Obama admin.

I think that Trump will build on the momentum of this speech. He's at his worst when he feels unloved. The positive vibes from this speech will keep him out of Crazy Racist Uncle Twitter mode for a while. Which will lead to more good press, which will lead to less crazy, etc.

Now, can the Dems attack the GOP when the GOP's leader isn't shooting himself in the foot? Or (as I suspect), had they figured that their whole "strategy" for the next 4/8 years would be "Trump says stuff that liberals don't like on Twitter. That's good enough."

The Dems better get on board. Trump us a deal maker. He will approach them to make deals. If they slap his hand away, they will have a tough time winning elections.

Norman L. Eisen, the ethics lawyer when Mr. Obama arrived in the White House and the chief author of the rules that Mr. Trump is now replacing, commended much of Mr. Trump’s order.

But Mr. Eisen and other ethics experts noted that rules banning lobbyists from taking any job with an agency they had tried to influence in the past two years had been removed. Also, the new rules allow departing executive branch employees to take private sector jobs and then informally lobby the administration, as long as they are not registered as a lobbyist, a type of activity previously prohibited for two years. Registration is required once a person does a certain amount of work for a client.

“There is much to like,” Mr. Eisen said of the new executive order. “But it gives nonlobbyists too much leeway when they leave. That is where the biggest problem in the system is: unregistered, shadow lobbyists. They should be getting more regulation, not less.”


Seems like he is pretty okay with most of it.

If Trump can't get his own polices through its on him and the GOP. The Dems don't stand in his way at all really.

re: lobbyists (in general)

Presumably the "average American" has no idea how little of legislation is actually written by Congresscritters ... right?

Quite right.

No he's not. His first deal was sitting down with the health insurance industry who made him do a 180 on his campaign promise in a matter of an hour.

Just like the GOP had so much trouble in 2010.

The GOP discovered that the best way to make the president unpopular is to refuse to work with him, and the popularity of the president effects races all the way down to the state level at least.

Okay with some of it.

Understood, but isn't it better (in lieu of both) to ban officials from lobbying after rather than before?

I concede its all probably theater at the end of the day anyway.

The media's reaction to this speech reminds me of the audience reaction to Captain Hammer's speech at the end of Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog.

I think it's mostly oversold window dressing. The kind of thing Trump has done for decades.

I'd like some serious lobbying reform, but that would take legislation, and I don't see any way currently to even a majority, nevermind a Senate 60 vote threshold.

Well, he tweeted "Thank You" 5 hours ago... Thank you for what is unkown, I guess just congratulating himself. So while not quite Crazy Racist Uncle, it again shows he has no concept of why people clapped so loudly for a moment in his speech.

Also, if we're creating tasks forces in every department, how is there a hiring freeze?

I prefer 2 years to 1 year, but this seems like wishcasting. If the pool of effective lobbyists is smaller, firms will be willing to wait longer & pay more. There's just too much money at stake in the bigger bills.

He is not a deal maker. His "deals" are when he has the upper hand. Like what he did to many small businesses in Atlantic City that in turn failed because they signed large "exclusive" deals with him and then his properties declared bankruptcy leaving these businesses unable to survive as they were out hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Put him in a negotiation where the field is level (or where he has the weaker position) and he will resort to his "taking my stuff and going home" tantrums.

I'm so old I remember when the GOP said bills should be made public for days before votes.

Didnt your guy, Obama, run saying transparency inb government? Then shoved Obamacare down our throats without allowing anyone to see it?

Yet even though nobody was allowed to see it, conservatives could tell you exactly what was wrong with it.

Nope. The bill was posted for several weeks before the vote happened.

Right. All 20,000 pages. I guess it was easy reading.

The bill was introduced in Oct. 2009, voted on by the House in Nov. 2009, and voted on by the Senate in June 2010, signed by the President in June 2010. I'm not sure an 8 or 9 month period between introduction and signing into law constitutes "shoving down the throat".

Are you pretending you didn't just claim he didn't let anyone see it?

They should have started with tax reform or infrastructure. If Republicans vote to repeal Obamacare the Democrats will just filibuster the replacement and nothing will get done. I don't see enough Democrats voting for the replacement if it's just tax credits and HSA's.

I agree with this. Go with tax reform, infrastructure and start the Wall. If the market continues the way its going, he'll be forgiven.

At least he'll be able to claim victory on getting the Wall started and wait on Trumpcare in year 2 or 3.

Republicans have been campaigning on getting rid of Obamacare since it was passed. If it hasn't been repealed by the midterms, their base is going to crucify them.

Are you seriously saying that 20,000 pages is transparent?

The house had a month to look it over. If I remember correctly, there was a real push to get this through the house. So, yes, it was shoved down their throats. 20,000 pages to be read and studied in a month? I guess your D congressmen are all geniuses.
And is 6 months really enough time? And how would it have been stopped? The House had already approved it.

Yes, it was shoved down our throats. And no, it was not transparent.

That's like saying parsecs is a measurement of time.

The original Obamacare bill was 906 pages. More pages were added as part of reconciliation that was required to get the bill to pass after the dems lost the supermajority in the senate in 2010. These additions pushed the bill up to ~975 pages.

http://housedocs.house.gov/energycommerce/ppacacon.pdf

This is the full act that was passed. You can see how long it is yourself. Any of us can.

The 20,000 page stuff was posted by Mitch McConnell in 2013. He was referring to regulations that had been laid out to explain how obamacare was intended to be enforced.


Whether any of this is reasonable or ridiculous, how it compares to other major laws I am not immediately sure.

But you claim that the democrats rammed 20,000 pages of legislation down everyone's throats with no time. You're wrong. The entire premise of your argument is wrong at its core.


Fact check your shit people. There is an unbelievable amount of misinformation out there and its being used like this all the time. Not intentionally, I'm not accusing anyone of that. But everyone went along with this.



Exactly why we're discussing Obama right now i have no idea. But if we're going to, check your fucking facts.

Guys, reset the counter.

"It has been 0 days since someone lied about contact with Russia."

At a minimum, Sessions has to go, right. He lied under oath to Congress.

They're not going to do shit to an ex-Senator.

I love how the stock market goes up every time Trump can manage to be normal for a few minutes. It's like a weird text sim cheat.

Repeal ... without replacing.

Gosh, that would just break my fn heart.

#briarpatch

So both Sessions and Pruitt lied to Congress during their confirmation hearings. Maybe the Senate should take a little longer with confirming Trumps cabinet so these things can come out before a vote.

They already have the defense out that he spoke with the Ambassador in his capacity as a member of the Armed Services Committee and when he made his denial, he was denying that he did it as a surrogate for the Trump campaign. It's a bullshit rationalization, but it will be repeated 1000 times until people get tired of attacking him and move on to something else.