RE: Crooked Donald and Company
I started this with my question, which primarily was aimed to find out what the antiTrump people wanted to accomplish with the blanket protests and ferocious obstructionism. Still don't know.
One thing that keeps coming through from the protests is that Trump is "unqualified" to be president, but as the Constitutional scholars here know, the qualifications are very few and Trump meets them all. So it must be a subjective standard, one different for each person, he does not meet.
Kellyanne screwed up, plain and simple. She reacted to badgering, and said something she shouldn't have. It should be enough to apologize, retract, and not do it again, but the left is out for blood and here is some red meat. Good thing they cannot enforce a firing squad, as if she had been cavalier with government secrets. This reaction is part of the visceral hatred of all things (people) Trump.
On the tax return, I think JAAO covered why he should not release them - he and the millions of other critics predisposed to be negative are not tax professionals. Many people just take their returns to a CPA or H and R Block, and accept the result handed back to them, and then we are supposed to let these people tell us from a cursory inspection of a noninformative document(the 1040) what the facts are? I can just hear it now - "Line 73 is blank. what is he trying to hide?", or "How can a man with so much wealth show so little income from _____? What is he hiding?" It would never stop.
Trump is a new kind of animal, and the old ways followed by profession politicians(PP) will not work with him. The PP have had decades to sanitize their returns and make sure they are prepared campaign documents. The PP are able to segregate their salaries (on the 1040) from campaign contributions and giftsby others to their foundations and charities (not on the 1040),
Same for the blind trust. May work well for PP, but this is a new situation. Old solutions to new problems?
The whole point of the blind trust is to isolate his decisions from self-interest, and I never though a blind trust did that. But in any case, we have never had a president with such wide spread business interests and and so much wealth. Not since Washington, anyway.
Plenty of evidence he is NOT misogynistic. He has hired and promoted women, and many of his female employees are enthusiatic supporters. The evidence for such an accusation seems to rest primarily on the joke, from 15 years ago. I find the joke distateful and unfunny, but I have heard much worse from literally hundreds on men, and probably said something worse at some point in my life. The primary difference between me, millions of other men, Donald Trump, and Bill Clinton on the matter of sex seems to be that nobody has recorded any of the rest of us. Not evidence of misogyny, unless you think the hiring and promotion practices in his companies is just a cover up.
Being of partial Hispanic descent, and having family on both sides of the Rio Grande, my first reaction to the "rapists" remark was a quick flare of antagonism toward him. But then ten seconds later, I realized that he was talking (a) about illegal aliens, not Mexicans, and (b) not ALL illegal aliens at that. People who want to interpret it racially really have to want to. Same for the "Muslim ban" that does not prohibit Muslims from 200 countries from entering. I see no evidence of xenophobia.
So all this hysteria about he is racist, he is xenophobic, he is the next Hitler, seems to me to just be way overblown and incorrect, but it sure fuels the anger and despair of the people protesting.
I have never seen the problem with choice in schooling. It seems the problem is mainly that DeVos is TRUMP's choice.
I agree he overreacts, but what are we going to do? Burn a trash can to make him stop?
Short of death or impeachment, he is here for 47 more months. Should we spend those months gnashing our teeth and rioting in the streets? I was not happy with the election of Obama. But somebody told me to give him a chance, so I reined in my criticisms what what he was or wasn't and of what he was going to do, and sat back to wait and see. Is that a possibility now? It seems not, with angry demonstrations about everything and everybody he has anything to do with, without regard for who or what they are, but just because they are Trump's. And the demonstrators seem to not really know what they are demonstrating against or what remedy they hope for. At least during the draft and civil rights demonstrations of my youth, the demonstrators knew what they wanted - no draft, no war, more civil rights.
My memory goes back to Eisenhower. Seen changes in power from one party to another many times. Never saw a reaction like this. Hope to never see it again. I think it is shameful.
JMHOs.
(This post was last modified: 02-13-2017 01:02 PM by OptimisticOwl.)
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