[Discussion] Hope to Remember The Trump Administration Thread as being 'transparent and honest'

Let's follow and discuss what our newest presidential administration gets up to, the good, the bad, the lawsuits, and the many many indictments.

mudbunny wrote:

It has been like that for at least 5 years

Trump works fast.

But think of all the ad revenue they lost from not being able to charge for commercials in both markets! Won't someone think of the billionaires?

Those billions will trickle down any day now.

ugh. Part of me feels like I should watch the SOTU tonight. Another part of me wants nothing to do with seeing or listening to Trump blather on.

It will be easier for my stress levels to not watch and read all the "highlights" tomorrow.
Otherwise I will be interjecting FU throughout the live speech.

JC wrote:

ugh. Part of me feels like I should watch the SOTU tonight. Another part of me wants nothing to do with seeing or listening to Trump blather on.

Don’t watch it. That mother f*cker barges in on our lives constantly and doesn’t deserve a fraction of the headspace he takes up. Ignore him, watch the rebuttal online or the recap later.

All he cares about is ratings anyway.

I never watched Obama's SotUs, I'm not going to watch Trump's.

JC wrote:

ugh. Part of me feels like I should watch the SOTU tonight. Another part of me wants nothing to do with seeing or listening to Trump blather on.

I wish i still had live tv (and a ratings box) so I could make a conscious decision not to watch that garbage, but still turn on the tv for the response.

OG_slinger wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

Here's a question that's worth asking: I know the assumption is that "executive time" is Trump's time for sh*t posting on Twitter and imbibing Fox, but is it possible that "executive time" is being used by a notoriously opaque and secretive administration to avoid the requirement that Trump’s schedule be recorded? Like, is "executive time" being used to meet with people who it would be problematic for Trump to be known to be meeting with?

No, it's the accepted euphemism for Trump being a lazy f*ck who just wants to watch TV, talk to his friends outside advisors, attend rallies, and do things that make him look important and powerful like signing things.

Following up on this, the Washington Post compared Trump's tweets with his schedule to get a better idea of what "executive time" is, and the answer isn't entirely clear.

He and his team tend to mush together all of his unstructured time — including obviously nonproductive time watching cable news shows — as being work periods. It’s similar, in some ways, to how the administration will only rarely admit that the president is playing golf. At one point, former press secretary Sean Spicer suggested that Trump was making calls and holding meetings at his golf clubs, not necessarily hitting the links. By incorporating unscheduled call and meeting time in any way with Trump’s preferred leisure activities, those activities get blurred into an argument that the president constantly has his nose to the grindstone.
The impression we get from Trump’s leaked schedules, really, is that Trump’s day doesn’t generally start until 11 a.m. Before that, he seems to be engaged in the sort of executive time that his critics disparage: lots of watching television and tweeting about things that are on his mind. After that initial block, though, his executive time bears fewer of those hallmarks, looking more like the sort of unstructured-but-productive time his advocates suggest make up much of his day.

The answer seems to be a bit of "por que no los dos", really. Trump's executive time seems to be both sh*t posting about Fox News and a stew of productive and unproductive meetings and activities with God only knows who.

I was just watching at Top Tenz video on the Nazis and maybe I'm projecting, but the parallels between this administration and the Nazis were were striking. For instance, Stephen Miller seems like the modern analog for Goebbels. I just hope we can stop this crazy train before we get to Holocaust version 2.0.

Nevin73 wrote:

I was just watching at Top Tenz video on the Nazis and maybe I'm projecting, but the parallels between this administration and the Nazis were were striking. For instance, Stephen Miller seems like the modern analog for Goebbels. I just hope we can stop this crazy train before we get to Holocaust version 2.0.

We already have concentration camps along our southern border filling up with kids.

Maybe we can stop it before we invade Venezuela for their oil.

We had a shutdown that crippled 800,000 households and who knows how many others due to the people effected by lack of or understaffed government services.

Seth wrote:
Nevin73 wrote:

I was just watching at Top Tenz video on the Nazis and maybe I'm projecting, but the parallels between this administration and the Nazis were were striking. For instance, Stephen Miller seems like the modern analog for Goebbels. I just hope we can stop this crazy train before we get to Holocaust version 2.0.

We already have concentration camps along our southern border filling up with kids.

Maybe we can stop it before we invade Venezuela for their oil.

Yeah, something that gets missed is that by the formal definition we're already committing genocide by ripping these children away from their families, many permanently. And some have died. We're not at gas chambers yet, but don't mistake the plausible deniability and indirect murder for innocence: the sin at our southern border has already spilled blood.

Note though that gerontopeditricians say unstructured time is important in the development of man-babies.

The Trump Organization has fired at least 18 undocumented workers, mostly from Latin America, that the NYT and WaPo found were working at five Trump golf courses in New York and New Jersey.

Buried in the article was this little tidbit:

WaPo wrote:

The Trump Organization said last week it would start using the E-Verify electronic system to check the immigration status of all of its employees. The system allows employers to check the documents that employees provide against U.S. government records.

So the motherf*cker who's about to go on national TV and say that undocumented immigrants pose a clear and present danger to the country hasn't been using a readily available system specifically designed to prevent companies from hiring undocumented immigrants and thereby help decrease illegal immigration?

Perhaps instead of locking up the children of undocumented immigrants we should be throwing the CEOs and owners of companies who employ those undocumented immigrants in cold concrete holding cell somewhere in the desert.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

In Slack this morning, maverickz and Quintin Stone put together two curious little tidbits. First, this quote from Trump's appearance on Face the Nation:

Trump wrote:

"I did them a big favor in negotiating the USMCA, which is basically the replacement to NAFTA, which is one of the worst trade deals ever made. And I said to Canada, look we have a great American company known as the NFL, and they were being hurt and treated unfairly, the NFL, by Canada for a long time."

And if you're wondering, "How on earth was the NFL hurt by NAFTA?", well, here's the second part:

Patriots Owner Pushed Trump to Help NFL with Trade Issue

President Trump prioritized a key issue for the NFL in trade negotiations with Canada last year after a call from New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, according to a report by the Los Angeles Times.

[…] Trump asked Canadian officials to renew a rule that requires Canadian advertisements to be broadcast in Canada during broadcasts of the Super Bowl, regardless of whether the game feed is on a Canadian or American broadcast.

[…] A White House official told the Times that American negotiators said “there’s no deal without it” during negotiations on a new North American Free Trade Agreement, even though the issue didn’t seem as important as other high-profile issues.

So that's how the NFL was being hurt. Potential lost ad revenue. Poor lambs.

Also, why I'm not a fan of the NFL:

[NFL Commissioner Roger] Goodell called Trump to thank him for the demand on the commercials, the Times reported, and later issued a statement offering praise for Trump’s leadership.

You scratch my back, I flatter your ego.

I heard on NPR that the entire NFL was, revenue wise, about the size of Sherwin Williams Paint company and that all of professional sports in America was roughly the size of the cardboard box industry.

Lovely to see that a president is willing to f*ck up an international trade agreement in favor of a segment of the economy as significant as 1/3 of the residential painting industry.

If you want numbers to depress you about how politicized they are, look up how many coal workers there are in the US and then how many employees Arby's has.

Spoiler:

83k vs 2.2 million.

SallyNasty wrote:

If you want numbers to depress you about how politicized they are, look up how many coal workers there are in the US and then how many employees Arby's has.

Spoiler:

83k vs 2.2 million.

I'm gonna take a wild guess that coal workers are a lot whiter than Arby's employees.

Jonman wrote:
SallyNasty wrote:

If you want numbers to depress you about how politicized they are, look up how many coal workers there are in the US and then how many employees Arby's has.

Spoiler:

83k vs 2.2 million.

I'm gonna take a wild guess that coal workers are a lot whiter than Arby's employees.

Grandpappy putting in a long hard day at the Arby's to build this country isn't a part of our national identity.

oilypenguin wrote:
Jonman wrote:
SallyNasty wrote:

If you want numbers to depress you about how politicized they are, look up how many coal workers there are in the US and then how many employees Arby's has.

Spoiler:

83k vs 2.2 million.

I'm gonna take a wild guess that coal workers are a lot whiter than Arby's employees.

Grandpappy putting in a long hard day at the Arby's to build this country isn't a part of our national identity.

. You never hear about his beef lung either.

I guess you haven't had their french dip!

My wife is from coal country in eastern KY. Her great-grandfather was a miner and, because he was numerate, helped a lot of the other miners with their paychecks when the companies routinely underpaid them. According to her, he'd be appalled if any of his descendants went back into the mines; he did that crappy job so they could do something better.

qaraq wrote:

My wife is from coal country in eastern KY. Her great-grandfather was a miner and, because he was numerate, helped a lot of the other miners with their paychecks when the companies routinely underpaid them. According to her, he'd be appalled if any of his descendants went back into the mines; he did that crappy job so they could do something better.

Funny, in the same NPR story I referenced above, a retired NFL player was asked if he would let his kid play football and he said something to the effect of "I played because I came from poverty. My kids come from means. Playing football for them would be a gigantic step backward.".

Paleocon wrote:
qaraq wrote:

My wife is from coal country in eastern KY. Her great-grandfather was a miner and, because he was numerate, helped a lot of the other miners with their paychecks when the companies routinely underpaid them. According to her, he'd be appalled if any of his descendants went back into the mines; he did that crappy job so they could do something better.

Funny, in the same NPR story I referenced above, a retired NFL player was asked if he would let his kid play football and he said something to the effect of "I played because I came from poverty. My kids come from means. Playing football for them would be a gigantic step backward.".

This is such a weird ass country.

During the Super Bowl I was a snarky asshole on this message board and on Facebook, but it's because I honestly think the death of some of America's cultural icons would be healthy.

It would be healthy if people stopped watching the Super Bowl and the NFL shriveled up.

The "Breads and Circus" function that the NFL serves currently isn't doing the job these days. Instead it's a giant overloaded spectacle of violence, head trauma and completely amoral capitalism. It would be really healthy if more people thought like him and the sport eventually died.

Maybe the future kid who finds himself in that player's shoes could grow up in a society that prized taking care of each other, providing a living wage, etc. instead of forcing the poor to literally risk their lives for the amusement of everyone else.

DSGamer wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
qaraq wrote:

My wife is from coal country in eastern KY. Her great-grandfather was a miner and, because he was numerate, helped a lot of the other miners with their paychecks when the companies routinely underpaid them. According to her, he'd be appalled if any of his descendants went back into the mines; he did that crappy job so they could do something better.

Funny, in the same NPR story I referenced above, a retired NFL player was asked if he would let his kid play football and he said something to the effect of "I played because I came from poverty. My kids come from means. Playing football for them would be a gigantic step backward.".

This is such a weird ass country.

During the Super Bowl I was a snarky asshole on this message board and on Facebook, but it's because I honestly think the death of some of America's cultural icons would be healthy.

It would be healthy if people stopped watching the Super Bowl and the NFL shriveled up.

The "Breads and Circus" function that the NFL serves currently isn't doing the job these days. Instead it's a giant overloaded spectacle of violence, head trauma and completely amoral capitalism. It would be really healthy if more people thought like him and the sport eventually died.

Maybe the future kid who finds himself in that player's shoes could grow up in a society that prized taking care of each other, providing a living wage, etc. instead of forcing the poor to literally risk their lives for the amusement of everyone else.

IN counterpoint: the propoganda machine is actively working against that future

Fox News Laments That Schoolchildren Are Being Taught Fairness

DSGamer wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
qaraq wrote:

My wife is from coal country in eastern KY. Her great-grandfather was a miner and, because he was numerate, helped a lot of the other miners with their paychecks when the companies routinely underpaid them. According to her, he'd be appalled if any of his descendants went back into the mines; he did that crappy job so they could do something better.

Funny, in the same NPR story I referenced above, a retired NFL player was asked if he would let his kid play football and he said something to the effect of "I played because I came from poverty. My kids come from means. Playing football for them would be a gigantic step backward.".

This is such a weird ass country.

During the Super Bowl I was a snarky asshole on this message board and on Facebook, but it's because I honestly think the death of some of America's cultural icons would be healthy.

It would be healthy if people stopped watching the Super Bowl and the NFL shriveled up.

The "Breads and Circus" function that the NFL serves currently isn't doing the job these days. Instead it's a giant overloaded spectacle of violence, head trauma and completely amoral capitalism. It would be really healthy if more people thought like him and the sport eventually died.

Maybe the future kid who finds himself in that player's shoes could grow up in a society that prized taking care of each other, providing a living wage, etc. instead of forcing the poor to literally risk their lives for the amusement of everyone else.

More that a few of my friends refer to the NFL as "Modern day mandingo fighting".

I wouldn't be friends with people who used racism that casually.

DSGamer wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
qaraq wrote:

My wife is from coal country in eastern KY. Her great-grandfather was a miner and, because he was numerate, helped a lot of the other miners with their paychecks when the companies routinely underpaid them. According to her, he'd be appalled if any of his descendants went back into the mines; he did that crappy job so they could do something better.

Funny, in the same NPR story I referenced above, a retired NFL player was asked if he would let his kid play football and he said something to the effect of "I played because I came from poverty. My kids come from means. Playing football for them would be a gigantic step backward.".

This is such a weird ass country.

During the Super Bowl I was a snarky asshole on this message board and on Facebook, but it's because I honestly think the death of some of America's cultural icons would be healthy.

It would be healthy if people stopped watching the Super Bowl and the NFL shriveled up.

The "Breads and Circus" function that the NFL serves currently isn't doing the job these days. Instead it's a giant overloaded spectacle of violence, head trauma and completely amoral capitalism. It would be really healthy if more people thought like him and the sport eventually died.

Maybe the future kid who finds himself in that player's shoes could grow up in a society that prized taking care of each other, providing a living wage, etc. instead of forcing the poor to literally risk their lives for the amusement of everyone else.

I responded to this great post in the NFL thread, as it is getting farther off topic.

SallyNasty wrote:

If you want numbers to depress you about how politicized they are, look up how many coal workers there are in the US and then how many employees Arby's has.

Spoiler:

83k vs 2.2 million.

Coal accounts for roughly 30% of the electricity in the US. Roast beef accounts for a lot less.

I'm not defending the coal industry. It needs to not exist anymore. But, that comparison is just silly.