The Donald Trump Thread

Far.From.Here said:
I think everything that is written or spoken has some bias. To say flatly that the NYT or other MSM lie and distort is to undermine the reality that there are many hard working honest people in the media who are utterly committed to uncovering the truth. Just like saying all politicians are crooked. It just doesn't work. There are honest people in gov't who want nothing more than to advance the quality of life for humanity.
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I said it flatly because I have seen with my own eyes that NYT and other outlets have outright lied about situations, twisted reports, on issues and situations, that, yes, I have seen with my own eyes.

Yeah, I believe there are honest people in all industries, including journalism. But then they get beaten down by the top. They either conform, or they leave.
 
Regarding the Sweden issue, this is a series of tweets from Jake Hanrahan, a freelance journalist and filmmaker who has worked for VICE News and HBO:

"Thread: Both left and right are talking a lot of nonsense about the situation in #Malmo. I was there four weeks ago, reporting on the fatal shooting of 16-year-old Ahmed Obaid, an Iraqi-Swede immigrant with a bright future ahead of him. Here’s some actual info for anyone not interested in the shrieking leftist eye covering or racist right wing exaggeration that is surrounding #Malmo atm. Ahmed (police, family & gang members all agree he was innocent & not affiliated with gangs) was one of three murders in Malmo in Jan 2017. In that month, there were 13 shootings, a small IED explosion and a hand grenade thrown into the lobby of a police station. Statistically this was a sharp increase in violence. People pretending there's no problem with gang violence in #Malmo need to get real.

"The problems in #Malmo stem from many things. One big issue is how the Swedish government seems to have pushed its large migrant population in #Malmo into a corner and tried to forget about them. This, coupled with the lack of employment and easy access to weapons across from Denmark and from the Balkans, has of course created a problem. The unemployment rate for foreign-born men between 16 and 64 in #Malmo is 30%. That compares with 8% nationally. High unemployment means more chaos, as is pretty much the case universally. This, of course, is not exclusive to migrant communities (despite what the Trump lot with their half mast Pepe hard-ons and Wotsit fingers might claim). A lack of skilled work, discrimination, housing issues, failed assimilation and ridiculously lenient laws toward violence (sorry lefties) all plays a role in the very real problems Malmo is facing. There’s also a huge lack of support for the police in #Malmo from the Swedish government. They don’t have enough officers, are under resourced & with Sweden's laws their power to lock up criminals they do catch, is diminished. Police in #Malmo seized ~600 weapons in 2016. Some semi-auto rifles & hand grenades. From ’16 there’re also 13 currently unsolved murders.

"Whilst reporting in #Malmo, I spoke to the family of Ahmed Obaid, a gangster parading around the streets in a bullet proof vest, and with a policeman about all of this. They all agreed, that yes, there IS a big problem in #Malmo and it is being largely ignored. Unfortunately it’s now blown up (excuse the pun) in a way that isn’t currently shedding light on anything of substance. You have the right wing pretending there are no go zones (there aren’t, that’s bullshit), non-stop rape and daily explosions, and you have the left who’re pretending it’s all milk, honey and racist propaganda. Ignoring the situation in #Malmo doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, and exaggerating why doesn’t make it so. Tl;dr - #Malmo has a problem with gang related violence, but this cannot be blamed entirely on immigrants, it also cannot be ignored."

As suspected, the truth is somewhere between the extremes.
 
Atticus said:
Regarding the Sweden issue, this is a series of tweets from Jake Hanrahan, a freelance journalist and filmmaker who has worked for VICE News and HBO:

"Thread: Both left and right are talking a lot of nonsense about the situation in #Malmo. I was there four weeks ago, reporting on the fatal shooting of 16-year-old Ahmed Obaid, an Iraqi-Swede immigrant with a bright future ahead of him. Here’s some actual info for anyone not interested in the shrieking leftist eye covering or racist right wing exaggeration that is surrounding #Malmo atm. Ahmed (police, family & gang members all agree he was innocent & not affiliated with gangs) was one of three murders in Malmo in Jan 2017. In that month, there were 13 shootings, a small IED explosion and a hand grenade thrown into the lobby of a police station. Statistically this was a sharp increase in violence. People pretending there's no problem with gang violence in #Malmo need to get real.

"The problems in #Malmo stem from many things. One big issue is how the Swedish government seems to have pushed its large migrant population in #Malmo into a corner and tried to forget about them. This, coupled with the lack of employment and easy access to weapons across from Denmark and from the Balkans, has of course created a problem. The unemployment rate for foreign-born men between 16 and 64 in #Malmo is 30%. That compares with 8% nationally. High unemployment means more chaos, as is pretty much the case universally. This, of course, is not exclusive to migrant communities (despite what the Trump lot with their half mast Pepe hard-ons and Wotsit fingers might claim). A lack of skilled work, discrimination, housing issues, failed assimilation and ridiculously lenient laws toward violence (sorry lefties) all plays a role in the very real problems Malmo is facing. There’s also a huge lack of support for the police in #Malmo from the Swedish government. They don’t have enough officers, are under resourced & with Sweden's laws their power to lock up criminals they do catch, is diminished. Police in #Malmo seized ~600 weapons in 2016. Some semi-auto rifles & hand grenades. From ’16 there’re also 13 currently unsolved murders.

"Whilst reporting in #Malmo, I spoke to the family of Ahmed Obaid, a gangster parading around the streets in a bullet proof vest, and with a policeman about all of this. They all agreed, that yes, there IS a big problem in #Malmo and it is being largely ignored. Unfortunately it’s now blown up (excuse the pun) in a way that isn’t currently shedding light on anything of substance. You have the right wing pretending there are no go zones (there aren’t, that’s bullshit), non-stop rape and daily explosions, and you have the left who’re pretending it’s all milk, honey and racist propaganda. Ignoring the situation in #Malmo doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, and exaggerating why doesn’t make it so. Tl;dr - #Malmo has a problem with gang related violence, but this cannot be blamed entirely on immigrants, it also cannot be ignored."

As suspected, the truth is somewhere between the extremes.
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Thanks for posting that.
 
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In the video (not direct quotes)

The media was wrong about the Trump campaign. They were wrong about the election. Trump won. Now they are wrong about the Trump administration. [If you are getting your news from the media you are misinformed.]

Tump is resisting washington insiders who want him to deviate from his campaign promises or who want to distract him with other issues.Trump and his staff are sticking to and staying focused on fulfilling his campaign promises.

At 12:00 Bannon explains the administration's plans to deconstruct the administrative state That means restoring the rule of law. In immigration ... existing laws will be enforced. Trump will nominate judges that interpret the law literally as passed by congress rather than according to progressive principles. When the left can't get something through congress, they implement it through the government bureaucracies. The Trump administration will undo all of that legislation by bureaucrat.

16:40, Bannon: The corporatist, globalist media are opposed to Trump's economic nationalist agenda.
 
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Key Question About DNC Race: Why Did (Obama) White House Recruit Perez to Run Against Ellison?

But as Ellison’s momentum built, the Obama White House worked to recruit Perez to run against Ellison. They succeeded, and Perez announced his candidacy on December 15 – a full month after Ellison announced. Why did the White House work to recruit someone to sink Ellison? If Perez and Ellison are so ideologically indistinguishable, why was it so important to the Obama circle – and the Clinton circle – to find someone capable of preventing Ellison’s election? What’s the rationale? None has ever been provided.

I can’t recommend Chang’s analysis highly enough on one key aspect of what motivated the recruitment of Perez: to ensure that the Democratic establishment maintains its fatal grip on the party and, in particular, prevent Sanders followers from having any say in the party’s direction and identity...
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As both Chang and Vox’s Jeff Stein have argued, the fact that DNC Chair is a largely functionary position, with little real power over party policy or messaging, is all the more reason to throw Sanders supporters a symbolic bone. If Democrats were smart, this would be the perfect opportunity to capture that energized left-wing movement without having to make any real concessions on what matters most to them: loyalty to their corporate donor base.

But it’s hard to conclude that a party that has navigated itself into such collapse, and which deliberately and knowingly chose the weakest candidate who managed to lose to Donald J. Trump, is one that is thinking wisely and strategically.
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Apparently Trump has said the "press should not be allowed to use anonymous sources, a restriction on free speech he has not suggested before. “You will see stories dry up like you have never seen before,”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...-2017-live-news-day-two-donald-trump#comments

But yeah, he's really sticking it to the swamp, by filling his cabinet with Goldman Sachs heads, Oil Barons and corporate stooges. He's totally in favour of democracy and freedom, he says whilst attacking a cornerstone of healthy democracy. He's completely in favour of transparency, whilst he continues to hold business interests in foreign countries, who themselves can manipulate Trump. Jesus H Christ this is preposterous.
 
politicaljunkie said:
Oop, he's now banning certain media orgs from the next press briefing. Totally freedom loving. "If you cut out a man's tougne, you aren't silencing him, you fear what he has to say."

Sorry, that should have been "when you tear out a man's tongue you don't prove him a liar..."
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To be fair, if my memory is correct Obama's combative attitude toward FOX News arguably opened the door for this.
 
Sciborg_S_Patel said:
To be fair, if my memory is correct Obama's combative attitude toward FOX News arguably opened the door for this.
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Being combative is different to banning certain media from a press briefing. Look, there's plenty of things I'm uncomfortable with Obama on. He's done nothing to counter the increased militarisation of the police, done little to address the war on drugs, and ruthlessly expanded the use of UAVs sometimes killing US citizens without trial in Pakistan and Afghanistan. I appreciate some of this is due to republican obstruction to some degree, but on the other hand some of the blame invariably falls with him.

I do however concur with David From in his recent long article in the Atlantic. That some of the seeds of authoritarianism were both laid by Obama and Bush despite it not being their intentions.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazin...to-build-an-autocracy/513872/?utm_source=feed

Over the past generation, we have seen ominous indicators of a breakdown of the American political system: the willingness of congressional Republicans to push the United States to the brink of a default on its national obligations in 2013 in order to score a point in budget negotiations; Barack Obama’s assertion of a unilateral executive power to confer legal status upon millions of people illegally present in the United States—despite his own prior acknowledgment that no such power existed.

As politics has become polarized, Congress has increasingly become a check only on presidents of the opposite party. Recent presidents enjoying a same-party majority in Congress—Barack Obama in 2009 and 2010, George W. Bush from 2003 through 2006—usually got their way. And congressional oversight might well be performed even less diligently during the Trump administration.
 
Trump got 13.4 million votes in the primaries which is less than half of the 28.9 votes cast in the Republican primaries.

references:
https://qz.com/702521/trump-really-...lican-primary-votes-this-century-technically/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...toric-number-of-people-voted-against-him-too/

This means Trump was not the first choice of most republicans.

In the general election Trump got 62,979,213 out of 136,628,459 total votes.

Reference:
http://cookpolitical.com/story/10174

That means roughly one fifth of the people who voted for Trump in the general election thought he was the best possible candidate.
 
Atticus said:
Regarding the Sweden issue, this is a series of tweets from Jake Hanrahan, a freelance journalist and filmmaker who has worked for VICE News and HBO:

"Thread: Both left and right are talking a lot of nonsense about the situation in #Malmo. I was there four weeks ago, reporting on the fatal shooting of 16-year-old Ahmed Obaid, an Iraqi-Swede immigrant with a bright future ahead of him. Here’s some actual info for anyone not interested in the shrieking leftist eye covering or racist right wing exaggeration that is surrounding #Malmo atm. Ahmed (police, family & gang members all agree he was innocent & not affiliated with gangs) was one of three murders in Malmo in Jan 2017. In that month, there were 13 shootings, a small IED explosion and a hand grenade thrown into the lobby of a police station. Statistically this was a sharp increase in violence. People pretending there's no problem with gang violence in #Malmo need to get real.

"The problems in #Malmo stem from many things. One big issue is how the Swedish government seems to have pushed its large migrant population in #Malmo into a corner and tried to forget about them. This, coupled with the lack of employment and easy access to weapons across from Denmark and from the Balkans, has of course created a problem. The unemployment rate for foreign-born men between 16 and 64 in #Malmo is 30%. That compares with 8% nationally. High unemployment means more chaos, as is pretty much the case universally. This, of course, is not exclusive to migrant communities (despite what the Trump lot with their half mast Pepe hard-ons and Wotsit fingers might claim). A lack of skilled work, discrimination, housing issues, failed assimilation and ridiculously lenient laws toward violence (sorry lefties) all plays a role in the very real problems Malmo is facing. There’s also a huge lack of support for the police in #Malmo from the Swedish government. They don’t have enough officers, are under resourced & with Sweden's laws their power to lock up criminals they do catch, is diminished. Police in #Malmo seized ~600 weapons in 2016. Some semi-auto rifles & hand grenades. From ’16 there’re also 13 currently unsolved murders.

"Whilst reporting in #Malmo, I spoke to the family of Ahmed Obaid, a gangster parading around the streets in a bullet proof vest, and with a policeman about all of this. They all agreed, that yes, there IS a big problem in #Malmo and it is being largely ignored. Unfortunately it’s now blown up (excuse the pun) in a way that isn’t currently shedding light on anything of substance. You have the right wing pretending there are no go zones (there aren’t, that’s bullshit), non-stop rape and daily explosions, and you have the left who’re pretending it’s all milk, honey and racist propaganda. Ignoring the situation in #Malmo doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, and exaggerating why doesn’t make it so. Tl;dr - #Malmo has a problem with gang related violence, but this cannot be blamed entirely on immigrants, it also cannot be ignored."

As suspected, the truth is somewhere between the extremes.
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Aye, Sweden will have a general election some time between now, and Sept 2018.

You can see the effect of immigration feeding through into the birth rate...

http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=sw&v=25

...and fertility rate...

http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=sw&v=31

You can also see the rise of the right (yellow) in Swedish polls...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_Swedish_general_election,_2018

We see the same in France, and Germany...

I did some research into an None Governmental Organisation (NGO) who was saving refugees fleeing from North Africa, and depositing them in Italy... MOAS. They were using very expensive drone equipment from a military equipment manufacturer, and in published interviews, the very well educated American founder of the NGO (Chris Catrambone) said he didn't want to reveal where his funding was coming from.

It was pretty obvious from some third party investigations into this NGO, that they were involved in a deliberate effort to ship thousands of refugees into Europe.

https://gefira.org/en/2016/11/16/moas-is-there-to-pick-you-up/

I guess we have to look behind the headlines, and look to whom benefits...
 
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politicaljunkie said:
Being combative is different to banning certain media from a press briefing.
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Correct me if I'm wrong but Obama did plan to begin excluding Fox News from access, but this was protested by other members of the press?

I'm not excusing Trump, anymore than I want to excuse the Democratic elite, I'm just saying political divisions superseding longstanding protocols/traditions/expectations of government is bad. It's in line with your own post, though I'm not as willing to say Bush/Obama were so unintentional in their executive over-reach.

The temptation of the strong executive on one's own side is just too tempting - note the National Review article on limited government I posted a few pages back.
 
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