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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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110 billion bucks in hardware, wasn't it?
He's already losing independents, and the cracks in the GOP's hold on Congress are starting to show (near wins in deep red districts). If the Democrats run a decent candidate who focuses on the right states, Trump should be done.
edited 20th May '17 11:46:48 AM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.Well, barring a terrorist attack (and assuming Trump doesn't botch the response and take heat for it), or a popular overseas war (doubtful), or a massive scandal by the other side (knock on wood); his approval numbers shouldn't improve too much. Democrats will never accept him, and independents don't like his behavior or the fact that his policies will hurt them.
And that's assuming that these investigations don't come to anything more damning.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.Yes, but I'm not getting my hopes up yet. Plus, Pence will still be awful and nothing to celebrate (just a sense of relief that the risk of WW3, trade wars, or NATO imploding is probably heavily reduced).
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.The Economist: Why evangelicals love Donald Trump
The secret lies in the prosperity gospel
MANY titles bestowed on Donald Trump—from president to commander-in-chief—are hard for non-supporters to digest. But the honorific that most puzzles the world, perhaps, is that bestowed by American conservatives who praise the swaggering, thrice-married tycoon as a man of God.
Expect that gulf of perception to grow still wider as Mr Trump embarks on his first presidential trip overseas on May 19th. Sceptics remember Candidate Trump stoking sectarian rage on the campaign trail. They remember a man who proposed a complete ban on Muslim arrivals and scorned Pope Francis as a Mexican “pawn” for questioning his immigration plans. Yet now White House aides call President Trump a leader bent on uniting the great faiths, who will bring a “message of tolerance and of hope to billions” during stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel and Rome.
Sceptics have long suspected that conservative Christians—and above all white evangelical Protestants, who are among his most loyal backers—are embracing the president for a mix of reasons, including worldly politics and tribal loyalties. Opponents assume that is why pious followers overlook such Trumpian sins as pride, wrath and bearing false witness (or fibbing, to use a layman’s term). They note that when Jerry Falwell junior, head of Liberty University, a Christian college, called Mr Trump a “dream president”, he listed achievements that straddle the realms of God and man, from his appointment of a conservative Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch, to his vocal support for Israel.
Some political scientists sound more like anthropologists than theologians when they dissect Mr Trump’s success with whites who call themselves evangelical Protestants and attend church regularly—fully 80% of whom told a recent survey by the Pew Research Centre that they approve of his job performance. Those scholars note that for many whites, notably in small towns and rural areas, adhering to traditional Bible values and embracing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ—to use one common definition of evangelical faith—is another way of saying “I am an upstanding citizen”. Seen that way, piety is hard to untangle from other markers of conservative identity, from gun ownership to feeling the country is going to the dogs.
Still, it is a mistake to seek purely secular explanations for Mr Trump’s bond with religious conservatives. For one thing, the president’s rhetoric is steeped in time-worn stories about a Christian nation under siege. He is the latest in a long line of politicians to cast believers as a faithful remnant, under attack from the sneering forces of modernity. More specifically, Mr Trump’s language is filled with echoes of a much-mocked but potent American religious movement with millions of followers, known by such labels as “positive thinking” or the “prosperity gospel”.
To historians of religion, like Kate Bowler of Duke University, when Mr Trump speaks of spiritual matters his words fairly ring with the cadences of prosperity preachers. In an address to graduating students at Liberty University on May 13th, Mr Trump promised his audience a ���totally brilliant future”, and said that his presidency is “going along very, very well”. He ascribed both happy observations to “major help from God”. Lots of believers credit God for success, but Mr Trump went further. He described an America in which winners make their own dreams come true. He hailed a 98-year-old in the audience whose death by the age of 40 had been predicted by experts. He praised strivers who speak hopes aloud, ignoring doubters, and growled: “Nothing is easier or more pathetic than being a critic.”
That boosterism would sit happily in a sermon by preachers like Joel Osteen, routinely watched by television audiences of 7m, or Creflo Dollar, the Rolls-Royce-owning pastor of an Atlanta megachurch with 30,000 members. This is no accident. As Ms Bowler explained this month at the Faith Angle Forum, a twice-yearly conference about the interplay of politics and religion, as a young man Mr Trump attended a New York church led by Norman Vincent Peale, a “positive thinker” who also officiated at his first marriage. A prosperity preacher, Paula White, spoke at Mr Trump’s inauguration, despite grumbles about her hard-sell techniques, with worshippers prodded to make such “demon-slaying, abundance-bringing” donations as $229, chosen to honour I Chronicles 22:9, with its talk of Solomon earning respite from “enemies on every side”.
Favoured by the Almighty
Prosperity preachers are often dismissed by mainstream theologians as pompadoured hucksters (think Oral Roberts, a pioneering televangelist) or as near-heretics, for suggesting that believers can achieve God-like powers over their own health and wealth. But they reflect a Trumpian worldview. “Blessed”, a book about the prosperity gospel by Ms Bowler, describes the fine line between telling boastful untruths and “positive confession”, by which a bankrupt might thank God for an imaginary gusher of money, or a deathly ill congregant might insist that she is already cured, in the belief that naming a desire will bring it about. Like the Trump family, megachurch pastors and their immaculately groomed wives and children are held up as models of divine favour: winners who have found the rungs of an invisible ladder to success. Prosperity ministries revere celebrity—a Los Angeles church gave Jesus his own star, evoking the ones on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. The movement has deep roots, stretching back to 19th-century touring mesmerists and Pentecostal healers, and to the Depression-era pastor whose version of Psalm 23 began: “The Lord is my Banker, My Credit is Good.”
Not every prosperity worshipper is a Trump voter, not least because many are black. But the movement’s influence on the religious right is hefty, and growing. It is a theology for self-made men who scorn the idea of luck. God gives him “confidence”, the president bragged last year. That is a very American creed.
I feel bad for this being my first thought, but when I read about the Saudi arms deal, my very first thought was to wonder how much of that $110 will end up in Trump's pocket, rather than the US's.
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.Yes, was wondering as well. There be cool things one can build with 110 billion dollars if they appear in check format (questionable), such as a giant desalination plant.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanThe Most Straightforward Op-Ed ever...It's Time to Get Rid of Donald Trump
Never My Fault as an Art Form (with some self-righteousness for flavor): 'WikiLeaks Will Always Be the Bad Boy'
Assange: That is all spin. After Hillary Clinton lost the election, she and her campaign manager John Podesta decided to blame it on FBI director James Comey, on Russia and on Wiki Leaks.
SPIEGEL: The credibility of Wikileaks depends on it being non-partisan, on not having a hidden political agenda.
Assange: Wiki Leaks' credibility with the public depends on our proven record of accuracy. In 10 years, we have published over 10 million documents. Not a single one of them had been proven to be forged. But of course, every source has its own interest. That's a basic law of journalism.
SPIEGEL: Do you know your sources?
Assange: We usually have very good insight into our material to authenticate it. In some cases, that means that we also develop insight into a source.
SPIEGEL: But you can't deny that Wiki Leaks lost a lot of its popularity since it published documents about Hillary Clinton and her campaign.
Assange: What are you saying? If we hadn't published Hillary Clinton's Goldman Sachs speeches, she would have won? Or should we have censured information to favor one candidate? Wiki Leaks will never do that.
SPIEGEL: Increasingly, though, secret services seem to be trying to influence the outcome of elections in foreign countries.
Assange: That may well be.
SPIEGEL: If these secret services are using Wiki Leaks as a useful weapon, you can't just lean back and say: "That may well be."
Assange: Secret services are planting things in the media every day. And if Wiki Leaks is logistically able to publish documents before an election, we will do that - and that's also exactly what the public expects.
SPIEGEL: You don't care if Wiki Leaks influences the outcome of elections?
Assange: Wiki Leaks is made up of human beings who have different political views. But we cannot undermine our publicly given commitments, our publicly stated principles.
SPIEGEL: And these principles require that you publish authentic documents as quickly as possible, regardless of who benefits or is damaged?
Assange: That's our current policy, which might be changed under extreme circumstances.
SPIEGEL: What do you have to say to people who accuse Wiki Leaks, among others, of being responsible for Donald Trump's election as U.S. president?
Assange: Wiki Leaks revealed the dirty tactics of the Clinton campaign. Some voters took it in. It was their free choice to do so. That's their right. That's democracy.
SPIEGEL: As secretary of state, Clinton sought to take action against Wiki Leaks. Was the publication of Democratic Party documents a kind of vendetta?
Assange: That is U.S. East Coast psychobabble. The reason that Wiki Leaks follows its principles is because one man has a problem? No! But here is some historic irony behind it. Clinton was involved in putting our alleged source Chelsea Manning in prison. There seems to be some natural justice.
SPIEGEL: You derived satisfaction from her loss?
Assange: . . .
SPIEGEL: You are smiling.
Assange: On a personal level I would probably get along with her quite well. She is a charismatic person. She is a bit of wonk - like me. A little bit awkward - like me. However, there has to be a line drawn. She decided to destroy the Libyan state. As a result, she fueled the European refugee crisis. We published a lot of her emails on how this unfolded. It seems an inescapable conclusion that she is a war criminal.
SPIEGEL: The initial Wiki Leaks mission statement from 2006 said: "Our primary targets are those highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and Central Eurasia." But we haven't learned much about these countries from your organization.
Assange: That's absolutely false. This wrong impression is the result of navel gazing in the West and the United States. When we publish in languages other than English, in New [Y]ork they don't care.
SPIEGEL: But your biggest scoops, like documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Clinton emails or the recent CIA documents, have all targeted the United States.
Assange: Because the U.S. is an empire with 700 military bases spread across the world. That which exposes American power is of interest worldwide. When we published 2.3 million Syrian documents, including emails from Bashar al- Assad, it wasn't seen as a scoop.
SPIEGEL: If you had the chance to bring down Russian President Vladimir Putin with leaked documents, would you do it?
Assange: We don't publish documents to bring people down. If the documents were authentic, we would publish them. We do not accept censorship. We think freedom of information is what human civilization needs in order to be just and equitable.
SPIEGEL: You don't believe there are any limits to transparency?
Assange: That's not a question for Wiki Leaks. That's a question for society. Each organization has its own role. Police have a role in stopping the mafia. Media has the duty to tell people the truth. That's our primary role. Not censorship.
SPIEGEL: Do you not think there is a danger that an anonymous source could instrumentalize Wiki Leaks?
Assange: Certain media groups have tried to say that in order to excuse themselves for their lack of success and their relatively poor output. Meanwhile many newspapers and magazines have copied Wiki Leaks and are offering the possibility of delivering documents anonymously. Wiki Leaks publishes harder than anyone else. Wiki Leaks is successful through its commitment to its values and through its robustness in the defense of its sources. That attracts sources.
edited 20th May '17 1:35:46 PM by CenturyEye
Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives@PresVillain reminds us of the bygone days off September 2014
TELL SAUDI ARABIA THAT WE DEMAND FREE OIL FOR THE NEXT 10 YEARS! PAY UP! #PresidentSupervillain https://t.co/tjFVirZdza
edited 20th May '17 2:01:38 PM by sgamer82
If true, then that would be seriously damning of Trump and Ivanka.
And once again, the Alabama government is the worst.
Do not obey in advance.
"We'll try to stay serene and calm... when Alabama gets the bomb!"
edited 20th May '17 2:51:20 PM by kkhohoho
I always find myself wondering how many people genuinely believe the "history and heritage" narrative, versus the ones who just fully understand and support the racist implications, or at least don't care about them.
Because regardless of whether it's their true feelings or not they're all going to use that reasoning publicly.
edited 20th May '17 2:55:06 PM by LSBK
My Bull-ometer is going off. Especially since Spicer says that the Investigation wouldn't have stopped because of Comey being fired.
... Guys, is there anyone among you willing to lend an ear over PM? Because I just had my first brush with what may be the weirdest kind of Trump supporter I've seen yet, and the Insane Troll Logic terrified me so much I immediately put a block on any future messages from that person.
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

See, the impression was that these 110 billion are for the US by Saudia. In return they get some undeserved weapon supplies, most likely.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman