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**Unregistered** · 01-10-2019, 06:47 PM

Originally posted by Unregistered View Post

He also rejected an effort by Lindsay Graham and a block of Republicans to end the shutdown. He absolutely owns it. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/...utdown-1096118

Meanwhile Air Traffic controllers and airline pilots are worried about public safety, the FDA is trying to figure out how to get food inspections running (public safety), the FBI says it has the shutdown has to end (safety), TSA agents and Coast Guard not getting paid (safety).

Evolution of trump

Mexico is paying for wall!

Wall will pay for itself on month by month basis !

Buck stops with everybody!

**Unregistered** · 01-10-2019, 07:33 PM

Fun fact: more Americans were killed by contaminated lettuce than illegal aliens last year. The FDA isn't inspecting food right now.

**Unregistered** · 01-10-2019, 08:21 PM

I'm hearing the way Trump will cave is to declare a national emergency and redesignate military funds for his wall. Then Congress and Trump will pass legislation that begins funding the gov't again.

*Everyone* knows, Trump included, that an emergency declaration/reappropriation-of-funds will be tied up in court for a long time. This plan is fine with Dems because they get what they want. Trump is hoping that his lickspittle base won't recognize that he's caving. Fools that they are, they won't.

**Unregistered** · 01-10-2019, 08:41 PM

Allen Lichtman, an American political historian, had correctly predicted three decades of presidential elections when he made the surprising forecast in 2016 that Donald Trump would win. Perhaps he was aware of Russian attacks on our election before the rest of us (he did co-create the prediction model with a Russian seismologist). Either way, he has often been accurate when making political prognostications. Lichtman�s latest forecast does not bode well for Trump.

In a recent interview, Lichtman stated that he believes Trump will be impeached this year. �If [Special Counsel Robert] Mueller comes up with some devastating findings, the Democratic base will demand impeachment,� he stated. �I think [Trump] is in grave peril from the Mueller probe.� Sure, at this point it seems abundantly clear that the new Democratic House majority will vote to impeach, but, according to Lichtman, Trump�s endangerment does not end there.

Lichtman also foresees there being enough votes in the Senate to remove Trump as well. �I can�t believe [Mueller] has been working all this time just to say: Sorry, nothing to see here,� said Lichtman. �I think there are going to be some very serious findings from Mueller directly tying the Trump campaign to the Russians.� He went on to mention that Trump�s increasing chances of being removed from office are not only due to the Mueller investigation, citing the multitude of other investigations into Trump and his family.

With additional indictments from Mueller�s investigation almost certainly dropping sometime in the near future, Lichtman predicts enough Republican Senators will fear for their own future reelection if they remain staunch allies to Trump. �The way in which Trump could be impeached and removed would be if Republicans think he is going to drag them down with him,� said Lichtman. �They don�t have any personal loyalty to Trump. They are worried about antagonizing his base and losing Republican primaries. But if they think he is going to be a political liability, they may be willing to abandon him.� While there are several of Lichtman�s previous predictions I wish never came true, this is one we can certainly hope comes to fruition.

**Unregistered** · 01-10-2019, 09:04 PM

As chaos reigns and Donald Trump�s reckoning with Robert Mueller draws near, the question persists � why is Trump�s base so obdurate in its loyalty to a dangerously unstable and incompetent president? One answer is particularly disturbing: for millions of Americans, Trump�s pervasive lies are culturally and psychologically addictive. They have become his means of survival.

Even now, Trump�s mendacity astonishes ― witness his repeated assertions that droves of violent terrorists are assaulting our southern border, or his plainly false claim that government workers support his petulant shutdown. But his perpetual dishonesty obscures a related pathology which makes him as dangerous to our climate as he is to the rule of law: the comprehensive incomprehension of his own intellectual deficiencies which melds him with his followers.

Not only is Trump ignorant of his ignorance but, as George Will put it, �he does not know what it is to know something.� Thus the biggest lie of all: his assertions of universal expertise.

Repeatedly, Trump claims that �nobody knows more than I do� regarding a multitude of complex subjects: energy, the debt, the Federal Reserve, fiscal policy, trade, tariffs, infrastructure, immigration, border security, fighting ISIS and military strategy in general � exemplified, most recently, by his precipitous decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria over the vehement objection of his advisers, Congress, and experts across the ideological spectrum. Paradigmatically, Trump dismissed the dire National Climate Assessment without glancing at the world all around us: �People like me, we have very high levels of intelligence, but we�re not necessarily such believers.�

Even for a self-anointed �genius,� Trump�s range impresses. That�s the problem. True geniuses are disinclined to proclaim their gifts, and perceive the infinity of what they can never know.

By contrast, Trump is a classic exemplar of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, named for two psychologists who demonstrated that the less knowledgeable and competent you are, the more you believe in your own superlative abilities. Such benighted folks not only �reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.�

Our president personifies this to a frightening degree. That explains his embarrassing search for a chief of staff, and the resignation of James Mattis in protest over Syria: Trump lurches from crisis to crisis, foreign and domestic, deaf to the voices of knowledge and experience. And so the few capable advisers he has are supplanted by incompetents who coddle his groundless and dangerous conceits ― condemning us to a president whose unilateral actions grow ever more unhinged.

But the worst of it is this: Trump became president because the Dunning-Kruger Effect increasingly pervades the country which elected him ― converting his blustery contempt for knowledge into a political asset. The noted academic Tom Nichols illuminated our collective cognitive decline in a telling article �How America Lost Faith in Expertise.�

Nichols offered a jaw-dropping example. In 2015, Public Policy Polling asked primary voters in both parties whether they would support bombing Agrabah � the fictional country in the Disney film �Aladdin.� Nearly one-third of Republicans favored bombing; only 13 percent were opposed. Democrats� percentages were roughly reversed. Aside from confirming stereotypes � hawkish Republicans, dovish Democrats � half those responding expressed opinions on whether America should bomb a cartoon country.

One laughs. But the very serious concern, Nichols suggests, is that Americans have reached a point where ignorance � at least regarding public policy � has become a virtue.

This contempt for expertise helps bond Trump to his followers. To reject established knowledge enables the angry or insecure to assert their autonomy from a despised elite ― including specialists in areas like climate science and global economics. Informed debate devolves into a mindless fusion of vituperation and misinformation.

Why? One cause, Nichols argues, is that the complexity of modern life engenders feelings of helplessness among Americans who feel increasingly subordinate to sophisticated experts. As it grows harder to comprehend complex subjects � climate change leaps to mind � they seize upon assertions, however bogus, that corroborate what they wish to believe. Donald Trump is their enabler in chief.

This phenomenon is particularly acute in shaping our opinions about politics, decoupling our most visceral biases and illusions from the need for objective verification. Thus a 2015 study by scholars at Ohio State found that both liberals and conservatives discounted scientific theories which contradicted their beliefs � and, when challenged, doubted science instead of themselves.

In this swampland of subjectivity, opinions justify themselves simply by existing, creating a thickening fog of incomprehension where expertise competes with bunk. The result is a pernicious intellectual populism in which everyone�s opinion, regardless of its basis, is as good as anyone else�s. All one needs to validate a preposterous assertion is to express it.

That�s Trump.

His voters elected him by ignoring the most obvious requirement of global leadership: that presidents must both understand the challenges of governance in a complex world and be aware that, because their knowledge is finite, they need informed advice to help them govern wisely. Trump�s accession marked the democratization of ignorance, empowering a dangerously self-obsessed demagogue who, devoid of learning and discernment, portrays himself as sufficient to all things.

For those supporters, Trump�s belligerent ignorance on a multiplicity of subjects is a source of comfort and affirmation, the psychic glue through which Trump simplifies an all-too-complicated world. Even should Mueller reveal damning evidence of Trump�s enthrallment by Russia, their craving for what he gives them is too primal to shake. If they need to believe whatever Trump says, most will.

Critical to this polarization is the widespread decline of respect for Trump�s favorite target, the mainstream media � outlets with actual journalistic standards � in preference for divisive social media. Equally problematic, self�selected virtual communities are supplanting actual relationships between people of differing views and backgrounds, intensifying the tendency of more Americans to view each other as enemies ― and for millions to see Trump as their avatar.

These communal bubbles have become increasingly impermeable, their occupants ever more susceptible to disinformation and manipulation. Inevitably, this suffocates our capacity for critical thought � mirroring, and empowering, Trump�s political needs and intellectual and psychological incapacities.

Central to his survival in office is the deliberate destruction of our shared belief that verifiable truth is the indispensable foundation of political discourse. As our societal agreement about credible sources and objective fact diminishes, so does our means of resistance to baseless theories and political quackery ― affecting even the skeptical and well-informed.

This fact-free environment provided Trump a credulous audience unwilling, or unable, to perceive his constant lies and lethal grandiosity � or care about the democratic institutions and traditions he seeks to override. Kellyanne Conway�s �alternative facts� nourish the alternative reality in which Trump inflames his own American tribe against �enemies� like Robert Mueller.

Trump�s Lotusland has dedicated soothsayers ― Breitbart, Infowars, Hannity, Limbaugh ― buttressing a class system of the mind which separates those addicted to propaganda from those who are not. Like other class systems, this perpetuates itself ― enhancing the danger that Trump�s presidency will not be sui generis, but a banefully instructive prototype.

If we are to survive as a civil society, this cannot continue. Schools must emphasize civic education and Internet and media literacy � the ability to question and research. In a time when resources for good journalism are shrinking, building strong nonprofit news sources must become a philanthropic priority.

Finally, we must renew our personal and political commitment to reach America�s varied communities, and the actual people who live there � our fellow citizens. That means addressing the realities which define their daily lives, surmounting false palliatives through empathy and, yes, knowledge.

Unless and until this happens, we will pay a terrible price. Just how terrible is likely to be revealed yet again as this New Year brings us new revelations about Trump�s multiple violations of law and entanglement with Russia, and millions of Americans treat Mueller�s report like a political Rorschach test � its meaning distorted by their own internal landscape.

**Unregistered** · 01-11-2019, 06:30 AM

Originally posted by Unregistered View Post

He also rejected an effort by Lindsay Graham and a block of Republicans to end the shutdown. He absolutely owns it. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/...utdown-1096118

Meanwhile Air Traffic controllers and airline pilots are worried about public safety, the FDA is trying to figure out how to get food inspections running (public safety), the FBI says it has the shutdown has to end (safety), TSA agents and Coast Guard not getting paid (safety).

Tensions rising at federal prisons as guards aren't getting paid, some not showing up for work. Vandals at the unmanned Joshua Tree National Park cut down 300+ year old trees

**Unregistered** · 01-11-2019, 06:34 AM

Originally posted by Unregistered View Post

I'm hearing the way Trump will cave is to declare a national emergency and redesignate military funds for his wall. Then Congress and Trump will pass legislation that begins funding the gov't again.

*Everyone* knows, Trump included, that an emergency declaration/reappropriation-of-funds will be tied up in court for a long time. This plan is fine with Dems because they get what they want. Trump is hoping that his lickspittle base won't recognize that he's caving. Fools that they are, they won't.

A bunch of Republicans led by Lindsay Graham proposed a way to open the government back up yesterday and Trump yet again turned it down.

The only emergency to Trump is his presidency going down in flames. It's of his own making. Not one American citizen should have to suffer because of it.

**Unregistered** · 01-11-2019, 08:39 AM

Even most cons likely can't abide by diverting FEMA funds from disaster victims to build the folly-wall. He's also threatening diverting military money, another nonstarter for most on the right.

If it's such an urgent emergency why hasn't he sent 30,000 troops to the border right now? Because it isn't an emergency. His dog and pony show yesterday was a joke considering the drugs the showed were at stopped at ports of entry/roads. That's how most drugs come in from Mexico, however the vast majority come by boat and air, even the mail. A wall won't make a dent in that issue.

**Unregistered** · 01-11-2019, 08:43 AM

Hypocrites.

He puts troops at the border, Libs complain.

He doesn't put troops at the border, Libs complain.

Idiotic lib press stands in front of a wall and says "look, nobody crossing"....

Can't make this up. Really, I did a lot of creative writing through school and published a few things, and I'm not even creative enough to make today's climate up.

Trump's a fool, we get it. You don't get many arguments about that. It's turned into a race to the bottom and what I thought he's win by a large margin, is actually neck and neck right now...

**Unregistered** · 01-11-2019, 09:04 AM

https://media.townhall.com/Townhall/...0110074515.jpg

**Unregistered** · 01-11-2019, 09:15 AM

How to lose the shutdown showdown
https://theweek.com/articles/816867/...tdown-showdown

Small-government Republicans have long insisted that federal workers do very little that's essential � that most are paper-pushers collecting larded up paychecks and absurdly generous benefits in return for loyalty to the Democratic Party (through both votes for Democratic candidates and union dues that reliably end up lining party coffers). Focusing on the suffering of these employees during the shutdown, however humane it might be, tacitly confirms this narrative by making it look like the primary concern of the Democratic Party is the plight of federal workers rather than the good of the country as a whole.

**Unregistered** · 01-11-2019, 09:49 AM

Originally posted by Unregistered View Post

How to lose the shutdown showdown
https://theweek.com/articles/816867/...tdown-showdown

Small-government Republicans have long insisted that federal workers do very little that's essential � that most are paper-pushers collecting larded up paychecks and absurdly generous benefits in return for loyalty to the Democratic Party (through both votes for Democratic candidates and union dues that reliably end up lining party coffers). Focusing on the suffering of these employees during the shutdown, however humane it might be, tacitly confirms this narrative by making it look like the primary concern of the Democratic Party is the plight of federal workers rather than the good of the country as a whole.

Immigration reform needs to be debated. But it's a complex issue that shouldn't be tied to the current budget. That was Trump's mistake (although his bigger mistake was to turn down the original offer of $20B in exchange for DACA). Even most cons don't want to see people hurting over this (and plenty of those suffering are cons themselves, either directly or indirectly). Personal stories work. Most Americans think the wall is stupid anyway. You don't get numbers like this below without many in the GOP disagreeing with Trump. Same with the congressional GOP.

"The national opinion poll, which ran from Jan. 1 to Jan. 7, found that 51 percent of adults believe Trump �deserves most of the blame� for the shutdown, which entered its 18th day on Tuesday. That is up 4 percentage points from a similar poll that ran from Dec. 21 to 25.
Another 32 percent blame congressional Democrats for the shutdown and 7 percent blame congressional Republicans, according to the poll...It also found that only 35 percent of adults in the United States support a congressional spending bill that includes funding for the wall, and 25 percent support Trump�s decision to keep the government closed until Congress approves funding for the wall." https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKCN1P223U

**Unregistered** · 01-11-2019, 09:59 AM

I discount any poll that says "Trump is to blame" right out of hand. Sorry, but people only know what they read, and unless you take the time to research you only getting one side of the story. Whether that story be Fox's, CNN's, MSNBC's, Talking-Soccer's.