Donald Trump 2020

[Pancho 44969]

 

[Bama Chick 28596]

[4th&Five 41586]

I just had one of those moments where I’m still in disbelief that this country elected a known failure, conman and sexual predator to be president. 

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

2 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

I just had one of those moments where I’m still in disbelief that this country elected a known failure, conman and sexual predator to be president. 

This happens to me about once every couple of weeks. It’s a very surreal few minutes, then I fade back into the simulation. 

[JimmyJames 12271]

5 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

I just had one of those moments where I’m still in disbelief that this country elected a known failure, conman and sexual predator to be president. 

The simulation does have a sense of humor.

Once you accept that it all becomes easier.

[TexasEd 8071]

6 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

He already has -- the Chinese are gonna print up hundreds of thousands of fake ballots and mail them in.

But I'd reply that I'd bet the Chinese would put them in as votes for Trump since he gives them such great terms in negotiations. You know, just like the Russians.

 

[Bullneck 19203]

 

 

[FondrenRoad 4378]

1 hour ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Watersports.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/secret-service-drops-dollar25k-for-jet-skis-to-protect-trump-family?ref=home?ref=home

 

 

But aside that:

 

 

  Hide contents

When Trump’s youngest daughter Tiffany visited Serbia with her boyfriend in 2019, lodging for her protective detail cost taxpayers at least $23,000. Hotel rooms for Secret Service agents during her jaunt to the Cannes Film Festival a few months later ran nearly $20,000. And when Tiffany’s sister, and White House adviser, Ivanka jetted down to the Dominican Republic for a luxurious weekend getaway with husband, and fellow White House adviser, Jared Kushner the year before, their security detail’s hotel charges came to almost $60,000.

Trump’s adult sons often travel for Trump Organization business, which results in taxpayer money being spent to protect them while they complete deals that will ultimately enrich the president. A 2017 business trip to a Trump property in Ireland by Eric Trump cost $4,029.85 in limousines and $11,261 in hotel fees for the Secret Service detail accompanying him. A business trip Eric took with his brother Don Jr. to the United Arab Emirates cost taxpayers $230,000.

One of the biggest spenders, however, has been first lady Melania Trump, whose spokesperson once boasted about her being “mindful and responsible when it comes to taxpayer money.” In 2017, the protective detail looking after the president’s wife managed to rack up a $174,000 hotel bill on a day trip to Toronto, and $95,000 in lodging charges during a six-hour stop in Cairo the following year without the first lady even staying the night.

Protecting Trump himself during his extracurricular outings also costs big money. Golf cart rentals for the Secret Service agents who follow Trump on the links have now cost more than half a million dollars. The modified carts can reach speeds of at least 19 miles per hour, roughly five mph faster than a regular cart.

Trump has long criticized his predecessor for spending taxpayer money on personal trips, although his claims ring somewhat hollow in light of his own family’s expenditures.

“The Obama's [sic] Spain vacation cost taxpayers over $476K...They love to spend money,” Trump tweeted in 2012.

“Let's not mince words,” Craig Holman, an ethics expert at D.C. nonprofit Public Citizen, told The Daily Beast. “Trump is costing our country a fortune.”

 

Did Bush 1's adult children get secret service protection everywhere when he was President?  

[Chuckie Finster 22727]

[Blotto 23570]

1 hour ago, Pancho said:

 

Can you imagine being so goddamned stupid that you think Jared Kushner knows a lot about anything, let alone about everything? I guess dotard figures  that anybody who has figured out a way to sniff Ivanka's b-hole every night must be a God. 

[Bama Chick 28596]

He’s such a coward. He never has the guts to fire anyone himself.

[HornPhD 1368]

2 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

I've said it many times, but my in-laws.  Have absolutely no reason to fear anything (have money, have their health, have 4 kids graduated from college and all on their own, have grandkids, own everything) but they are absolutely scared shitless of the world. 

FIL is convinced that AOC is going to take his millions.  Just pass a law on her own, fly in, and empty his bank accounts.  I'm totally serious.

I have a bank account that will ensure his millions are saved. Have him DM me. 

[tx 3 putt 77358]

19 minutes ago, Blotto said:

Can you imagine being so goddamned stupid that you think Jared Kushner knows a lot about anything, let alone about everything? I guess dotard figures  that anybody who has figured out a way to sniff Ivanka's b-hole every night must be a God. 

Ivanka’s  is sacred in trump’s eyes 

[Mapache 1117]

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

33 minutes ago, Blotto said:

Can you imagine being so goddamned stupid that you think Jared Kushner knows a lot about anything, let alone about everything? I guess dotard figures  that anybody who has figured out a way to sniff Ivanka's b-hole every night must be a God. 

In fairness, Javanka was behind the hiring of Paul Manafort and the firing of Lewendowski the last go round.  However, they kind of hit the jackpot with Manafort seeing as how he was a Russian agent and a master of evil. That kind of personnel procurement will be challenging for Jared to replicate.  

[Superhero 8834]

6 hours ago, Okie State said:

Been saying this for a while. I get bombarded with mailers and they're always the same. Fear of immigrants, fear of socialism, fear of taking your guns, fear of tax hikes, fear of the stock market plunging...and on and on and on. Imagine being afraid of everything.

Some fears are real damnit!

[Bookman 4639]

7 hours ago, Blotto said:

I'll give him credit, Trump NEVER misses an opportunity to act like a butthurt little bitch. Dude is on brand 24/7

 

His base LOVES that about him. They see him being a whiny little bitch as being a strong leader who says what they're thinking.

[Bookman 4639]

9 hours ago, JimmyJames said:

You just described FoxNews entire business model. It is profitable. 

Which copied the right-wing talk radio business model.

[Bateshorn 9932]

7 hours ago, 4th&Five said:

I just had one of those moments where I’m still in disbelief that this country elected a known failure, conman and sexual predator to be president. 

Well, the competent governance lady was off putting, while both being too conservative and too liberal, so YOLO!

[Bateshorn 9932]

6 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

In fairness, Javanka was behind the hiring of Paul Manafort and the firing of Lewendowski the last go round.  However, they kind of hit the jackpot with Manafort seeing as how he was a Russian agent and a master of evil. That kind of personnel procurement will be challenging for Jared to replicate.  

That combined with Bannon taking away Trump’s phone the last week of the election and the Comey letter allowed Trump to hit the inside straight on the river.

[HenryJames 66164]

 

[Guest Lobo]

That's gotta sting, Trumpers.  An immigrant saved a state below the Mason-Dixon line because your false messiah could fuck up a can of beans.  

[Francisco 2.0 32421]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/team-trump-frantically-plots-new-ways-to-make-him-feel-good-about-himself

 

Quote

On Tuesday night, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro—whom Donald Trump affectionately calls “my Peter”—decided to dump gasoline on a simmering fire when he sent USA Today a statement that it published as an op-ed in which he slammed Dr. Anthony Fauci for standing in the way of “the president’s courageous decision” making on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Having just downplayed the significance of anti-Fauci talking points that they themselves had sent to media outlets, members of the White House press office were left, once again, to repair the residual damage, insisting that the USA Today opinion piece didn’t go through the “normal White House clearance processes.”

 

Quote

But the fact that Navarro didn’t get official clearance for his statement was largely an irrelevant point. After all, he didn’t need it. According to three individuals familiar with the matter, in the past few months Trump has privately encouraged multiple senior officials and allies, including Navarro, to remind journalists and the American public of how Fauci has been “so wrong”—in the president’s phrasing—in some of his predictions about the coronavirus pandemic. 

Navarro hadn’t “gone rogue,” as one White House official put it. He’d performed the precise task that many in Trump’s orbit have been given in recent days. He pleased the boss.

 

Quote

As Trump’s re-election campaign has struggled to tear down former Vice President Joe Biden with less than four months until Election Day, the president’s staff have devoted considerable resources to finding novel ways to make him feel better about the crumbling world around him. 

They tell him tales of his sagging poll numbers being fake. They’ve concocted ways of convincing him that the adoring crowds he loves on the campaign trail are still there and ready. They’ve pledged that the social, racial, and economic crises ravaging the nation are ephemeral. And they’ve carried his water as he seeks to reassert his authority over situations falling beyond his control. 

 

 

Spoiler

Among Trump’s modern day court jesters are administration brass and prominent White House allies. Navarro may be the most pugnacious of the bunch. But he’s hardly the only one going out of his way to trash Fauci, a coronavirus task force member and leading infectious disease expert.

Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who informally advises Trump, told The Daily Beast earlier this week that he’s already in the midst of co-authoring a new memo for the president, titled “Dr. Wrong,” that will demonstrate “how many times Dr. Fauci’s been wrong during not just corona, but during his entire career.” 

Several of the most prominent anti-Fauci claims made by the president’s allies overstate elements of Fauci’s record, which stands up well to that of many other top Trump administration officials, including the president himself. And, perhaps for that reason, in various opinion polls, Fauci has fared markedly better in gaining the public’s trust than the president has during this global pandemic, which has a U.S. death toll north of 130,000.

On Wednesday afternoon, The Atlantic published a new interview with Fauci, in which he called White House efforts to take him down a peg “bizarre.”

“When the staff lets out something like that and the entire scientific and press community push back on it, it ultimately hurts” Trump, he added.

Beyond trying to publicly humiliate Fauci, the president’s lieutenants have sought to lift his spirits in numerous other ways during this dark and deadly chapter for the country. One of them is to simply highlight for the president—as much as they possibly can—the images and footage of Trump-loving citizens the president has affectionately dubbed his“beautiful ‘boaters’” during the pandemic. 

According to two people who’ve been in the room when Trump has fixated on the issue, the president has repeatedly stressed that “boaters”—MAGA fans who join in on pro-Trump flotillas, with ships adorned with Trump and Mike Pence banners and gear—are a shining exemplar of the enthusiasm gap he enjoys over Biden. He has delighted in advisers showing him boater photos and videos that have bubbled up on social media. And during strategy sessions in the past two months, he’s told officials to keep bringing him more and to push out the content on their own accounts, as well. 

“I think we have really good poll numbers,” Trump declared at a press conference Tuesday when asked about his position in the election. “They’re not suppression polls; they’re real polls. You look at the Intracoastal in Florida. You look at the lakes. You see thousands of boats with Trump signs.”

At one point last month, the president privately asked in a meeting if his people could organize more boater events and even inquired, “Are we polling the boaters yet?” as one of the sources recounted. Another source familiar with this inquiry insisted that Trump was merely “joking.”

John McLaughlin, a top Trump pollster whom the president values in part for providing internal data that give Trump significantly better odds than most of the public polling does, told The Daily Beast that though “there’s not enough boaters” to buoy the president to a November victory, “we also do well with bikers, NASCAR fans, NFL, college and high school tailgaters, golfers, aviators, RV people, campers, [and] homeowners,” for instance.

It is not common—and, indeed, may be strategically unsound—for a president’s political apparatus to be fixated on a sliver of the U.S. population its own pollster says is statistically and demographically insignificant. But such are the machinations of the Trump campaign, where manpower, time, and money are directed toward the goal of ameliorating the boss’ wounded emotions in the face of increasingly stiff electoral competition.

“There are probably things that the campaign and the White House do to mollify Trump, and if those things result in a net benefit for the president and his campaign, then they are worth doing,” a former White House official tersely noted.

The Daily Beast interviewed 14 sources, including Trump administration officials, senior campaign aides, GOP operatives close to the White House, and longtime associates of the president, for this story. Reached for comment on Wednesday, Trump campaign spokeswoman Samantha Zager said in a statement, “President Trump and his Administration are too busy working to deliver wins for the American people on everything from trade deals to tax cuts to national security to lend credence to this fan fiction from the left.”

In recent weeks, Trump’s political advisers have also been sure to present to him not only his campaign’s internal poll numbers but also have slipped in print-outs of public polling that’s deemed favorable to the president, even if the public poll is not quite reputable, according to an individual with direct knowledge of this practice. 

“The point is to show the president that it’s not just our data but to say, ‘Look, the ‘real’ [public] polls have good numbers for you, too,’” this source said, adding that this has included showing Trump polls done by Zogby, once derided by FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver as the “worst pollster in the world” for the shoddiness of its online polling.

And this past weekend, when the president made headlines for wearing a mask in front of news cameras following his lengthy stretch of petty refusal, several of his senior aides and allies took to Twitter to lavish praise on Trump for how good he looked and to claim that this was somehow a small victory over Barack Obama’s VP.

“Joe Biden is finished,” Jason Miller, a top official on Trump’s campaign, tweeted on Saturday, attaching a flattering photo of the president donning a mask and a blue necktie. Fifteen minutes later, Trump’s then-campaign manager, Brad Parscale, followed up with a similar post.

This burst of flattery immediately led to speculation that aides were trying to convince the president to abandon his aversion to publicly wearing a mask during the coronavirus pandemic and thus finally, finally set a better example for the American people. On Tuesday, The Daily Beast asked one senior Trump aide who’d tweeted about the president and his mask if this was their own reason for doing so, to which the aide simply replied: “Of course.”

In their official efforts to soothe the president’s feelings, Trump’s campaign has also resorted to wasting a ton of money. In June, The Daily Beast reported that Team Trump had dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars on cable-news ads in the Washington, D.C., area, purchasing time largely on the president’s preferred network, Fox News. The ad buys had no real chance of making a positive electoral difference, given that they were reaching solidly Democratic turf in Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. But knowledgeable sources said at the time that the real purpose was to get the pro-Trump ads in front of the president, a voracious TV watcher, to set him at ease that his campaign was defending him strongly on television.

But perhaps the biggest example of Trump advisers attempting to make their boss happier has been the efforts to find ways to get him back on the trail. They have not worked. The president’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last month saw a dramatically reduced turnout and an embarrassed and incensed Trump. And with the sudden postponement of last weekend’s rally in New Hampshire, the future of the president’s in-person campaigning—not to mention the nature of his upcoming re-nominating convention in Florida this summer—has been thrown into even greater uncertainty.

One of the primary reasons aides wanted to get Trump back on the trail was they kept noticing his deteriorating mood as he remained mostly confined to the White House, as the nation entered months of coronavirus lockdowns and isolation. During a Tuesday morning press call organized by Trump 2020, Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) claimed that these coronavirus-era Trump rallies, despite the public health fears, are “good for everybody.”

Unable to get him out of D.C., Trump's staffers have, instead, tried to assuage his stir craziness and gloom by other means, including telling the president how many people are viewing him while he’s in the nation’s capital. 

To this day, the president will tell his people to brief him on the TV ratings for a recent event or rally he just held, or an “exclusive” interview for which he just sat, according to a current senior administration official and a former official. These sources described how much pleasure this president has derived, including throughout the major crises of the past six months, from being shown or told about his large television audiences for specific events. It’s an old habit of Trump’s that has yet to die, having been a personal hallmark of his 2016 presidential run and the years leading up to it.

“In 2013, he had me ask Jon Karl how the ratings were for an ABC interview he did with him, asking if he ‘won the hour,’” recalled Sam Nunberg, a former political adviser to Trump. “Other times when he would do, for instance, Fox News shows, he would always ask [executive assistant] Rhona Graff to ask the Fox host or staff if they could send him the exact ratings data of his interview or hit that he had just done. Sometimes he’d just ask them himself. Often, they wouldn’t send him the actual numbers but just transmit back something like, ‘They were fantastic, you won.’ He kept very close track of his ratings and always wanted the numbers so he could tweet them.”

 

[FondrenRoad 4378]

17 minutes ago, Lobo said:

That's gotta sting, Trumpers.  An immigrant saved a state below the Mason-Dixon line because your false messiah could fuck up a can of beans.  

The federal gov't also collects 63 billion a year from MDers.  The state collects only 20 billion.  While Republicans have completely destroyed the federal government's ability to deliver services in pursuit of general welfare, they certainly haven't hurt the federal government's ability to take.  

Since Republicans have gotten the dogshit federal government of their dreams, they can now get around to the states rights platform they have long pretended to desire.  Pass the HEROES act. 

Edited July 16, 2020 by FondrenRoad

[Constant 6754]

Even though we don’t need any more evidence that he is the worst President in the history of our country, Trump is happy to supply some. 

[Mo Horn 8853]

Something else he can ignore. Geez, these international issues can be so time consuming. Takes away from time on the course. 

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

1 hour ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/team-trump-frantically-plots-new-ways-to-make-him-feel-good-about-himself

 

 

 

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Among Trump’s modern day court jesters are administration brass and prominent White House allies. Navarro may be the most pugnacious of the bunch. But he’s hardly the only one going out of his way to trash Fauci, a coronavirus task force member and leading infectious disease expert.

Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who informally advises Trump, told The Daily Beast earlier this week that he’s already in the midst of co-authoring a new memo for the president, titled “Dr. Wrong,” that will demonstrate “how many times Dr. Fauci’s been wrong during not just corona, but during his entire career.” 

Several of the most prominent anti-Fauci claims made by the president’s allies overstate elements of Fauci’s record, which stands up well to that of many other top Trump administration officials, including the president himself. And, perhaps for that reason, in various opinion polls, Fauci has fared markedly better in gaining the public’s trust than the president has during this global pandemic, which has a U.S. death toll north of 130,000.

On Wednesday afternoon, The Atlantic published a new interview with Fauci, in which he called White House efforts to take him down a peg “bizarre.”

“When the staff lets out something like that and the entire scientific and press community push back on it, it ultimately hurts” Trump, he added.

Beyond trying to publicly humiliate Fauci, the president’s lieutenants have sought to lift his spirits in numerous other ways during this dark and deadly chapter for the country. One of them is to simply highlight for the president—as much as they possibly can—the images and footage of Trump-loving citizens the president has affectionately dubbed his“beautiful ‘boaters’” during the pandemic. 

According to two people who’ve been in the room when Trump has fixated on the issue, the president has repeatedly stressed that “boaters”—MAGA fans who join in on pro-Trump flotillas, with ships adorned with Trump and Mike Pence banners and gear—are a shining exemplar of the enthusiasm gap he enjoys over Biden. He has delighted in advisers showing him boater photos and videos that have bubbled up on social media. And during strategy sessions in the past two months, he’s told officials to keep bringing him more and to push out the content on their own accounts, as well. 

“I think we have really good poll numbers,” Trump declared at a press conference Tuesday when asked about his position in the election. “They’re not suppression polls; they’re real polls. You look at the Intracoastal in Florida. You look at the lakes. You see thousands of boats with Trump signs.”

At one point last month, the president privately asked in a meeting if his people could organize more boater events and even inquired, “Are we polling the boaters yet?” as one of the sources recounted. Another source familiar with this inquiry insisted that Trump was merely “joking.”

John McLaughlin, a top Trump pollster whom the president values in part for providing internal data that give Trump significantly better odds than most of the public polling does, told The Daily Beast that though “there’s not enough boaters” to buoy the president to a November victory, “we also do well with bikers, NASCAR fans, NFL, college and high school tailgaters, golfers, aviators, RV people, campers, [and] homeowners,” for instance.

It is not common—and, indeed, may be strategically unsound—for a president’s political apparatus to be fixated on a sliver of the U.S. population its own pollster says is statistically and demographically insignificant. But such are the machinations of the Trump campaign, where manpower, time, and money are directed toward the goal of ameliorating the boss’ wounded emotions in the face of increasingly stiff electoral competition.

“There are probably things that the campaign and the White House do to mollify Trump, and if those things result in a net benefit for the president and his campaign, then they are worth doing,” a former White House official tersely noted.

The Daily Beast interviewed 14 sources, including Trump administration officials, senior campaign aides, GOP operatives close to the White House, and longtime associates of the president, for this story. Reached for comment on Wednesday, Trump campaign spokeswoman Samantha Zager said in a statement, “President Trump and his Administration are too busy working to deliver wins for the American people on everything from trade deals to tax cuts to national security to lend credence to this fan fiction from the left.”

In recent weeks, Trump’s political advisers have also been sure to present to him not only his campaign’s internal poll numbers but also have slipped in print-outs of public polling that’s deemed favorable to the president, even if the public poll is not quite reputable, according to an individual with direct knowledge of this practice. 

“The point is to show the president that it’s not just our data but to say, ‘Look, the ‘real’ [public] polls have good numbers for you, too,’” this source said, adding that this has included showing Trump polls done by Zogby, once derided by FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver as the “worst pollster in the world” for the shoddiness of its online polling.

And this past weekend, when the president made headlines for wearing a mask in front of news cameras following his lengthy stretch of petty refusal, several of his senior aides and allies took to Twitter to lavish praise on Trump for how good he looked and to claim that this was somehow a small victory over Barack Obama’s VP.

“Joe Biden is finished,” Jason Miller, a top official on Trump’s campaign, tweeted on Saturday, attaching a flattering photo of the president donning a mask and a blue necktie. Fifteen minutes later, Trump’s then-campaign manager, Brad Parscale, followed up with a similar post.

This burst of flattery immediately led to speculation that aides were trying to convince the president to abandon his aversion to publicly wearing a mask during the coronavirus pandemic and thus finally, finally set a better example for the American people. On Tuesday, The Daily Beast asked one senior Trump aide who’d tweeted about the president and his mask if this was their own reason for doing so, to which the aide simply replied: “Of course.”

In their official efforts to soothe the president’s feelings, Trump’s campaign has also resorted to wasting a ton of money. In June, The Daily Beast reported that Team Trump had dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars on cable-news ads in the Washington, D.C., area, purchasing time largely on the president’s preferred network, Fox News. The ad buys had no real chance of making a positive electoral difference, given that they were reaching solidly Democratic turf in Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. But knowledgeable sources said at the time that the real purpose was to get the pro-Trump ads in front of the president, a voracious TV watcher, to set him at ease that his campaign was defending him strongly on television.

But perhaps the biggest example of Trump advisers attempting to make their boss happier has been the efforts to find ways to get him back on the trail. They have not worked. The president’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last month saw a dramatically reduced turnout and an embarrassed and incensed Trump. And with the sudden postponement of last weekend’s rally in New Hampshire, the future of the president’s in-person campaigning—not to mention the nature of his upcoming re-nominating convention in Florida this summer—has been thrown into even greater uncertainty.

One of the primary reasons aides wanted to get Trump back on the trail was they kept noticing his deteriorating mood as he remained mostly confined to the White House, as the nation entered months of coronavirus lockdowns and isolation. During a Tuesday morning press call organized by Trump 2020, Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) claimed that these coronavirus-era Trump rallies, despite the public health fears, are “good for everybody.”

Unable to get him out of D.C., Trump's staffers have, instead, tried to assuage his stir craziness and gloom by other means, including telling the president how many people are viewing him while he’s in the nation’s capital. 

To this day, the president will tell his people to brief him on the TV ratings for a recent event or rally he just held, or an “exclusive” interview for which he just sat, according to a current senior administration official and a former official. These sources described how much pleasure this president has derived, including throughout the major crises of the past six months, from being shown or told about his large television audiences for specific events. It’s an old habit of Trump’s that has yet to die, having been a personal hallmark of his 2016 presidential run and the years leading up to it.

“In 2013, he had me ask Jon Karl how the ratings were for an ABC interview he did with him, asking if he ‘won the hour,’” recalled Sam Nunberg, a former political adviser to Trump. “Other times when he would do, for instance, Fox News shows, he would always ask [executive assistant] Rhona Graff to ask the Fox host or staff if they could send him the exact ratings data of his interview or hit that he had just done. Sometimes he’d just ask them himself. Often, they wouldn’t send him the actual numbers but just transmit back something like, ‘They were fantastic, you won.’ He kept very close track of his ratings and always wanted the numbers so he could tweet them.”

 

Don't you know how much glee the author of the article took in penning "my Peter?" Anyone in the WH underlings staff with a sense of humor probably choked on their coffee.

More and more, the descriptions sound so much like humoring someone who long ago needed to have his car keys taken away. That those with the power to act, do nothing but placate his whims so that they can continue the shadowy furtive plunder is an abomination.

[Ricky's one-hitter 9125]

1 hour ago, HenryJames said:

 

Hogan from the top rope

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

 

[FondrenRoad 4378]

10 hours ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

This happens to me about once every couple of weeks. It’s a very surreal few minutes, then I fade back into the simulation. 

Yeah, I momentarily disconnected from my pod a few times. I only keep reconnecting because I like the taste of steak.  Cypher was right.  Still, Neo is gonna need to come reset us back to the 90s if they want to keep this Matrix functional. 

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

This is going around social media. This thread moves quickly, and the embedded tweets are messed up on my devices, so sometimes I miss earlier posts:

 

[yoladu 4094]

On 7/1/2020 at 3:51 PM, yoladu said:

There will be NO statement on minimum wage in the next two weeks.

stone cold lock of the week.

 

So his two weeks are up.... was there a statement on minimum wage policy from the White House like Mr. Trump said there would be.

Of course not.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-trump-wage/trump-says-he-will-have-a-statement-on-the-minimum-wage-in-the-next-two-weeks-idUSKBN24276G

 

[yoladu 4094]

11 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 “The First Family is very active in water sports.” 

[Beau Vine 54388]

52 minutes ago, Constant said:

 

[kevwun 15860]

49 minutes ago, Mo Horn said:

Something else he can ignore. Geez, these international issues can be so time consuming. Takes away from time on the course. 

Really Putin?  Can't even lay off during a global pandemic?

[Brisketexan 105285]

46 minutes ago, Mo Horn said:

Something else he can ignore. Geez, these international issues can be so time consuming. Takes away from time on the course. 

Russia's committed ANOTHER act of war against the US?

Ho-hum.  What's really important is that loyal patriots buy Goya products, and eat two cans of beans every day for breakfast!

 

Seriously.  Global fucking pandemic.  Repeated acts of war committed by a country that has the POTUS by his shriveled little balls.  Country in rapid economic collapse because it can't handle a pandemic that every other western country has handled.  And a party made up of enabling sycophants who allow it all.  

We're at war, and we've lost.  The devastation is and will continue to be incalculable.  We will never fully recover from this.  I hope it was worth it for y'all "to own the libs, hurr durr!"

[Red Five 40881]

"Burn it down". They weren't kidding. 

[Biff Tannen 45715]

11 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Over the last two years, the Trumps have taken 3,249 trips requiring Secret Service protection—12 times the number of protected trips taken by the Obama family in seven years, according to a recent analysis by D.C. watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in Washington. The Trump family’s travel has squeezed the Secret Service’s finances, CREW explained, forcing the agency “to justify the spike in protective travel costs in its congressional budget requests for the past two years.” 

[wildcat09 29377]

1 hour ago, Mo Horn said:

Something else he can ignore. Geez, these international issues can be so time consuming. Takes away from time on the course. 

And we'll do nothing. This sort of behavior warrants a response along the lines of seizing every fucking penny Putin and his friends have stashed outside of Russia around the globe, but we'll do nothing. This to me is worse than the bounties. That's basic realpolitik that every country has done at one time or another. It certainly would warrant a response from a President that wasn't a literal Russian agent, but I'm not going to pretend to be morally outraged about Russia doing something like that.

This though, fucking with the world's ability to develop a vaccine to solve a pandemic? This is plain evil. And we'll do nothing, because Trump and the GOP are Russian agents.

[Guest Lobo]

When I see Melania, Barron, and Donald...all I can think of is "Now there's a family who is passionate about Water Sports."  I think some of us are incredibly impressed with their dedication to all things aquatic, be it athletic or leisurely in nature.  Almost to the point where we see so many photos and news clips of them snorkeling, swimming, fishing, boating, etc., that we're like "Whoah, we get it...you guys are like Cousteau, Babe Winkelman, and Summer Sanders out there.  Calm down, the First Family is like J. Crew meets Bass Pro Shop, we get it."  

And don't get me started on the Kush.  I know everything about him screams, "I'm the indoorsy type", he's all that is man.  Guy shows up to our spearfishing dive with nothing but a pocket knife and his freediving PADI certification, goes down for ten minutes and comes up with two Pelagics and a lobster.  Fucking-a Kush! 

[Chooky 13317]

[WhatTheBuck 28797]

1 hour ago, yoladu said:

So his two weeks are up.... was there a statement on minimum wage policy from the White House like Mr. Trump said there would be.

Of course not.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-trump-wage/trump-says-he-will-have-a-statement-on-the-minimum-wage-in-the-next-two-weeks-idUSKBN24276G

 

Anytime Trump mentions something and says he'll make an announcement about it in the next couple of weeks, that's code for, "I have no clue, no plan, and no announcement is coming."

[Dnaguy 12054]

59 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

 

Shhhh.

It'll be over soon.

Soon the pain with just go away.

Let the white light wash over you....

Feel the warmth?

That's good. That's good.

Go to sleep.

Go to sleep.

 

Edited July 16, 2020 by Dnaguy

[Beantown Express 2.0 6559]

4 hours ago, Bateshorn said:

That combined with Bannon taking away Trump’s phone the last week of the election and the Comey letter allowed Trump to hit the inside straight on the river.

The only way your analogy would be correct is if Trump hit the inside straight on the river because the dealer pulled the winning card from the bottom of the deck while nobody was looking.

[NameAlreadyInUse 5114]

1 hour ago, yoladu said:

So his two weeks are up.... was there a statement on minimum wage policy from the White House like Mr. Trump said there would be.

Of course not.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-trump-wage/trump-says-he-will-have-a-statement-on-the-minimum-wage-in-the-next-two-weeks-idUSKBN24276G

 

This is a salesman's trick.  Don't handle the objection, but say you will handle it in the future, then just hope they forget about it.  And our reporters are falling into the trap by not bringing it back up, which in effect means that he got exactly what he was looking for.

[Biff Tannen 45715]

7 minutes ago, NameAlreadyInUse said:

This is a salesman's trick.  Don't handle the objection, but say you will handle it in the future, then just hope they forget about it.  And our reporters are falling into the trap by not bringing it back up, which in effect means that he got exactly what he was looking for.

Our reporters suck.

[AnTiM 1669]

At least Trump has admitted that maybe Dr. Fauci knows more about covid than he does, so maybe there is still some hope that....who am I trying to kid?  Hand me the shit sandwich so I can take a bite, please.

[Jester 382]

12 minutes ago, AnTiM said:

At least Trump has admitted that maybe Dr. Fauci knows more about covid than he does, so maybe there is still some hope that....who am I trying to kid?  Hand me the shit sandwich so I can take a bite, please.

when eating a shit sandwich, it is not advised to nibble.

[WhatTheBuck 28797]

1 hour ago, NameAlreadyInUse said:

This is a salesman's trick.  Don't handle the objection, but say you will handle it in the future, then just hope they forget about it.  And our reporters are falling into the trap by not bringing it back up, which in effect means that he got exactly what he was looking for.

Many people are saying...

[Dbeasy 15085]

Surly is full of educated, opinionated readers and posters. Many have expressed varying levels of concern about Trump getting re-elected.  Today's news report of Russia trying to penetrate the vaccine manufacturers demonstrates that Trump's lack of leadership on checking Russian aggression has emboldened Putin even further to try and disrupt the United States with acts of digital and psychological warfare.

This is an extremely serious issue and raises a very big question for every Surly poster and American who is concerned about Trump getting re-elected, concern that is rooted in the further damage he could do to this country over four more years. The fundamental question for all of us is whether we all should be doing much more to ensure he doesn't get re-elected.

Right now, the Lincoln Project is making a dent into the psyche of voters, but the Democratic party simply isn't doing enough. I don't see much evidence of them taking advantage of the gifts Trump gives us all every day. There are literally hundreds of opportunities to point out the horifically bad leadership Trump has provided as President across almost every policy area.  Plus, he has divided Americans more than just about any President in history, except Lincoln. Are we all going to just sit around for 5 months and hope that he is defeated? While it appears right now that Biden has the upper hand, sentiment could change quickly, just like in 2016.

And more importantly, how hard is Russia working to penetrate our state voting systems to fraudulently swing this election to Trump? We know Trump in office is great for Putin.  So, does anyone else feel the same burning responsibility to do something, anything, to keep this Moron-in-Chief from getting re-elected? I feel a resonsibility to get much more involved, and honestly I think it's time for everyone to get more involved. We've all sat around and watched idiots on Facebook quote Brietbart and Infowars, spew ridiculous viewpoints, and demonstrate how uninformed they are about Trump and the situations. The current blow up over masks and rejected science across the world is ridiculous and never would have happened if we had a President who led. 

To date, most people don't even bother to engage others because it's a fruitless exercise that likely won't change anyone's mind (myself included).  But is that a good reason to do nothing and just live with the potential scenario of 4 more years of Trump? I'm starting to believe that it's time to take on the uninformed in some way, any way, to try and get through to them.