Social Media Torches Trump for Thumbs Up-Obama did Same

Fox

Tue, Feb 20 2018, 10:21 pm

southernbubby wrote:

There is more than one reasonable explanation.

There is more poverty than there was a half a century ago and greater income inequality.

No, there's not. The rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten richer, too. The poverty rate has declined by nearly half since 1960.

The rich got proportionally richer than everyone else, but they also saw their taxes quadrupled during the same time period. That's money that they were unable to spend or invest, and therefore the rest of us were unable to take much advantage of it.

southernbubby wrote:

The racial tension has been building up over time.

Every survey and study suggests that people are significantly less racist than in previous years. There's obviously progress to make, but increased "racial tensions" are more likely to be found in postmodern identity politics than in day-to-day life.

southernbubby wrote:

This president winning was a complete surprise and has a very un-presidential style of governing but he comes along after 2 terms of a progressive left wing president that left some groups feeling that America was leaving them out.

And the Internet has given those groups a voice . . .

However, I truly believe that "politics is downstream from culture," and that Trump is really just a representative of the rebellion against postmodernism and cultural Marxism. The postmodernist left genuinely thought they had "won," and they were astounded to find a lot of people quietly rejecting their tenets.

The were also shocked to discover that some identity-politics beneficiaries weren't buying it. Prior to the election, I mentioned that I'd noticed a surprising amount of pro-Trump rumbling in Chicago's African-American community. I had no data; just anecdotal evidence like the number of young black men wearing MAGA caps and black professionals complaining about Obama. Of course, I was mocked. Oh, that silly Fox. She's so cute, thinking these things.

In fact, Trump pulled higher numbers in among AA voters than previous Republican candidates. A tiny fraction, yes -- but an interesting change. Just recently I heard an AA analyst comment that while few blacks want to deal with the fallout of going public, many are silently nodding their heads regarding Trump's immigration stands.

Hispanic voters seem to be following the same trend -- again, voting primarily Democratic, but losing enough to Trump and/or Republicans to make a difference in tight elections.

The LGBT alliance is falling apart. With same-s-x marriage off the table, the individual groups have little in common, and the Log Cabin Republicans and their allies are successfully siphoning a fair amount of high-profile talent. "Coming out as conservative" is the latest trend, albeit a somewhat self-absorbed one. Adam Levine (not the Maroon Five singer, who seems to be entirely too heterosexual, but the son of former D-CA Representative Mel Levine) recently wrote a piece that was hilarious and especially pointed.

Strangely enough, to the postmodern left, there seem to be a whole lot of oppressed people out there who want to be judged by the content of their characters, not their demographic characteristics. At least enough to make a difference in the political landscape.

Fox

Tue, Feb 20 2018, 11:06 pm

Jeanette wrote:

What I feel you are trying to do with this argument is to back me into a corner of defending the words and actions of people I have no connection to and that are only tangentially related to the subject at hand. You do this to deflect criticism of Trump and on to other people that I have nothing to do with.

Interesting. I would have said the same thing. As I noted, I literally don't know IRL or follow anyone who doesn't criticize Trump. Ben Shapiro even has a scale: Excellent Trump; Good Trump; Bad Trump; Awful Trump. Yet you apparently run into mindless MAGA myna birds all the time. Who are they? Where are you hanging out that attracts such people?

Jeanette wrote:

For one thing, I cannot take it for granted that the picture you say represents Bush or Obama after a tragedy is actually what you say it is. I know that there are certain players who are not above simply making up conspiracy theories, passing off fake pictures or highly misleading ones. So first I need to confirm that your picture is accurate and that it was actually taken when you say it was taken, and that it's not being taken out of context. By then we are talking and thinking about something completely different from the original topic, which is exactly the point.

Well, that's why news organizations have people that examine photos, etc. I personally try not to get involved in discussions that rely on easily-manipulated evidence, but the quality of evidence is part of the process.

Jeanette wrote:

For example, Obama once flirted with the Danish prime minister, so therefore everything Trump ever did is okay. Did he actually flirt? How bad was it? Who cares. What matters is that we are talking about Obama flirting.

Here's an example that I heard over and over throughout the campaign. Someone points out some egregious whopper of Trump's. The response from the right, almost inevitably, was, "Obama lied all the time too! He said, 'If you want to keep your doctor you can keep your doctor!'" The fact that EVERYONE used this one example ALL the time made me think that there was no other example of an Obama "lie" that they could easily call to mind. As if repeatedly making demonstrably false claims on all sorts of topics is somehow comparable to a campaign promise that Obama certainly HOPED and TRIED to follow through with but unfortunately failed to deliver. But that was enough in the minds of conservatives to walk away saying, "See? It's not so bad that Trump lies. Obama lied too!"

So why not just make that argument? Why not say, "I don't consider plans that don't come to fruition to be lies." I'll buy that. I never considered "you can keep you doctor" to be a lie, but then, I live in Chicago, and our standards for truth-telling among elected officials are not known to be high.

But I'll tell you why many people don't want to say, "I don't consider plans that don't come to fruition to be lies."

Because that opens the door to evaluate Trump's lies in ways that frequently end up in the same place. For example, I don't consider Trump's constant hyperbole to be evidence of dishonesty. Annoying? Frequently. But not in the same category as, "I did not have s-x with that woman."

So if you want to claim that other Presidents have made statements that, because they were unable to fulfill them, turned out to be untrue, you have to be similarly forgiving of Presidents who are accustomed to selling real estate and declaring that everything is in move-in condition, so to speak.

Jeanette wrote:

It matters to me that the examples should at least be comparable in scope and scale. So yes if you want to get aburdly reductive it does not matter to me exactly how many days, hours, minutes or seconds a president goes golfing after a tragedy. I find Trump's overall response to tragedies woefully insufficient. I am disturbed by the fact that he spent two days after the tragedy tweeting self-pitying comments on the Russia investigation. It's all about him all the time.

So it's not about his golf or whatever. It's that you don't like his self-centered tweeting. Fair enough. Stand in line behind a long, long line of conservatives. But be honest: "I don't like Trump's self-centered tweeting. It's annoying, distracting, and obnoxious." Don't drag golf games or poses with medical staff into the mix.

Jeanette wrote:

So your argument is that if you really believed A then you would do B, and the fact that you don't do B proves that you don't really believe A. Who is making up these rules? Do you follow these rules in your own life? Or are you just trying to impose them on others as a way to shut down any discussion you don't like?

Lol, it depends on whether you ask me, my DH, or my DC. Yeah, I mean, I try to live my life that way. My DH claims I have double-standards in what I consider an appropriate tone of voice to use when aggravated by a spouse. My kids mostly daven that I don't live up to my beliefs, because they're convinced my zealotry in various etiquette, interpersonal, and financial matters is embarrassing.

"Shutting down discussions" is a red herring. I am not a moderator. In fact, I'm barely a moderator in my own home. So I can't lock the thread or literally shut down a discussion. Presenting evidence or explanation to support or refute a thesis is not the equivalent of shutting anything down. In fact, it's precisely the opposite. It gives you a better opportunity to make your own points and refute whatever I believe.

The primary tenet of classical liberalism is that challenging one another's ideas using logic, reason, and evidence is how we make progress and come up with better ideas. The only way to truly shut down a discussion is, essentially, to nod politely but decline to defend your beliefs.

Fox

Tue, Feb 20 2018, 11:20 pm

southernbubby wrote:

There is no denying that housing, education and health care takes a bigger bite of the budget now than it did in the past and that wages are not keeping up with these demands. The jobs that people are getting today are not the type of jobs that people got in the past when America was into manufacturing.

Healthcare is the biggest factor, and there's no simple answer for it. I've frequently used the line that we want the benefits of both socialism and capitalism with the costs of neither, and I think that's the best explanation.

I voted for Obama in 2008 because I felt that somebody, anybody, needed to address the healthcare cost issue. I didn't know if he'd be successful or not, but at least he was talking about it.

If healthcare were luxury handbags, we're a country awash in Hermes Birkins. And none of us want to downgrade to a Louis Vuitton or Chanel, let alone whatever Kohl's is selling. But the vast majority of us simply can't pay $20K for a handbag, and we'd prefer that the government do it for us. Alas, experience shows that when the government gets involved, our wonderful Birkins will probably go up to $40K, and we'll be no better off than we were. Or we'll discover that we can only get certain colors and some of us will have to settle for Kellys or Bolides. And some people may even say, "Why should I subsidize your Birkin? I'm happy with a Michael Kors bag?"

A better way to pay for healthcare in a country the size and scope of the U.S. is a complex, rocky road, and anyone who claims otherwise is either woefully under-informed or lying.

southernbubby

Tue, Feb 20 2018, 11:50 pm

Fox wrote:

while health care is the biggest factor, people are in student debt until their 40's, lots of people can't afford to retire, or even get sick, and loads of people move in with their parents because they can't afford rent, let alone buying a house

WhatFor

Wed, Feb 21 2018, 12:56 am

I assume posters who think that Trump is unfairly targeted more so than prior presidents are not actually closely following what Trump does or says.

I agree he gets more attention. But his behavior is so beyond the pale of what someone expects from a president that it warrants more attention. This is an objective reality. It's not my personal opinion.

Prior presidents may have done horrible things, but at the very least, they maintained an illusion of competence and stability. They carried themselves with a certain sense of dignity that Trump does not.

Now you may not think this is a bad thing. You may choose to interpret this as someone being "real" as opposed to instability.

But what you cannot deny is that his tweets are inflammatory. And inflammatory statements from the POTUS will make news. Every single time.

I understand that some of you don't follow him, so I'll post some of his tweets from the past few days. Now you might say I'm not posting some of his benign tweets. I'm not. Posting non- inflammatory tweets doesn't get you credit. It's the very bare minimum we expect from our president. These tweets were sufficient to warrant news coverage:

For example: On Friday, Mueller indicted 13 Russians for attempting to influence our election. Now cracking down on Russia trying to influence our election is an issue both parties agree on. The Senate almost unanimously confirmed that Russia should be sanctioned. Trump is by law required to implement those sanctions, but he inexplicably hasn't. Anyway, back to Friday.

What would a normal president do when such indictments were publicly issued? I think we'd expect them to maybe make a public statement saying the US will not tolerate foreign interference in our election, something along those lines? Here was our president's first tweet:

So what we're seeing here is: no concern about the actual welfare of the US and the continuing threat of foreign interference from Russia. This is all about him, him, him.

Another thing, it's an obviously, easily disprovable statement. News articles from early 2014 have Trump already announcing his bid for President. He actually patented the term "Make America Great Again" in 2012, and this is a matter of public record. The indictments were silent on whether Trump was involved or not. (Meaning they neither implicated him or absolved him.)

For the purposes of this thread, the issue isn't even whether Trump was or wasn't involved. The issue is that he's tweeting things that are highly inappropriate and unusual for what we expect from a US leader. They include easily provable lies.

So of course he's garnering more attention than other leaders. His behavior warrants it.

Here's another one he sent out the next day:

He's exploiting the shooting from the day before to go after the FBI for the Russia investigation, and again making it about himself. (Never mind the fact that the Counterintelligence unit is totally unconnected to the domestic unit. Or that the FBI is under the executive branch, so it's literally part of his own branch that he's publicly undermining.)

This isn't normal behavior we expect from a president. If you think it is you are being disingenuous. Of course this warrants more attention from the media.

This is later the same evening:

To those who don't know, General McMaster is the US National Security advisor. He apparently expressed concern about the fact that the Russians are trying to influence our election, and so that was Trump's response.

This looks like the rambling of a lunatic. Never mind the fact that the FBI has not definitively stated that the outcome of the election wasn't influenced (and maybe it wasn't, we just don't have that information yet). Is this what we expect from the US president after we receive evidence that the Russians attempted to interfere in our election? Who would a president normally be upset at when we got such news? I don't need to tell you: Russia! Right? Isn't that what we would expect? Wouldn't things look normal then?

Instead he goes after Hillary, the Dems etc. The indictments from the FBI explicitly state that the Russians attempted to help Trump and to prevent Hillary from getting elected. But the tweet says that Hillary colluded with the Russians (against herself so she could lose?!) His tweet is absurd. It's insane.

I'm not going to go on, but check out his Twitter feed. Scroll down.

You can believe that Trump did not collude with Russians but still think that all of these tweets are insane and unbecoming of a US president. That's why more people are outraged by him. That's why the media has more to talk about with him. Because he simply does and says more outrageous stuff.

33055

Wed, Feb 21 2018, 5:36 am

WhatFor wrote:

"Meanwhile, Priorities USA, the major Democratic super PAC that backed Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns, issued a memo last week raising concerns about whether the party has become too focused -- or perhaps too refocused -- on reacting to Trump, according to Politico.””

The biggest lunatics are the reactors to Trump. They keep reacting even though it is a very loser position. Even Democrats in Washington admit their failures are because they ran on an anti-Trump basis and can't connect to middle class voters. Trump connects to the American workings stiff. His platforms help them. They are delighted with their crumbs in their paychecks.

http://www.foxnews.com/politic......html

Jeanette

Wed, Feb 21 2018, 9:19 am

aleph wrote:

The accusation of "shutting down conversations" is a favorite liberal trope, and is used ad nauseum. On the surface, it sounds convincing, educated, incisive. But when you stop to think about it, it means absolutely nothing. How is somebody "shutting down a conversation" by participating in it and stating their point of view.

What it actually means is "you are diverting attention from my opinion by having one of your own."

There are lots of ways to shut down a conversation:

1. Change the subject.

2. Throw out a loaded epithet like "liberal " that does nothing to further the conversation but generates defensiveness and us-vs-them thinking. Apikores, Nazi and racist are also terms that serve this purpose.

3. If you can't attack their arguments, attack their tone. Tell them they're being condescending. "You think you're so smart because you [use big words, use grammar and punctuation correctly, brush your teeth in the morning and wash your hands after using the bathroom]."

4. When all else fails attack the person. Give them a cruel nickname. Tell them they're a nasty woman. Call them ugly, fat, Liddle. Remind them that they're losers who lost the last election. Call them hysterical and crazy. That always works.

33055

Wed, Feb 21 2018, 9:36 am

Jeanette wrote:

The Democratic money guys and political bosses get it. Anti-Trump is not a message that speaks to the traditional base of the Democratic party. They want to shut down the conversation as it is only appealing to the fringes. The rest of the world is turned off by the constant chicken little messages.

The traditional base is happy with a humming economy and more money in their paychecks. They like immigration being controlled. Only big business and those that think future immigrants will vote Democratic want what was going on. Cheap imported labor hurts the working class Americans. This is clear from the two major polls on immigration. The one sponsored by business looking for cheap labor has drastically different results than the fairness poll which asks questions about cheap labor effecting their neighbors' jobs. Blacks have like having the lowest unemployment rate ever recorded.

I don't want to see a one party system, but that is where we are heading unless the rank and file listen to the bosses, the money guys, and Squishy.