Trump - Clown Genius

[Miss Lonelyhearts]

I consider genius a stretch.

[Riggerjack]

In an ironic (is that the right word?), the SHARE Act (to deregulate the ownership of silencers) was up a debate hearing on the same morning as the shooting. Duncan, who is the congressman who believed he talked to the shooter is the main sponsor of the act which included this:

http://www.guns.com/2017/06/13/hearing- ... this-week/ (from the day before the shooting)

Other additions Duncan has combined into the draft of the new SHARE Act are the elimination of the ATF’s authority to reclassify popular rifle ammunition as “armor piercing,” rolling back restrictions on the importation of certain ammunition from overseas, limiting how regulators classify some shotguns, shells and rifles as “destructive devices” under the NFA, and broadening temporary interstate transfers of firearms without having to meet a sporting clause.

Wow, just wow! It's hard to make this up. It could have been so much worse.

The hearing was postponed.[/weapon

I know this sounds strange to a European, but the weapons they are talking about are crazy regulated, and the BATF has massively abused their power in this area. It works because these are in the hands of the most absolutely law abiding citizens we have. The last time a legally owned NFA weapon was used in a crime was a deputy who shot his wife, back in the 40's IIRC. BATF used abuse of NFA weapon regulation to kick off both Ruby ridge, and Waco, and under Obama, they relaxed the rules on silencers, because they were concerned about the whole mess being thrown out as unconstitutional. (Specifically, they gave chief law enforcement officers the ability to deny without reason anyone in their jurisdiction trying to get an NFA weapon. This was routinely happening in Urban areas.) This set of rules is what the hearing was about.

[Campitor]

I consider genius a stretch.

Genius definition per Merriam Webster:

1. 
   exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability.
   "she was a teacher of genius"
   synonyms: brilliance, intelligence, intellect, ability, cleverness, brains, erudition, wisdom, fine mind; More
2. 
   a person who is exceptionally intelligent or creative, either generally or in some particular respect.
   "one of the great musical geniuses of the 20th century"
   synonyms: brilliant person, gifted person, mastermind, Einstein, intellectual, great intellect, brain, mind; More
   adjectiveinformal
3. 
   very clever or ingenious.
   "a genius marketing ploy"

I would say he fits into bullet #2: creative, either generally or in some particular respect. I didn't vote for the great bloviator but painting him out to be a clown or idiot only reinforces the narrative that he can be easily dismissed and is without skill - this is how he got elected. He's smart as in Tammany Hall smart. He's a business man who uses thug tactics and demagoguery - he's dangerous because he's underestimated. And you don't get ultra-rich by being stupid or avoiding coalitions. The entire Pussy-Grabbing monologue shows that he's manipulative and opportunistic. Trump POTUS 2.0 groundwork is being built by the Left. The only hope is to take him seriously or pray that Bill Clinton is grooming a Slick Willy that can match Trump blow for blow. And whoever he's up against better be clean or Trump will dirty him up good.

[Dragline]

[To find lunatic hatred of BO you pretty much had to go looking for it. You'd have to go nearly off-grid to avoid the lunatic hatred of Trump.

Um, no, this is incorrect. The whole Tea Party movement was lunatic hatred of BO. The whole Birther Movement, championed by Donald Trump, was lunatic hatred of BO. It was in our face almost every day. Every single day.

DT would get off easy if he would stop watching TV and tweeting about it. I know more about what's on TV from DT's tweets than any other source. Because DT loves TV and loves the media, deep down. He does not exist in his own mind, but for the media. That's the irony of it.

[EdithKeeler]

To find lunatic hatred of BO you pretty much had to go looking for it. You'd have to go nearly off-grid to avoid the lunatic hatred of Trump.

Go looking for hatred of Obama? I guess you and I must hang with different people, but from where I sit, the hatred of Obama was common and ever-present; the guy couldn't do anything right, and he tried to run a low-key White House. Trump stirs up crap every single day, and while i think the media coverage of his tweets is overblown, I guess I'm glad for it because I know what's going on. The stuff against Obama was very often overtly racist and not based on anything he did or didn't do. Political cartoons about "watermelon flavored toothpaste," Obama as a pimp, cartoons involving lynchings, the perpetual allegations of his lack of citizenship, he's a Muslim, millions of comparisons of both he and his wife to monkeys or gorillas.... The list goes on. NONE of those things were about policy or about international relations or anything else--there were about HIM as a man, a BLACK man.

Sure, there was stuff directed at Obama about policy stuff--the Affordable Care Act, Benghazi, etc.

But little that he brought on himself because of his behavior. Trump brings the scrutiny upon himself because of how he acts and what he does. If he stayed of the twitter, he'd give his critics a little less fuel to work with. If he had more competent spokespeople (I think Sean Spicer is the best of them, and he's not good) instead of Sarah Sanders and Kellyanne Conway... you know, people who could give coherent, informed answers rather than the gibberish they spout half the time, well, Trump would look better.

I admit that I liked Obama, but didn't agree with everything he did and didn't do, and in my opinion Trump is... a terrible, terrible mistake. I think Trump deserves almost everything he's getting (though the Kathy Griffin thing went too far), but what worries me is what is happening behind the scenes. When all the cameras and microphones are pointed at the latest trainwreck, what dirty deal is going down in the back room? Sometimes it seems that all of this crazy has got to just be a big diversion for something really sinister. Are they all really that inept???

[Campitor]

When all the cameras and microphones are pointed at the latest trainwreck, what dirty deal is going down in the back room? Sometimes it seems that all of this crazy has got to just be a big diversion for something really sinister. Are they all really that inept???

Sun Tzu: For should the enemy strengthen his van, he will weaken his rear; should he strengthen his rear, he will weaken his van; should he strengthen his left, he will weaken his right; should he strengthen his right, he will weaken his left. If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.

Unfortunately Sun Tzu is widely read by every predatory business man. Everyone right now is playing Trump's game of Sun Tzu.

[IlliniDave]

Dragline, I think the Tea Party and birther stuff were somewhat different in degree than seeing someone get fired from a major news network for holding up a mockup of the presidents severed head, or talk show hosts on a major cable channel making thinly veiled incest jokes involving his daughter or holster remarks about his mouth. Or public figures discussing in public/on air desires to blow up the White House or finish their dreams of beating the president with a putting iron on the golf course. That's the kind of stuff I was referring to that I don't recall occurring on an ongoing basis in the public figure discourse about BO. Stuff like Trump's taxes and the collusion with Russia stuff probably equate to the birther nonsense, and weren't the kind of things I was alluding to.

EdithKeeler, I live in the Southeast and hang with run-of-the mill people that span both sides of the political aisle and a number of social classes and education levels. But what I was talking about was the stuff I mentioned above that is out there on the TV networks from public figures. There are a lot of people around here who didn't like BO, but I can probably count on one finger the people I know who actually hated him (and that person is a childhood friend from Illinois I haven't seen in years and knowing him it probably was racial). It isn't really whether hatred exists but how/where it is proclaimed and by whom. The differentiation I was making was the difference between what private citizens might say to each other in private and what has been going on/broadcast in the news organizations, talk shows, etc.

You are right that DT did himself no favors with those he surrounded himself with. If he even had one good adviser surely that person would have taken his phone and closed his freaking twitter account! The Russia collusion and related disinformation campaigns have pretty much vaporized his political/economic agenda. So three more years of bizarro tweets and we'll get to try again.

Trust me, I'm not supporting or defending DT, but suppose I was being critical of the "political" discourse in the media and the public remarks of some public figures.

[jennypenny]

I dunno. I was part of the tea party and most of the people I knew who were active in the movement weren't in it because they hated BO (the person, policies-yes). Once people like Sheriff Joe became the face of the movement (how does that stuff happen??), we moved on to the alt-right. Now alt-right means racist bigot to everyone (I will go to my death denying that about the base of that movement) so we've moved on again. The current group is calling itself the 'deep right' in an attempt to be more inclusive to christians (alt-right was definitely a little anti-religion/libertarian in that regard). We'll see if that loose coalition holds together. It probably depends on the next election and who is running. Some like Pence and hope he takes the reins. The more traditional alt-right likes Rand Paul.


I should explain that I'm disgusted with Trump because he isn't getting anything done. I agreed with a lot of his proposed policies, but he folded on some things and isn't appointing the people who can accomplish his agenda. He's wasting time and political clout. I have some tolerance for people's shortcomings if they are getting things done, but T is all BS with nothing to show for it. I'm ready for Pence.

That said, just because T is a jerk doesn't mean it's ok for everyone to act that way. His behavior is not a pass. While I agree his actions are setting the tone and he's instigating a lot of his own drama, that doesn't mean it's ok for people in the press or politics to take the bait. "He started it" isn't a defense in grade school and it shouldn't be in national politics or the media either. I don't think it's inconsistent for me to believe that T is out of line but so is everyone else most of the time. They are all accountable for their own actions.

It's the same with the MSM. Some are trying to keep their bias in check and not lower their standards. Compare the behavior of Anderson Cooper or Jake Tapper with others at their network. I think their bias still shows but they seem to know where the line in the sand is, like Wallace and Baier at Fox.

A few months ago, Paul Ryan told the press he wasn't going to comment on everything T said for four years. People with that approach might come out of this relatively unscathed. Cory Booker is a good example, who is taking a cautious approach and keeping his rhetoric dignified while staying true to his base. If you want to know who'll survive to 2020/2024, look to those politicians who haven't had to delete a tweet.

[jacob]

When I worked at U. of Notre Dame, I began to watch their football games. While I still don't much about football and couldn't tell a shotgun formation from a triple option, I still like watching ND games, especially when they're winning. I've even been to a real game and I once got "the shirt".

For the record, I don't consider myself a fan of the team as much as I'm a fan of the game. I want a fair game just like the Fightin' Irish which are stand-up athletes who play the way I would if I actually knew anything about football. The Irish sometimes gets penalized, but I don't recall them ever breaking any rules or being unsportsmanlike. I asked other people (mostly ND fans but also some yokel from Northwestern) and they don't remember either.

The Irish play aggressively but very fair. In fact if it wasn't for some bad referee calls, like those frequent but accidental helmet-to-helmet tackles, I doubt the Irish would ever get any calls against them. The commentators where I watch it my local TV station (free) agree with this assessment. They seem like smart guys---they know way more about football than I do, so I like to listen to what they say.

I hate MSU. I can't really explain why. I just do. Hate'm hate'm hate'm. Everybody knows how MSU breaks the rules all the time. It's not just aggressive play. It's downright cheating. You can see the fouls on the re-runs and there's also youtube channel that keeps track of MSU penalties as a public service so everybody can know how terrible they are. The channel shows the worst examples and is completely unbiased. You can watch the typical MSU play style with your own eyes. They have hundreds of calls against them and they only get touchdowns when they cheat. I don't hate MSU fans but why they support a team like that is beyond me.

If it wasn't for MSU, Notre Dame would likely be in the Rose Bowl every year instead of the Toilet Bowl.

Once we went to watch a game against Alabama with some friends because it was only on cable. Most of the people there were Alabama fans and they hated Notre Dame. I didn't know why because until then I had never even heard of Alabama (the team). The host even had to tell them to tone it down because there were also some ND fans at the party. We were just there to watch the game. I don't understand why other people can't be decent. I also once watched an ND game against USC while we lived in California on TV. Those mainstream TV commentators were some of the most biased ever. Not like the ones I usually listen to in Indiana and Illinois.

[EdithKeeler]

@Edith
Where do you live and where did you see all of this stuff about Obama? I live in Kentucky which has its fair share of straight up racists and other than the birther stuff and the occasional references to him being sympathetic to Muslims and its possible origin, which were almost unilaterally dismissed and marginalized by the MSM, I don't recall ever seeing cartoons of him being lynched or portrayed as a monkey. I am truly curious because it always seemed to me the mainstream press went out of its way to be politically correct in regards to the Obamas. I can't imagine the Washington Post or Fox , or the like posting an image of Obama hanging from a tree. Can you even imagine them showing Obama smoking a cigarette?


Is this what you were referring to: http://www.salon.com/2014/10/01/7_disgu ... artoons_2/
Today was the first time I have ever seen these and I had to actively look for them.

I live in Memphis, TN, which despite being 70% black, is very racially divided. I am white, I work with a lot of white people, and I have white friends, and I can tell you that I received lots of emails and articles and things from acquaintances who thought they were funny and who assumed I would too. I didn't.

I wonder if time doesn't dim some memories. And granted, I'm going to be more sensitive to negative Obama stuff because he was my guy. And I think with some people, there's just more fodder. Trump creates a lot of fodder with his tweets and statements. I believe if he'd shut up and just ignore some of it, the press would move on. Let's face it: the press is about money and eyeballs. They sure are getting a lot of eyeballs right now, pro or con.

[IlliniDave]

The Irish play aggressively but very fair. In fact if it wasn't for some bad referee calls, like those frequent but accidental helmet-to-helmet tackles, I doubt the Irish would ever get any calls against them. The commentators where I watch it my local TV station agree with this assessment. They seem like smart guys---they know way more about football than I do so I like to listen to what they say.
...

So you've never heard the old quip about the Michigan coach complaining to the referees saying, "Hey, ref, Notre Dame is lining up offsides on every play!!" to which the referee answered, "No we're not."

Of course when you watch sports some of it depends on who is giving the broadcast. Often they are broadcast by the team's own broadcast network/crew, and they are very openly biased and everyone knows it. Nowadays that's mostly relegated to radio broadcasts. Even still, despite the bias they don't threaten or call for bodily harm to the other teams coach or players. Other games are broadcast by the national networks unaffiliated with any school. In principal they endeavor to stick to a charter of being neutral. Doesn't always happen, but as a neutral observer to many neutrally broadcast games, they (traditionally) do a good job much more often than not and tend to stick to the scope of the game and avoid unverified/salacious commentary.

Sports is a great microcosm through which to view political machinations, which is why I started riffing on it here several years back. I was immersed in sports long before politics so it comes naturally to me.

That was a good essay.

[IlliniDave]

...
I wonder if time doesn't dim some memories.

It certainly can distort them: sometimes dimming them, but sometimes distilling them. BO was president 16X longer then Trump has been, so that sort of skews things too. I guess we do have some differences in acquaintances. The people I correspond with tend to be left-leaning (though generally not far enough left to be considered progressives). Certainly gives us a different perspective from which to view things.

[7Wannabe5]

@jacob: Yes, but what is the purpose of the system of collegiate football? My first thought was "dominance", but that's not correct, because one football team can't eat another football team (unlike Amazon/Whole Foods, USSR/Estonia, Wolf/Coyote.)

[jacob]

@ffj - If you define MSM as NYT, WaPo, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, WSJ, Bloomberg, etc. probably yes. However, if all sources of news and opinions get included (add in Fox&Friends, Sean Hannity, Alex Jones, etc.), that is, once you include the entire media/information river, the pattern gets a lot more symmetric. It could be argued that talk shows aren't news but that's where a lot of people get their world view and sentiments from.

It's very clear here that personal memories and interpretations line up with party affiliations and leanings. Not just in this thread, but elsewhere as well.

Republicans seem to have no memory of anything outrageously negative being said about Obama while at the same time being frustrated about all the outrageously negative things being said about Trump now; especially seeing left-leaning comments as they are being covered by right-leaning media and not reading them directly in context. Conversely, Democrats see the current coverage of Trump as being entirely reasonable---they are after all just covering a president who won't stop tweeting---while vividly remembering the Birtherism and talking about long guns and 2nd amendment rights to "protect ourselves from the Obama Tyranny"(*).

There's a strong tendency to excuse fringe representatives on MySide as individual outliers while at the same time judging everyone on TheirSide according to statements from fringe representatives. Yet, as long as those representatives are not saying crazy stuff, we're willing to listen to them again. We may condemn them for certain statements today, but all is forgiven by next week. There's also a strong tendency (see EK's posts) to dismiss stuff on MySide as "just a joke" while taking everything on TheirSide literally and personally. It's very hard to even give examples without having people who are invested declare that "That's not the same!"

All these determines what and how much is being remembered.

(*) The left would interpret this as practically calling for or at least justifying armed rebellion against the government. Whereas the right would see it as simply reaffirming the principles the nation is founded on. Neither side would have much understanding that it could be interpreted very differently by the other side.

The two sides don't have the same kind of humor and values and don't take the same things seriously. What one side sees as persecution, the other side sees as fair and balanced reporting. And vice versa. People on the right, who are now complaining about liberal bias, now understand how people on the left felt about right-wing talk shows during the Obama years.

I also bet that 95% on both sides will insist and keep insisting that the two situations are in no way comparable.

This also goes to 7wb5's question. This behavior reminds me eerily much of 3rd grade schoolyard and how kids from different cliques see a fight between two people from different groups of friends. According to OurSide "They started it because OurGuy was just making jokes that we all thought were kind of funny and then TheirGuy suddenly flipped out completely unreasonable". According to TheirSide "OurGuy had been bullying TheirGuy for months including stealing his lunch and finally he stood up and defended himself".

So it's not a dominance thing. It's a clique or team thing. Hence, the sportsball example. We simply tend to forgetful and blind to faults on our own side while drilling down on the other side. We hold the TheirSide to far higher standards than we do our OwnSide.

Wait and see next time there's a Democrat president. Left-wingers will suddenly develop amnesia forgetting the severed heads and comments about the first lady or Ivanka, etc. while at the same time lamenting how biased the right-wing media show is.

[7Wannabe5]

@jacob: Gotcha. A lot of people still believe that loyalty is a virtue. ENTPs not so much. So, the purpose of collegiate football is to allow for a not-totally-violent outlet for the indulgence of the primitive instinct of loyalty.

BTW: I used to date a guy who played for Alabama in the 70s, and I had no clue about the identity of Bear Bryant prior.-lol. (Gawd, I feel ancient after typing this.)

[Tyler9000]

even with my confirmation bias goggles on I think I can still objectively make the argument that the MSM has treated Obama and Trump quite differently.

I don't know about that -- only a day after firing three employees for a blatantly false hit-piece on Trump, CNN clearly tried to balance the scales by bringing the heat in their latest Obama expose.

[IlliniDave]

@Jacob

Yes, the internet is the great equalizer. If you were to count them all up including websites I would say that you are right as far as parity.

But the logical question would be how many people are accessing the internet exclusively for their news? And how many are using social media sites such as Facebook and the like? And how many rely on CNN,NBC, MSNBC,NPR, ABC,NYT, WASHPO, CBS, BBC, etc, etc. Plus most of Hollywood, late night pundits, etc? The advantage these organizations have is that they are still mainstream and readily more accessible to the average person. Is the average person more likely to hear what CNN or ABC or Seth Myer has to say on a subject versus Drudge? Probably.

That sort of hearkens back to my point a while back: what is out there at the forefront versus what you have to go somewhat out of your way to look for.

[jacob]

@ffj - That depends on how you define "news". As far as the political discourse goes, I would include everything right down to low-information voters who rely strictly on facebook memes (I know a few) or a single talk-show radio (or podcasts) to form their thoughts on the world.

Some Pew Research numbers ...
http://www.journalism.org/2016/07/07/pathways-to-news/
http://www.journalism.org/2016/07/07/th ... -consumer/
http://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/ne ... orms-2016/

Most people still get their "news" from TV. Here I would fully expect the right to be tuned into Fox News (the biggest channel) and the left to be tuned into a distribution along NBC, CNN, MSNBC, ABC.

You need to weigh them by viewership to get an idea of what the average person is thinking. Fox is more than twice as big than the second and third biggest put together (CNN and MSNBC). You do not have to go out of your way to tune into Fox News and leave it on that channel. To find a right-wing talk show, all you have to do is to turn on your AM radio. I think counting channels or outlets is too simplistic. If I measured media-bias by what was found on the AM-band, I would conclude that radio is heavily biased to the right. But I don't think one can do "science" that way ...

The second most popular source, not far behind TV, is social media. Only 20% still read newspapers ... dunno if we're talking national newspapers here or just the local rag. Most interestingly, those social media users who follow the news the least are most likely to rely on forwards/shares from friends/family whereas heavy consumers are not.

The average person would thus be more likely to tune their TV into hearing whatever bias they're already primed and desire to hear while ignoring the opposing channels. I'll bet money that for every person you can find who flips channels to see the same story on both sides, I can find someone on either side who never ever does that. I talk politics with people who exclusively watch Fox and MSNBC respectively. It's like they live in entirely different universes. It's not just that they see things differently. It's that they see different things. Something could be the most important crisis on one channel .. meanwhile, the other person has never even heard about that issue.

There was a study once that showed that liberals were more likely to unfriend people over political disagreements than conservatives on social media. This was, on the conservative side, hailed as showing how conservatives were more open-minded. Then there was a second study that showed that liberals tended to have a wider range of friends (politically speaking) than conservatives who choose their friends in a more .. lets just say politically narrow-minded manner already... and that the hardening up simply meant that liberals were becoming more like conservatives during the 2016 election.

So now there are fewer people with overlaps and therefore confirmation bias in the respective bubbles is rampant! As for the low-information voters on social media (either side now), it means that they pretty much only hear what their still approved friends are forwarding. This is also why fake news (in the original meaning of the concept) worked so well because it could survive/propagate in bubbles. Indeed, people admitted to forwarding news they knew to be fake simply because they thought it was fun to play along. Yay sportsball!!

I would also note, that liberals are much more politically active on social media now (as far as I can tell) under Trump than they were under Obama. Conversely, conservatives are much less politically active than they were under Obama. There's absolutely a demand for unflattering reporting about the opposition---it's just that it's coming from the other side now. MSNBC has grown spectacularly in viewership since Trump was elected, for example.

[EdithKeeler]

I talk politics with people who exclusively watch Fox and MSNBC respectively. It's like they live in entirely different universes. It's not just that they see things differently. It's that they see different things.

Vouch. Example: My mom. She's housebound, but still mentally pretty sharp, and ingests a steady diet of Fox News and local TV news. I haven't had a TV in 6 years, and most of my news comes from NPR, WaPo and the NYT--I have online subscriptions. I can't count the number of times I'll ask my mom about such and such news story and she hasn't seen it. I usually see the news stories she mentions, probably on the Yahoo home page or something. When "her" news and "my" news do come together, they are usually spun differently.

I'm amazed sometimes at how ubiquitous Fox is--doctor waiting rooms, cafeterias, even bars.

[BRUTE]

interesting, seems like there is some kind of long-tail thing going on with news as well. oh internet.