Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread

[Professor Tiger]

From the Alt-Right goose stepping WaPo:

The left’s contempt is going to reelect Trump

In recent weeks, Trump derangement syndrome on the left has reached critical mass. First, there was Robert De Niro’s “F--- Trump” tirade at the Tony awards, followed by Samantha Bee’s calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless c---” on her TV show. Then the owners of the Red Hen restaurant threw out White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders because she works for the president, while chanting protesters heckled Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at a Mexican restaurant. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) added fuel to the fire by openly calling on mobs of left-wing activists to “absolutely harass” Trump officials. Then there were the countless Trump opponents in the media, Congress and on Twitter who compared family separations at the southern border to Nazi Germany, and the Time magazine cover depicting Trump staring down heartlessly at a crying migrant girl and implying she was separated from her mother (until it emerged that she had not in fact been separated from her mother). And now come the threats to block Trump’s Supreme Court nominee before he has even nominated one.

How do liberals think that 20 percent of reluctant Trump voters respond to these displays of unbridled contempt? They are outraged not at Trump but at his critics. The unhinged hatred for the president makes these voters almost reflexively defend him.

Don’t take my word for it. The New York Times recently interviewed dozens of tepid Trump voters who explained how the incessant attacks are causing them to rally around the president. “Gina Anders knows the feeling well by now,” the Times reports. “President Trump says or does something that triggers a spasm of outrage. She doesn’t necessarily agree with how he handled the situation. She gets why people are upset.” But Anders, who the Times says has “not a stitch of ‘Make America Great Again’ gear in her wardrobe, is moved to defend him anyway.” When she hears the “overblown” attacks on Trump, she says, “it makes me angry at them, which causes me to want to defend him to them more.” Another reluctant Trump voter, Tony Schrantz, agrees. “He’s not a perfect guy; he does some stupid stuff,” he tells the Times. “But when they’re hounding him all the time it just gets old.”

These are exactly the voters Democrats are hoping to win back. Instead, they are doing the opposite. Polls bear this out. Two weeks ago, Trump’s Gallup approval rating hit 45 percent — the highest it has been since his inauguration. (It slipped slightly to 41 percent last week). Trump’s approval among Republicans is at a near-record 87 percent, comparable to the levels of support for George W. Bush in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Think about that: The left’s attacks on Trump have had the same rallying effect for GOP voters as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Democrats are deluding themselves if they think they lost because of #NeverHillary voters who will come home when she is not on the ballot. They lost because they have become a party of coastal liberal elites who have lost touch with millions of ordinary citizens in Middle America — working-class voters who are struggling with factories closing, jobs leaving and an opioid epidemic that is destroying their families. These voters concluded in 2016 that Democrats no longer care about their problems and that Trump does.

Spasms of anti-Trump outrage are not going to win them back. If anything, they are confirming these voters’ conclusions that Democrats still don’t get it — and don’t get them. The left’s miasma of contempt may feel cathartic, but it is the best thing that ever happened to Trump. Indeed, it may very well get him reelected.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... b2127059d5

[hedge]

Difficult to completely disagree with that...

[bluetick]

Let me try.

The only thing most right-wingers get out of Trump's autocratic presidency...THE ONLY THING...is satisfaction from liberal angst, gnashing of teeth, and face it - exploding heads. One percenters and corporations got the lion's share of the tax giveaway. Factory jobs aren't coming back, coal jobs aren't coming back, and real wages are stagnant. And the stock market is in retreat thanks to Donnie's idiotic trade war. But at least RWNJs got to see the left suffer. And now prof's advice to the left is "well, you may as well sit back and enjoy it", like some impending rape victim. Don't make a scene - "wink". Although prof is tickled shitless by all this supposed uncivility.

But the article admits Donnie sits at 59% not-approval. I just don't see the rally cry of "Remember the Red Hen" moving the needle much in his favor. Michael Cohen just broke up with Trump on Twitter, and Mueller hired a bunch more federal career prosecutors...so I'm all for keeping the Fuck Trump ball rollin'. It's good for the mouthbreathers and the bedwetters alike, imo - a win-win if you will. Lets get everybody galvanized and see where the chips fall in November. Deal?

[bluetick]

Putin making hay while his ‘useful idiot’ remains in office

By Jonathan Manthorpe. Published on Jul 4, 2018 2:21pm

KGB agents like Vladimir Putin have always been very good at spotting and employing people they call “useful idiots.” Usually the idiots have been socialists or communist fellow travellers among Russia’s enemies who are easily persuaded to promote Moscow’s case. But not always. Sometimes the useful idiots are merely foreign politicians or movers-and-shakers whose interests and views of the world coincided with those of Moscow.

Donald Trump falls into this category.

The world no longer needs Special Counsel Robert Mueller to tell it that with the election of Trump in 2016, Putin got his man in the Oval Office.

The United States Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on Tuesday confirming what Washington’s intelligence agencies have been saying for months. Putin threw the full weight of his propaganda and cyber espionage battalions behind the effort to get Trump elected.

Whether Trump, his family and campaign mafioso “colluded” with the Russians is almost irrelevant at this point. Everything that Trump has said and done on the international stage since coming to office has been in the interests of Putin’s Russia and not those of the U.S. and its allies. Trump has moved with persistent determination to demolish all the trade and security alliances and institutions the U.S. has been foremost in creating since the Second World War. Only Putin’s Russia and, waiting in the wings, Xi Jinpiung’s China, benefit from Trump’s hubris and criminal stupidity.

It’s not that Trump is a traitor to the U.S. in the classic sense, as some eminent commentators have written.There was no moment when Trump kissed Putin’s ring. By his character and nature Trump was pre-programmed to betray the U.S., and Putin – alert KGB man that he is – saw a pigeon ready for the plucking.

Trump is a narcissist who, lacking any creative urges or abilities, uses chaos and destruction to ensure the focus of attention is always on him. Like many weak and self-pitying people, Trump is a bully who berates all those around him to hide the fact that he has nothing sensible to say and no vision of what might be created. He strikes out because he fears more knowledgeable and insightful people may expose his unplumbed shallowness. He lies because he fears the truth.

So, since the U.S. confirmed that it is a failing, gerrymandered democracy and put Trump in the Oval Office, the world has seen him flaying about like a boy with a stick in a nettle patch.

Trump has denounced the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as “obsolete” and pointedly shied away from committing to the pledge to mutual defense that is at the heart of the alliance. He has rudely dismissed all Washington’s trade alliances, especially the free-trade pact with Canada and Mexico, as means by which the U.S. is bled dry. The World Trade Organization has treated the U.S. “very badly.” In an unmatched piece of absurd ignorance, Trump even said the European Union “was put there to take advantage of the United States.”

Any hopes that Trump’s pompous malevolence might be just an act to placate his “base” were conclusively sunk at the summit of the G-7 major industrialized countries in Quebec last month. Trump was recalcitrant throughout the meeting, backed off signing the final communique, and then, while flying away on Airforce One, Tweeted that his host, Justin Trudeau, was “Very dishonest and weak.”

While Trump is President, the G-7 is defunct.

[bluetick]

(cont) Having abused the best friends of the U.S., Trump flew to Singapore to fawn on North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, one of the world’s nastiest despots with a record of killing even his closest relatives who get out of line.

But Kim played Trump like a violin. In return for giving Trump a glossy ten-by-eight of them shaking hands and a meaningless piece of paper with vague promises about peace and plenty, Kim got recognition from Washington that North Korea is in the club of nuclear weapons powers. He also got a de facto end to economic sanctions.

Since then, Kim has confirmed that his commitment to “de-nuclearization” of the Korean peninsular is so far in the future as to be out of sight by restarting his weapons program.

This makes dangerously stupid Trump’s boast that the world is now safer than when he met Kim. It’s been said many times, but Trump is not a man to be trusted to lead what is still the world’s major military superpower.

The denouement of this appalling story may come next week when Trump is due to attend the summit of the 29 NATO member states in Brussels. After what will undoubtedly be a difficult and perhaps even catastrophic summit, Trump is due to fly to Helsinki for a one-on-one with Putin. The imagery of Pinocchio rushing to Geppetto’s arms is too outlandish to contemplate. Apparently, no one in the White House has the slightest clue about visuals.

Trump has strewn confusion along the path to this meeting by refusing to rule out recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which it took from Ukraine in 2014. A whole raft of United Nations-backed sanctions against Russia stem from this annexation and Moscow’s invasion of occupation of tracts of eastern Ukraine.
In classic bully style of hitting out before being hit, Trump set the stage for the summit by firing off nasty letters to several of the NATO leaders. All the letters were variations on the theme that most NATO members are defrauding the U.S. by not spending two per cent of their gross national products on defence, as they have committed to do. Most NATO countries have increased defence spending since Trump railed at them last year. But Trump clearly has no understanding of the nuances of analysis involved in defense spending.

For example, Greece has for years spent more than two per cent of GDP on defense. But large hunks of that money go on pensions for veterans and a large standing army that is far from being battle-ready. In contrast, Norway still spends less than two per cent of GDP, but its troops are well-equipped, well-trained and among the first to deploy to any NATO campaign.

While it is unlikely that Trump will be able to kick the skids out from under NATO and destroy the alliance that has sustained peace and prosperity over much of the world since its founding in 1949, members are increasingly apprehensive.

The creation of an integrated European defense force is already underway, and there are rumours of current NATO members exploring informal alliances and deeper defense co-operation. A big question is what happens to Britain, which provides Europe’s most potent military, once it leaves the European Union at the end of March next year.

If the Canadian government is not already thinking about post-NATO options, it had better start quickly.

As the friends and enemies of the U.S. contemplate the Fourth of July, 2018, a looming question is whether Trump is a temporary aberration and that life will return to normal after the 2020 presidential elections.

That is a dangerous straw of hope to cling to. Trump is the symptom of a deep-seated disease in U.S. politics and society. His ravings echo and lead a chorus of anger, frustration and fear among large segments of U.S. society. There is no sign that anyone in the political or civil society classes have the slightest idea of how to remake America before it cascades into what German economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942 called the “gale of Creative Destruction.”

[Professor Tiger]

The only thing most right-wingers get out of Trump's autocratic presidency...THE ONLY THING...is satisfaction from liberal angst, gnashing of teeth, and face it - exploding heads.

That's a big part of it, for sure. It IS wondrously entertaining. But it is far from the ONLY thing Trump voters are getting from Trump's presidency. Here are some more:

He does not demean, besmirch, or express smug hostility towards, blue collar or rural people.
He does not convey the idea that people with advanced educations are smarter and better than blue collar or rural people.
As he promised during his campaign, he got rid of a lot of inane government regulations that were killing jobs.
As he promised during his campaign, he stopped Obama's war on the coal industry, and by extension any other industries that liberals might decide to target for destruction.
As he promised during his campaign, he is keeping factories and jobs in America and luring more in from overseas.
As he promised during his campaign, he cancelled TPP, which was killing US jobs.
As he promised during his campaign, he threatened to cancel NAFTA, which was killing US jobs, and got Mexico and Canada back to the negotiating table to make NAFTA kill fewer US jobs.
As he promised during his campaign, he approved and started the Keystone pipeline.
As he promised during his campaign, he approved drilling in ANWAR.
As he promised during his campaign, he has approved so much fracking and domestic oil drilling that the US is far less vulnerable to the whims of crazy anti-American Middle East thugocracies.
As he promised during his campaign, he has started enforcing the law by deporting illegal aliens, focusing on the ones that have committed crimes after arriving here, especially gangs like MS 13, which California is trying to protect.
As he promised during his campaign, he has made an attempt to start building the Wall, sort of.
As he promised during his campaign, he got rid of the individual mandate in Obamacare, which forced people to buy health care products they did not want.
As he promised during his campaign, he stopped Obama's war on guns.
As he promised during his campaign, he stopped Obama's war on Christian nuns, florists and bakers who failed to comply with federally approved religious dogma.
He stopped the federal government trying to force men who think they are women into every women's bathroom in America.
He is calling AGW what it is - a hoax supported by fraudulent pseudoscience.
As he promised during his campaign, he got us out of the Paris Climate Accords, which wold have imposed energy restrictions on the West but allowed the world's largest polluter - China - to keep polluting as much as they wanted.
As he promised during his campaign, he is taking steps to punish cities that refuse to comply with federal immigration law, sort of.
As he did during the campaign, he is calling out the MSM news outlets and telling them straight to their faces what they truly are - the PR department of the Democrat Party and a disgrace to their profession.
As he promised during his campaign, he got a conservative on SCOTUS - Neil Gorsuch. Neil Gorsuch. Neil Gorsuch. (Did I mention Neil Gorsuch?)
UPDATE: Another Neil Gorsuch on the way.
As he promised during his campaign, he is stocking the federal bench with judges who apply the law as it actually written, and not just follow their own personal liberal utopian preferences.
He credibly threatened Kim Jong Whale to the negotiating table, with the possibility (however slim) of negotiating the NORKS out of their nukes and nuke program. At the negotiating table, Kim Jong Un has released 3 American hostages, destroyed his own nuclear facilities, stopped launching ICBM's and detonating nukes, pledged to denuclearize entirely.
He has not attacked North Korea, yet, which would kill millions of people.
As he promised during his campaign, he has withdrawn the US from the most Neville Chamberlain-esque treaty in US history, Obama's feckless Iran nuke deal.
As he promised during his campaign, he treats Israel, the only pro-Western constitutional democracy in the Middle East, like a respected ally. Unlike his predecessor.
UPDATE: As he promised during his campaign, he moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem.
Like he did during the campaign, he continues to call Islamic terrorism what it is - Islamic terrorism. Unlike his predecessor.
As he promised during his campaign, he has nearly destroyed ISIS all over the world, which has never been reported in the MSM.
As he promised during his campaign, he has cut taxes paid by the middle class and forced people in high tax states to pay for their own state taxes and not hand the bill to the rest of the country.
He has presided over the lowest unemployment rate since the 1970's.
He has presided over the lowest unemployment rate for blacks in history.
He has presided over a long series of stock market record highs.
He has absorbed the most vicious and sustained attack in history by the news media, the entertainment industry, academia, yet his poll numbers have risen.
He has been subjected of the most fact-free, evidence-free, probable cause-free, partisan investigation by the entire leadership of the FBI, DOJ, UPDATE: and NSA, who have abused their authority by manufacturing false evidence, lied to FISA courts, and reenacted Watergate by planting spies in the Trump campaign. Yet, despite the greatest political witch hunt in us law enforcement history, his poll number have gone up.
He has banned travel from countries riddled with terrorism, as upheld by the Supreme Court.
UPDATE: He is not in favor of abolishing ICE.
UPDATE: He is not calling for his supporters to threaten and harass his political opponents in restaurants, gas stations, their front lawns, etc.

So yeah, it's a lot more than watching liberals' heads explode, as fun as that is.

[hedge]

"Let me try."

I agree with most of what tick said as well, but I still don't think the left is doing itself any favors with moderate repubs (yes, there are a few out there) with the Red Hen stuff nor the Maxine Waters stuff. Granted, plenty of red meat stuff like that goes on on the right as well, but I'd rather them make that kind of tactical error. I guess the Red Hen thing is more of a personal matter, but it certainly lends itself to getting blown up by the right wing media into another instance of "liberal intolerance." But an elected politician calling for citizens to publicly harass officials from the other party in non-political social settings I just don't think plays very well...

[Professor Tiger]

You, sir, are sane. Cogent even:

[Jungle Rat]

My mom always thought my penis was large for my age.

[Jungle Rat]

The ladies agree

[Professor Tiger]

My mom always thought my penis was large for my age.

That was when you were in your 30's, right?

[sardis]

Tick still doesn’t understand why we don’t particular care for God hating, communist loving, gun confiscating, gender confusing, whiny bedwetters like himself.

[Professor Tiger]

Tick’s okay in my book. He’s not evil, just misguided.

[bluetick]

Tick still doesn’t understand why we don’t particular care for God hating, communist loving, gun confiscating, gender confusing, whiny bedwetters like himself.

heh You got me...2/3rds of my arsenal came from the KPD's stash of confiscated guns back in the 60s and 70s. You need a snub .38 with the serial #s filed off, let me know.

[Toemeesleather]

Sooo, tick, do you favor an open primary to select/elect the dem prez candidate for '20, or just keep the status quo and let the establishment apparatchiks select him/her/it again?

[BigRedMan]

I want Maxine Waters to give the Democratic speech at their convention. And Nancy Pelosi standing beside her. Please god make this happen.

[Toemeesleather]

[youtube]8VecswXsN08[/youtube]

[hedge]

Yuge crowd Hanson is lecturing to there. There's got to be a few dozen folks in there. Also, this is a talk for the Young America Foundation? Some of that huge crowd aren't completely gray yet, but most of them would be decent bets in any death pool...

[hedge]

On the bright side, he doesn't seem particularly impressed with Trump, to say the least...

[Toemeesleather]

DNC chair offers current version of you can't make this sh!t up...

After yet another booming jobs report, record employment.....

Trump and Republicans in Congress are trying to build a winner-take-all economy that enriches their wealthy friends and saddles working families with the bill. Democrats want to create good-paying jobs and build an economy that works for everyone. And we will continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with workers and with our brothers and sisters in the labor movement as they fight for the wages, benefits, and livelihood they deserve.”


lmao