Will Trump be Re-elected?

[stuper1]

And I would say that you are naive. Do you think the press is performing this vital function just from the goodness of their heart?

(dual)No, not at all. Although I do think there is no shortage of journalists who are passionate about journalism. They don't say to themselves, "I'd like to go into the field of Being a Corporate Tool."

Passion is very easily squashed once you enter the corporate environment. The pressure to think and speak a certain way comes from the top. That's why I can easily believe that a journalist who genuinely thinks they're following best practices and doing the right thing, can produce articles that say things like "After Trump did X, Y happened" and imply that Y occurred solely due to X.
<snip>I can only imagine that it would be even worse at a major media organization.

No doubt. Again, I don't think anyone here is saying the press is perfect, but I'm insisting it's still indispensable. On other forums, it would be stating the obvious, but over here, I'm not so sure.

I think the people who frequent this forum must be a little dimmer than average. Maybe if you type very slowly, o r p u t e x t r a s p a c e s i n y o u r p o s t s , we will be able to understand easier.

[moda0306]

Moda (and maybe others), you need to spend some time overseas. It really opens your eyes to the problems with the American press.

I've had extensive stays in both the Soviet Union (i.e. pre-breakup) and Kenya. In the USSR I was traveling with a Moscow native, and got to see some samples of Pravda (which means Truth, a very orwellian name). We usually think of Pravda as the ultimate propaganda tool, but it was in fact very similar to any American newspaper. I remember being surprised at that, I was expecting heavy handed government pronouncements and little actual news.

In Kenya, the local newspapers (when you managed to get them) were something of a joke: they'd get the date wrong, make silly printing mistakes etc. But, the articles were the most informative pieces I'd ever read! Despite how unpolished they were, there was a refreshing absence of propaganda, manipulation etc. They just told it like it is. At the time, there was a ton of information on what was happening in the West Bank & Palestinian territories that were not EVER being reported back in the US. I clipped the articles to mail to family & friends, and I genuinely missed the paper when I returned home. It was quite an eye opening experience. It's where my deep distrust of the press comes from. So no, I don't think the press is indispensable. Genuine reporting is indispensable, but that's not what they do. Independent reporters with their own websites and no corporate governance would be ideal, as long as they don't end up getting tagged as "fake news".

I also had brought a world-band radio with me to Kenya. I still have it. Maybe I should dust it off and try it. There are bound to be some non-US-controlled channels with good reception.

WiseOne,

I'm probably not being clear. I think the US media is mostly a joke, and your example of how we cover (or don't) the Israel/Palestine conflict coverage is a massive reason.

All I'm saying is that we should look upon our establishment press with a similar disdain as an equally factless, witless, unprincpled Trumpanzee with his finger on the button. That is all. I realize how important being critical of the media is. It's also important to be critical of the most powerful person in the world in charge of the largest killing machine in the history of the world.

I do disagree a bit though with the "facts vs opinions" measuring stick of media coverage. At the very least, yes, you want the "facts" to be correct, but simply deciding what to cover and how to cover it is laden with either stated or unstated value propositions. I prefer them to be stated. I find that good journalism clearly states biases & values, but also has a pretty strict adherence to facts in its attempt to engage in the journalism that reflects those biases & values.

[stuper1]

What was Trump's net worth when he was 20 years old? What is his net worth now? I don't know the numbers, but I'm guessing that his net worth now is quite a bit higher than when he was 20 years old, even though he started from a high number to begin with.

Just based on those numbers, whatever they may be, for you to call him "witless" makes me question your judgment on the matter.

Certainly, the guy is not everybody's cup of tea, but I don't think he's stupid.

[dualstow]

Moda (and maybe others), you need to spend some time overseas. It really opens your eyes to the problems with the American press.

I've had extensive stays in both the Soviet Union (i.e. pre-breakup) and Kenya. In the USSR I was traveling with a Moscow native, and got to see some samples of Pravda (which means Truth, a very orwellian name). We usually think of Pravda as the ultimate propaganda tool, but it was in fact very similar to any American newspaper. I remember being surprised at that, I was expecting heavy handed government pronouncements and little actual news.

I've lived in Moscow and I had the opposite experience, although my command Russian is not great. Pravda and Novosti- they say there is no news in 'Truth', and no truth in 'News.' I tend to agree with "them" (Russian residents).

<snip>
It's where my deep distrust of the press comes from. So no, I don't think the press is indispensable. Genuine reporting is indispensable, but that's not what they do.

WiseOne, you sound a little bit like stuper here, reclassifying what you do like as something other than the press. The Kenyan papers are the press. Stuper's non-mainstream sites are the press. Reporting is a subset of the press.

If you all feel cynicism about mainstream media like CNN and the NYT, fine. Maybe we're just talking past each other. But stuper, those pictures you saw of people in cages, they come from the press. You can see images from non-news-affiliated individuals these days, and that's an important check against mainstream media. But any words they write are going to have a spin of their own.

It's fine to be cynical and critical, but I think people are taking what they have for granted. Without it, we'd be back in dark, living off rumors. Flawed as the media is, it's better than the dark.

[stuper1]

Ok, so if we changed the statement to say, "The mainstream media is the enemy of the people", would that be more palatable?

That's how I took the statement in the first place, but I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed.

[dualstow]

Ok, so if we changed the statement to say, "The mainstream media is the enemy of the people", would that be more palatable?

It's not about palatable.
Anyway, variety of opinion is what makes the world go round. I would say, "the media is deeply flawed, as are most things." If your mother says she loves you, verify your sources.

[moda0306]

What was Trump's net worth when he was 20 years old? What is his net worth now? I don't know the numbers, but I'm guessing that his net worth now is quite a bit higher than when he was 20 years old, even though he started from a high number to begin with.

Just based on those numbers, whatever they may be, for you to call him "witless" makes me question your judgment on the matter.

Certainly, the guy is not everybody's cup of tea, but I don't think he's stupid.

If you look at the reporting done on his inheritance, it's believed to have been over $400 million between 3 and 58. For ease of figuring, and considering how many schemes they were running at a young age, if we assume the weighted average of the contributions was at the age of 40, all someone would have to do would be to earn an 8% net RoR to accumulate 4.4 Billion by the age of 70.

Someone who's great at making deals should have been able to eclipse that significantly.

Now he's probably not dumb in every sense, but he doesn't seem to have a deep understanding of any topic pertinent to the presidency, and his bonafides as a private sector winner are mostly in the sleazebag department, not "making great deals." Even the writer of his "Art of the Deal" book has said he's essentially a dimwit.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... ogin-email

People's excuse-making for such a man who sun-downs with his finger on the button while ridiculing the admittedly awful media is something more entertaining to behold than most of what "The Left" has to offer.

[stuper1]

Interesting. I never had seen actual numbers before. I didn't realize his inheritance was that big. I was thinking say $20 million.

Anyway, there's plenty of rich people who have lost their total inheritance.

I'm no more worried about Trump having his finger on the button than I was with Bush 43. Now that guy always seemed like a dimwit to me. I think Trump is more a crazy like a fox kind of guy.

Of the choices available in 2016, who do you think we should have voted for?

[Mountaineer]

Interesting. I never had seen actual numbers before. I didn't realize his inheritance was that big. I was thinking say $20 million.

Anyway, there's plenty of rich people who have lost their total inheritance.

I'm no more worried about Trump having his finger on the button than I was with Bush 43. Now that guy always seemed like a dimwit to me. I think Trump is more a crazy like a fox kind of guy.

Of the choices available in 2016, who do you think we should have voted for?

Not to derail the conversation, but anyone who can fly F-102 fighter jets is not a dimwit.

https://www.456fis.org/PRESIDENT_BUSH_&_THE_F-102.htm

[WiseOne]

I didn't say Pravda was good, only that it's no different from our own mainstream hack rags. There's no "news" in them either - good saying. Also, I'm not arguing that the press shouldn't cover Trump's buffoonery and reactions to it. I just don't like how they do more than simply report - they use it to invent connections that have absolutely no supporting evidence other than the prevailaing narrative. Also also, totally in agreement that opinions and speculation should be described as such. I like reading opinion pieces - I just prefer them to be tagged that way, e.g. in an "opinion" section, or perhaps a paragraph at the end of a front page article starting with "this is my biased opinion."

It is a good idea to separate "the press" from current mainstream news-consumer outlets with (IMHO) zero credibility, if that's what you're advocating. Outside of these, the press is worth protecting. I do try to use the phrase "mainstream press" to emphasize this difference, but I get lazy sometimes.

Also should point out: a lot of the right-wing news outlets are no better than CNN, NYT etc as info sources. Maybe we could turn this discussion to identifying news sources that we all think are truly reliable. That would be: staffed by journalists who consistently display professional integrity, no inherent conflicts of interest such as ownership by an entity with ulterior motives. A blog run by a few people who escaped from their jobs at CNN maybe, supported by ads and reader contributions?

[WiseOne]

Now he's probably not dumb in every sense, but he doesn't seem to have a deep understanding of any topic pertinent to the presidency, and his bonafides as a private sector winner are mostly in the sleazebag department, not "making great deals." Even the writer of his "Art of the Deal" book has said he's essentially a dimwit.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... ogin-email

I looked this up out of genuine interest. Some serious background digging by the Times? Let's see it!!

Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.

By the end of the article, my b-s detector had gone off enough times that I'm afraid I can't take this seriously. For starters, how could he "help" his father make improper tax deductions? Isn't the father in question the one responsible for his tax return, and doesn't he have an army of tax accountants and attorneys involved? This is sort of like the Michael Cohen kindergarten-level "he made me do it" defense. Also, a later paragraph claims that gifts made during life should be subject to the inheritance tax. I can only assume that the author of this little opus has no idea how taxes actually work.

In point of fact, there is an entire industry devoted to minimizing to organizing wealth into trusts, gifts etc in order to circumvent inheritance taxes. That the Trump family did these things should be no surprise. In fact, if they DIDN'T do these things then I think you'd have a legitimate reason to consider them stupid.

Well so much for that bit of yellow journalism. :-) BTW please don't take this as "WiseOne is a major Trump fan and he can do no wrong." This is just not the right way to go about making the case for behavior/actions unbecoming the Presidency.

[WiseOne]

Now he's probably not dumb in every sense, but he doesn't seem to have a deep understanding of any topic pertinent to the presidency, and his bonafides as a private sector winner are mostly in the sleazebag department, not "making great deals." Even the writer of his "Art of the Deal" book has said he's essentially a dimwit.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... ogin-email

I looked this up out of genuine interest. Some serious background digging by the Times? Let's see it!!

Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.

By the end of the article, my b-s detector had gone off enough times that I'm afraid I can't take this seriously. For starters, how could he "help" his father make improper tax deductions? Isn't the father in question the one responsible for his tax return, and doesn't he have an army of tax accountants and attorneys involved? This is sort of like the Michael Cohen kindergarten-level "he made me do it" defense. Also, a later paragraph claims that gifts made during life should be subject to the inheritance tax. I can only assume that the author of this little opus has no idea how taxes actually work. Small wonder that these moves "met with minimal resistance from the IRS."

In point of fact, there is an entire industry devoted to organizing wealth into trusts, gifts etc in order to circumvent inheritance taxes. That the Trump family did these things should be no surprise. In fact, if they DIDN'T do these things then I think you'd have a legitimate reason to consider them stupid.

Well so much for that bit of yellow journalism. :-) BTW please don't take this as "WiseOne is a major Trump fan and he can do no wrong." This is just not the right way to go about making the case for behavior/actions unbecoming the Presidency.

[dualstow]

@WiseOne: understood.

Maybe we could turn this discussion to identifying news sources that we all think are truly reliable.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2960

[Xan]

It is a good idea to separate "the press" from current mainstream news-consumer outlets with (IMHO) zero credibility, if that's what you're advocating. Outside of these, the press is worth protecting. I do try to use the phrase "mainstream press" to emphasize this difference, but I get lazy sometimes.

Until relatively recently, it was understood that every publication had an opinion, and there was no pretense of objectivity, only competition among opinions. I don't know whether that model is better than the "objective" model. Perhaps the former is better only because the latter isn't truly obtainable. And I certainly believe that journalistic ethics should prevail even in an opinionated publication.

It's also worth keeping in mind that our freedom of the press was invented precisely in order to protect opinionated publications, not objective ones. Of course freedom of the press must apply to ALL press, or else you have the problem of who decides what's objective and what isn't.

Also, a later paragraph claims that gifts made during life should be subject to the inheritance tax. I can only assume that the author of this little opus has no idea how taxes actually work.

The gift tax and the inheritance tax are really one and the same: if you give more than the annual exemption in any given year, then the gift starts to count against your inheritance exemption, and once that's gone, it's fully taxable. So all gifts made during life really are considered by the IRS to be "pre-inheritance".

[jacksonM]

Now he's probably not dumb in every sense, but he doesn't seem to have a deep understanding of any topic pertinent to the presidency, and his bonafides as a private sector winner are mostly in the sleazebag department, not "making great deals." Even the writer of his "Art of the Deal" book has said he's essentially a dimwit.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... ogin-email

I wonder why it is that every Republican president in my lifetime has been a dumbass even worse than the one before while every democrat has been a genius.

[moda0306]

How old are you? Bush I was certainly smarter than Reagan.

[jacksonM]

How old are you? Bush I was certainly smarter than Reagan.

Just a youngster. Turning 70 in June. Truman was president when I was born.

Teddy Kennedy made some interesting and favorable observations about Reagan's intellect, especially at his age.

But that was back before the time when Democrats were forbidden to say anything nice at all about Republicans. Now Joe Biden gets into trouble just for suggesting that Pence is a "decent man" even though his kids go/went to a Christian school (or his wife teaches at one or something. Can't remember which).

[jhogue]

Newsflash!

Donald Trump is to blame for everything-- including the leftward lurch of the Democratic Party.



https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video ... party.html

[dualstow]

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video ... party.html

Heh. I bump into that guy about once a month irl.

[jacksonM]

How old are you? Bush I was certainly smarter than Reagan.

Then I guess smarts has nothing to do with effective governing or being re-elected.

The idea that some dumbass can be elected president of the United States not once but twice is nothing more than a fantasy on a par with the story of Forrest Gump (or some equally fantastical stories in the Holy Bible if you will).

[dualstow]

News item: Mueller has submitted his report.

[moda0306]

How old are you? Bush I was certainly smarter than Reagan.

Then I guess smarts has nothing to do with effective governing or being re-elected.

The idea that some dumbass can be elected president of the United States not once but twice is nothing more than a fantasy on a par with the story of Forrest Gump (or some equally fantastical stories in the Holy Bible if you will).

The idea that some dumbass can sit and deliver news day-in-day out... blah blah. Same shoe other foot. There are plenty of astoundingly stupid people in politics. Add to that, people have their strengths and weaknesses. That doesn't mean they're not exceptionally corrupt AND dim-witted in some key areas. Trump AND the mainstream media carry massive negative traits considering the positions they hold, many of which have simply to do with their lack of deep knowledge on any important issues, but even more have to do with just being sleazeball opportunists. Both are extremely powerful (but only one has their finger on the button). Any attempt (including liberal ones) to be heavily critical of one but chronically defend the other is ridiculous and I refuse to beat around the bullshit on this issue. We can pat our heads and rub our bellies at the same time.

[WiseOne]

Trump's "dumb-ness" seems to be very compartmentalized. His main issue is the complete lack of a brain to mouth filter, and I'm sure he's been told so many times. It's just that he genuinely thinks he doesn't need one. Other than that, I still have a hard time understanding how a genuinely low IQ person could have accomplished what he has. It is likely more of a personality disorder than an IQ problem. I have no wish go down the armchair psychoanalysis path though.

On some level, it's kind of fun to hear the unedited thoughts of someone living in the White House. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure his staff are careful not to feed him too much material. Perhaps the best chance of getting him impeached is his revealing something classified on Twitter.

[moda0306]

Trump's "dumb-ness" seems to be very compartmentalized. His main issue is the complete lack of a brain to mouth filter, and I'm sure he's been told so many times. It's just that he genuinely thinks he doesn't need one. Other than that, I still have a hard time understanding how a genuinely low IQ person could have accomplished what he has. It is likely more of a personality disorder than an IQ problem. I have no wish go down the armchair psychoanalysis path though.

On some level, it's kind of fun to hear the unedited thoughts of someone living in the White House. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure his staff are careful not to feed him too much material. Perhaps the best chance of getting him impeached is his revealing something classified on Twitter.

A lack of filter is one thing, which he certainly has, but that doesn't quite include the complete lack of being able to communicate in a coherent, consistent manner or be constrained by facts. George Carlin didn't have a filter. But he communicated very clearly. Trump seems to be suffering from some sort of cognitive decline and/or mental illness. I have a dad who is suffering from mild dimentia and I notice many similarities to how Trump thinks and communicates.

He hasn't "accomplished" much beyond leveraging the vast empire he inherited for some degree of douche-bag celebrity. Man, the kudos people are willing to give to inherited capital interests for simply not blowing all their money is astounding. The man inherited half a billion dollars by the 1990's. This doesn't make him evil or stupid, until he is completely willing to be fraudulent and bombastic about how he has "earned" the money. That degree of unearned confidence is downright dangerous as trigger-man to the largest killing machine in the history of the world, and while the media certainly is "a joke," they don't get to drop bombs. Focusing on "Thuh Mediuh" while giving the blow-hard with his finger on the button a pass is one of the most bombastic double-standards one could assemble when looking at power-politics today.

[jacksonM]

Then I guess smarts has nothing to do with effective governing or being re-elected.

The idea that some dumbass can be elected president of the United States not once but twice is nothing more than a fantasy on a par with the story of Forrest Gump (or some equally fantastical stories in the Holy Bible if you will).

The idea that some dumbass can sit and deliver news day-in-day out... blah blah. Same shoe other foot. There are plenty of astoundingly stupid people in politics. Add to that, people have their strengths and weaknesses. That doesn't mean they're not exceptionally corrupt AND dim-witted in some key areas. Trump AND the mainstream media carry massive negative traits considering the positions they hold, many of which have simply to do with their lack of deep knowledge on any important issues, but even more have to do with just being sleazeball opportunists. Both are extremely powerful (but only one has their finger on the button). Any attempt (including liberal ones) to be heavily critical of one but chronically defend the other is ridiculous and I refuse to beat around the bullshit on this issue. We can pat our heads and rub our bellies at the same time.

I think I posted a video clip over on the religion thread that showed what some kind of lizard had to go through from the moment of birth without any assistance from either parent who were long gone. Basically it was a gauntlet whereby they had to make it past an obstacle of snakes who were working together, equally amazingly, to eat them for their own survival.

The lizard in the clip made it to the end and joined other lizards somewhere near the ocean and I cheered for him.

Was that lizard simply a dumb creature?

I think not. Evolution had obviously developed some form of innate intelligence in the creature over many years. A human being would never survive what that lizard had to go through, at least at the current state of evolution.

And that's the way I view politicians.The only debate is whether they are snakes or lizards.