Political Dog 101

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Donald J. Trump…The American President whose words don’t mean much…Open Thread for 4/18/18…..

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We have come to realize that Donald J. Trump often says things that have NOTHING to do with reality….

Who says one thing….

They changes it the next day….

That makes comments that staff have to try and clarify, only to have their boss confuse things again….

That has views that are shaped by Fox News , or worst it seems ?

Just plain made up….

In several cases in the last year and half Congress has had to disregard Trump’s wishes and go their own way…..

Several Federal Courts have stop actions he sort to take….

With this?

It is no wonder that many have stopped worrying about Trump’s tweets or comments and are moving ahead without focusing on a President that seems inept in the office of the American President….

All of this has led investors, executives and diplomats to the conclusion that trying to act on any single thing Trump says or tweets is a fool’s game. The more effective strategy, these people say, is to look for trends in the broad sweep of Trump’s approach to governance and ignore all the noise.

“He’s clearly proven that he tends to shoot first and ask questions later and that is very, very difficult for anyone on Wall Street or really anywhere to navigate,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Cresset Wealth Advisors. “You can get free traders in the administration pushing stuff like rejoining TPP then he wipes it all out with a single tweet. So what we’ve tended to do is just look at the trends from 30,000 feet and shrug off the random tweets.”

In the case of Amazon, Trump roasted the company for days on Twitter at the end of March, crushing its stock price. Since then he’s only asked for a review of Post Office contracts, including the one it has with Amazon. Investors consider the review unlikely to amount to anything. Fears of a full-bore assault on the online retail giant have evaporated and its shares are climbing again.

One of the wealthiest hedge fund managers in the world, who is a Trump supporter and did not want to be identified by name criticizing the president, said trading on any single Trump comment — whether Amazon or anything else — was ill advised given how quickly he can change positions or simply move on to another subject…..

More…

image…fortune.com

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  2. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer says he will introduce a bill to decriminalize marijuana.

  3. I think Democrats are wrong in voting not to move Mike Pompeo nomination to be Secretary of State to the Senate floor.

    I probably disagree with Pompeo on more things than I agree with him on,but I see nothing that should disqualify him.

    I have often stated that absent some major problem a President is entitled to a Cabinet of his choice,even if the President is named Trump.

    • I think he’ll make it….

      McConnell IS gonna put this up for a vote even though it would not pass the Senate Foreign Relations committee….THAT is a first...

      But I’m surprised at the closeness of this….

      This IS a rebuke of Trump’s Foreign Policy ineptness….

      By members of BOTH parties….

      I believe Haspel will NOT make it to the CIA and probably will withdraw…

  4. No nominee for Secretary of State in recent memory has received a negative committee vote.

    It is a bad precedent and will likely come back to haunt the Democrats.

    Pompeo might not be their choice but he shouldn’t be simply as scapegoat for their picque at Trump.

    • Maybe….

      Trump and his GOP buddies have broken quite a few customary paths….

      It will be up to the Majority party leaders in the House and Senate to set things back on track….

      McConnell should bear the brunt of criticism on this…Ryan to a lessor extent

      I doubt we will see a non-politician in the nations White House anytime soon after Trump leaves….

      • A Politico/Morning Consult poll finds that 43% of voters believe President Trump represents the majority viewpoint of Republicans in Washington, compared with 37% who said he does not.

        That’s a net swing of 20 points from a August poll when 47% said Trump did not represent the viewpoint of most Republicans, and 33% said he did.

        This is important: Trump promised to “drain the swamp,” but now voters see him as part of the swamp….

        Politicalwire…

  6. Romney comes in second in Utah US Senate vote….Mike Kennedy came in first…
    There Will be a run off…..

    • Romney came in second in the vote at the Republican state convention.Kennedy, a state legislator, received 51% of the delegate votes while Romney received 49%.

      The rules require that a candidate receive 60% to avoid an actual primary.
      Accordingly ,Kennedy and Romney will meet in a primary.

      Romney is the favorite of course ;however, it is certainly disappointing to him and his supporters that he couldn’t break the threshold to avoid aparty primary.

      • Morning….

        The run off will be just the two of them….

        Yes…Romney is sure to win….

        He has backed away from endorsing Trump after his immigration comment went public….

        • It isn’t a”runoff.”

          It’s a primary.

          A “runoff” is held as a result of a primary in which there are multiple candidates and no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote.In the runoff,the top two candidates face each other and the others are eliminated.

            • There won’t be a primary runoff. Only two qualified for the primary and Utah has no provisions for runoffs anyway.

              The term “runoff” does not apply to the state’s electoral system.

              What happened last night was not a “primary” and what will happen in June or whenever it is is not a convention vote. There will be at least 10 times more voters than last night.

            • No I don’t feel better.

              I expect a guy who self proclaimed,”know my stuff” to understand the difference.

  7. This isn’t that unexpected in Utah, where a convention is controlled by the most conservative elements of the party. Two years ago, the popular incumbent GOP Governor did worse at the convention than Romney did, and then easily won the primary, which is what is likely to happen here.

    Romney will at last get to beat Kennedy!

    • It seemed unexpected to me. I thought that Utah was the one state where a conservative who did not approve of Trump was supported at all levels by the party faithful. It appears that even in the Beehive State crossing The Donald can have consequences by the party that he is supposedly “holding hostage”

  8. I don’t think it had a whole lot to do with Trump. It’s more of a “Romney is not Tea Party” or “carpetbagger” thing.

    Two years ago, Governor Herbert got something like 41% at the convention and then 71% in the primary.

    • It can be two things. Seems to me all of the “Tea Party” Republicans are all in for Trump. It’s not like any of them ever gave a shit about the deficit anyway.

    • Trump is reportily NOT popular with the Mormons in Utah …..

      Immigration IS something they do NOT agree on with Trump

  9. Kim Jong Un is a”very honorable” man.

    So sayeth Republican President Donald Trump.

    What sayeth his fellow Republicans?

  10. Morning All..

    Nominee to head the VA , Adm Ronny Jackson has withdrawn from consideration for the job,,..

    He may lose his job as White House doctor after revelations about his actions in office….

    • NFL draft starts this evening…..

      Will the NY Giants take a QB or RB?????

      Who does Cleveland pick?

        • Senate vote to confirm Mike Pompeo to be Secretary of State:
          Question: On the Nomination (Confirmation Mike Pompeo, of Kansas, to be Secretary of State )
          Vote Number: 84
          Vote Date: April 26, 2018, 12:34 PM
          Required For Majority: 1/2
          Vote Result: Nomination Confirmed
          Nomination Number: PN1761
          Nomination Description: Mike Pompeo, of Kansas, to be Secretary of State
          Vote Counts:
          YEAs 57
          NAYs 42
          Not Voting 1
          *Information compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate

          Voting YEA: 50 Republicans (out of 51), Angus King (Ind-Maine) and the following six Midwestern and Southen Democrats:

          Joe Donnelly (Indiana)
          Heidi Heitkamp (North Dakota)
          Claire McCaskill (Missouri)
          Joe Manchin (West Vrginia)
          Doug Jones (Alabama), and
          Bill Nelson (Florida)

          John McCain (R-Arizona) did not vote.

          Voting NAY were Bernie Sanders (Ind-Vermont). the other 41 Democrats and no Republicans.

          https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&session=2&vote=00084

                • via twitter….

                  Chris Cillizza
                  @CillizzaCNN

                  3% of people have a “great deal” of confidence that elected officials act in the best interests of the public.

                  3%!!!!!

              • He might have gotten discouraged due to the problem with his posts not appearing.

                • Could be
                  He could post from his phone
                  Not company computer

                  Keith also seems unable to post

                  I’m trying get him thru
                  I believe the issue is not here for both of them but on their end…
                  It’s frustrating for me
                  But I’m out ways to deal with this

                  • Well that leaves you, me,Scott, CG and DSD.Manila apparently left when the old site disappeared.

                    • Actually,though, there is something odd going on.I mean what’s the point of having a political discussion group when apparently people can’t post?

                      I post on a couple of other sites occasionally and have no trouble whatsoever.

                    • Quite frankly I done just about all I can do on this….

                      Due to the bots and spam I have had a chuck of comments and commentors gone….

                      I have jumped thru hoops because of this…

                      Yes I’m down to just a few regulars….

                      NO ONE has helped me carry the cost of this place….
                      Which was several hundred dollars to reconstruct…

                      I’m tired on this….

                      I have contacted the people who run the filter system Akismet and offer them to anyone who still has issues geting on here to post….

                      If people walk away?
                      I understand…
                      But I have done everything I can….

                      This is all we’ve got….

                    • And as it stands…..

                      Manila
                      NYCmike
                      Daniel
                      ILL Brandon
                      RepubliCAN
                      SE

                      …..and it seems Z have ALL left due to no interest , the site going dormant for a week, or other reasons….

                    • Oh, and the hosting service cut the site off due to the spam and dots, who won against the server…..

                      And seem to have got mostly their way in chasing away traffic from this site….

                    • Rep. Patrick Meehan is resigning from Congress to end the Ethics Committee’s investigation into allegations he sexually harassed a former staffer. Read more

                    • James,contrary to what you think,I’m not being critical of you.

                      I was just pointing out that other sites seem to have a way of making it fairly easy to post comments without the problems you’ve been having.Perhaps there is a problem with those who helped you set up the site?Admittedly,I know little about this.

                      However, it simply doesn’t make sense that people can’t post comments on a site for comments.

                      Essentially ,now, you are spending a great deal of time(and money apparently),on a site for you and four other people.

                      I guess what I’m saying is that I appreciate your efforts ;however, I won’t blame you if you decide to pack it in.

                      I mean ,providing a venue for CG, Scott and myself to do a little back and forth each day or two while DSD offers historical context and paying to do so?Well, all I can say is ,if you decide to let it all go,I think we would all understand.

                    • I HAVE spent money on a site that goes out to at least 300 people….

                      Commentors are the few regulars….

                      I understand your view about comments which I share…

                      But the fact that you do not see is the spam and bots….

                      I have explained here how they overload a site’s server….

                      RRH crashed a month before this place….

                      I understand that you and everyone else do appreciate my efforts and the site….

                      But filtering is a requirement not an option….

                      I WILL continue….

                      And hopefully traffic will pick up….

                      Getting people to comment has been difficult ….

                      All the GOPer’s have dropped out preferring to be on sites that have people with their views….

                      And some just move on….

                      Thank you Jack for your support….

  12. PoliticalWire has a story out today about Red State firing writers not supportive of Trump.

    The conservative never Trumpers seem to be on life support. The only GOP opposition to Trump seems to rest with eastern Republican governors like Larry Hogan of MD and Charlie Baker of MA.

    • The latest Quinnipiac Poll shows Trump approval among Republicans at 84%.

      Only 11% of Republicans Disapprove ,while 6% are neutral.

    • Gonna be REAL interesting to see how the allegiance to Trump people deal with a GOP
      Trainwreck in November…..

      One would assume the surviving lawmakers ain’t gonna be as afraid to knock Trump in public?
      The ones who lose because of him ?

      They didn’t put enough space between
      Themselves and Trump…

      That 84% will work in primaries
      But could be a liability come November 7
      Even in some Red States

      • If the Democrats take the House ,Republican Trump supporters may react in one of two ways…

        They may blame Trump and begin a slow ,yet steady lessening of support for him ,or they may blame the “media” and the “lying libruls ” and double down in their support.

        Could go either way and will likely depend on other factors ie,the economy,foreign affairs etc at that time.

        However, as I’ve said, it is really too early to make any definitive judgment on Congressional elections which are still seven months out.

        • After the Goldwater débâcle of 1964, the Republicans who had been cool to him in the primaries and general election campaign were free to be even cooler.

          But those who’d supported him — as I dimly recall from over 50 years ago — didn’t repudiate him. He’d struck a chord south of the Mason-Dixon line that they wanted to prolong and repeat.

          Richard Nixon was a genius at seeming to be acceptable to both the Main Street/Wall Street/establishment moderate Republicans and to the Goldwaterites.

  13. Kentucky Republican Rep.Thomas Massie has labeled French President Macron a

    “Socialist militarist globalist science alarmist .”

    Did he miss any bases?

  14. Trump is on the warpath this morning against Sen Jon Tester. Saying he should resign, the people of Montana should reject him etc.
    You know, stuff a “secret Democrat” woukd say.

    • For sure,

      The only question left to be answered is ,when does Trump actually announce that he is a Democrat and denounce the Republicans.

      • Ha, ha, ha……

        Jan 2nd after Pelosi and Schumer get elected Speaker and Majority Leader?

      • Yes Jack, it is only a matter of time.

        I was in DC last week and left my laptop at home, planning to spend the week visiting with friends. I mistakenly thought I could post using my I-Phone, but was locked out for some reason. I too am not trying to be critical, especially after all the effort James has put into this effort, but I sure was frustrated.

        I was in DC with some good gossip and couldn’t post. I kept asking for a new password, but the system didn’t work as advertised.

        I hope James doesn’t pack it in, but wouldn’t blame him if he did, and I hope this has not been set-up to prevent someone from posting.

        But, back to last week.

        Imagine my surprise to read that Harry Reid is somehow responsible for Donald Trump becoming the Republican nominee. Supposedly, because Harry told an untruth about Willard Romney not paying taxes (he should have just kept talking about his secret offshore bank accounts). Now I didn’t know old Harry had such power, but we all know why Trump got nominated and elected and it sure didn’t have to do with taxes (since Trump didn’t pay any either) and it had everything to do with fear and racism. After all, Harry wasn’t the one who claimed Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii. How we got from Harry Reid to the racist disease that controls the GOP I’m not sure. But, it was funny to read.

        I suspect it all goes back to Romney losing, again, the Presidency (like father like son) and Willard’s boundless need for elected office. I was amused to see Willard lose at the Republican State Convention in Utah to a nobody (the savior of the Salt Lake Olympics). It would have been more fitting if Romney would have gotten 47% of the delegate votes. But Willard always had been a weak candidate, remember he barely beat old Rick “I hate gays” Santorum for the nomination in ’12.

        Now, Ronny Jackson, you know that Bush hire. Trump thinks the controversy surrounding Jackson is a disgrace, it sure is, Jackson is unqualified. Ronny must have been drinking when he told us that Trump weighed 238 pounds (one pound under obese), and if all of the things said about Jackson are untrue then Trump should renominate him. Let Jackson tell his story, and then let him tell us how he is qualified for the job.

        As a former Congressional staffer I made every effort to give my boss accurate information — and if that information was proven to be inaccurate then my boss took the blame. Trump keeps sending up unqualified nominees, but it is always someone else’s fault.

  15. Happy May Day, everyone !!

    We’re only four days away from Karl Marx’s 200th birthday (born 5 May 1818 in Trier [Trèves to the French]).

    No doubt we’ll be favoured by illuminating comments from a certain Republican in the Chicago suburbs, no doubt claiming pride in the fact that political and labour May Day began in Chicago after the Haymarket affair of 1886… I don’t think.

    Funny thing is that Republicans and conservatives (with the exception of Prof. C. Northcote Parkinson of Parkinson’s Law) are always ready to leap into unqualified, wholesale denunciations of any economist or philosopher on the Left, while socialist thinkers (including Marx and Engels themselves, Oskar Lange and Michael Harrington) always gave genuine, if only partial, credit to the insights of such conservative heroes as Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and C. Northcote Parkinson.

    [Of course, the conservatives will answer back smugly and unconvincingly that this is because their own theories are so irrefutable that it is impossible to deny them completely, while it is impossible to agree plausibly with a single point of the dangerous, pernicious and foolish theories of the Left.)

    • We’re also only 27 weeks (189 days) away from Election Day.

      On May 20th, less than three weeks from today, we’ll be one-third of the way (16 months) into this disastrous Presidency.

      539 days, or 77 weeks & 0 day(s) since Election Day, 2016
      466 days, or 66 weeks & 4 day(s) since Inauguration Day, 2017
      TODAY
      189 days, or 27 weeks & 0 day(s) until Election Day, 2018
      247 days, or 35 weeks & 2 day(s) until the 116th Congress sits
      917 days, or 131 weeks & 0 day(s) until Election Day, 2020
      995 days, or 142 weeks & 1 day until Inauguration Day, 2021

      • And….

        We are a hair away from six months from the 2018 MidTerm Elections and a possible Democratic revival…..

        • RCP has Trump inching up to 43% approval in it’s averaging….

          Could be the North Korea influence?

          Also could be people ARE beginning to undrestand Trump bull shit process and are calming down from the choas?

  16. And another installment of “Republicans Accidentally Speaking the Truth” former HHS Sec Tom Price admitted the Trump Republican tax cut for the rich will result in higher health care costs for many Americans.

    • The Repeal effort is dead….

      More acknowledgments that the tax cut screws the middle class and the poor like many of use knew.…

    • I am a huge opponent of the GOP tax cut, but I don’t see why it would significantly impact health care costs. Maybe someone can explain it to me.

      • On healthcare it could be that a several fixes where supported to done in the txa bill that never got put in…..

        The result is higher costs….

        I think medical equipment was one
        Fixing substities was another…
        Although I believe another fail dare subsidy
        Action actually kicked in…

        • Doctor Says Trump Dictated Glowing Health Letter

          “When Dr. Harold Bornstein described in hyperbolic prose then-candidate Donald Trump’s health in 2015, the language he used was eerily similar to the style preferred by his patient. It turns out the patient himself wrote it,” CNN reports.

          …

          Louisiana Elections Chief Quits Amid Misconduct Charges

          Secretary of State Tom Schedler (R) announced “that he is leaving his elected position as calls for his resignation increased amid allegations that the state elections chief sexually harassed one of his employees,” the AP reports.

          “The woman claims Schedler frequently sent her love letters, sexually propositioned her and showed up at her doorstep with unwanted gifts, including sex tapes.”

          Politicalwire….

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