My early Friday thoughts (because gee why not share them?):

So the stock market is based on what Trump says and not what he actually does? They do know that he's never run a publicly owned company and yet....

I don't get why he and his mouthpieces constantly used China to shield him from questions about Russia.  It's not a smart move but then....

The Democrats should have attacking gerrymandering and getting some sort of voter id drive going.  As a party they seem to take a lot of things for granted and they need to be more proactive and less presumptuous.

1 hour ago, JaneAusten said:

But the democrats better not waste too much time before trying to reach out to the local groups or their candidates of choice might just be primaried right out of the party.

I was thinking about people who feel left behind or left out.  One of the things that always strikes me as problematic is how all these advocates on various news-related programs will show up to talk about poor people or other disenfranchised people and what they need, but none of them gets to come on and speak for themselves.  They should be talked to and not just about.  Many people just want to feel as if they belong.  I may have said this before but the Democrats should take this time to define Americans and stop letting the Republicans do it while they just fight the Republicans.  It is almost too easy to beat Republicans at their own game that I cannot figure out why Democrats don't and all of this can be done in such a positive way--which will help them win over independent/non-partisans. 

Be the Party of and for the People.

39 minutes ago, GMac said:

 

Wales, you are, and have been, someone whose posts always strike me as overwhelmingly fair and insightful.  

 

I do hope that you're right regarding the people that voted against Hillary.  Although, I simply can't understand how someone, using the argument "the lesser of two evils", would come to the conclusion that DJT is that person.  I can't conceive of it. 

Thanks!

She expressed dismay that she was not given better options.  Maybe she didn't care for Hilary Clinton enough to want to vote for her and he just seemed like more bark than bite.  I can't begin to understand how anyone could find that annoying man an option for anything. I'm about tired of hearing "respectable" people brush off Trump's classless behavior by saying that's how he is but that's not how they would talk.  But then again, I am tired of reporters asking apologists to condemn his tirades when it's evident they won't.

30 minutes ago, GMac said:

 

Agreed.

 

On the subject to Trump voters.  Yes, there are some Dems that crossed party lines, for whatever reason, to vote for this clearly racist misogynist.  All because he made a couple of stops along the rust belt, promising the manufacturing and steel jobs will come back?!?  It was clear in the eighties when Billy Joel sang about Allentown...

 

The thing is, I work in IT and those jobs have been going offshore for almost 20 years.  If the Dems put forth a candidate that said the things Trump did, and wanted me to ignore ALL of that because he/she would bring my programming job back, there is NO WAY IN HELL I would vote for them.  I would have been voting for the Republican.  So I'm with you.  No sympathy for anyone that voted for this abomination.

 

You're thinking and using logic and some of those voters may have understood deep down that nothing would change but they want to believe and chose to vote for Trump.  I watched an interview of three women who voted for Trump a couple of weeks ago.  One of them said she didn't think he would deliver on the jobs but hoped he would and that she wasn't enthusiastic about him, but she felt he was the lesser of two evils. 

The people who voted against Hilary Clinton will likely vote for whoever the Democrats run as long as that person is not polarizing with a lot of baggage.

I am non-partisan.  I am tired of party rhetoric and all the divisiveness. 

What the Democrats have going for them is that they seem to be for people while the Republicans are about money.  But the Democrats need to snap out of their funk and get to networking.  They should be finding ways to get people i.d. cards, working on community outreach programs, etc.  There are plenty of young people who want to belong to something purposeful and they could get something going.  And they need to offer opportunities for young people to learn how the government works so that they can keep new blood in the party because the over 70 club is not cutting it.  Right now they're squandering opportunities to start something new.

Earlier I read about all David Duke and his ilk tweeting a bunch of congratulations to Jeff Sessions.  One of the tweets included a photoshopped picture of Sessions as a confederate soldier with the flag in split screen.  Duke labeled Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder black Marxists and bragged about how Sessions would take care of the "terrorist BLM group." So I'm now guessing that they had advanced knowledge of this:

http://ktla.com/2017/02/09/trump-signs-3-new-executive-orders-on-crime-reduction-public-safety/

I expect more lawsuits over this

22 minutes ago, Juliajms said:

I was just reading that story about the farmers. I tend to be pretty sympathetic, even to people who cause their own problems, but for the love of God!  Making life hard for the undocumented was one of his major promises, of course he meant it.

Maybe they were thinking that since Mexico won't pay for the wall that it would not be an issues. 

I feel sorry for the workers but not those selfish farmers.  They want to exploit cheap labor.  After a while they may figure out that their votes didn't get him elected anyway since CA went to Clinton.  But this is a prime example of how trickle down does nothing for American workers.  Those farmers want to benefit from tax cuts and deregulation which should put more money in their pockets and they have no intention of hiring American workers at higher wages than they can pay their illegal immigrant workers. 

I live in California and undocumented workers help a whole lot of craven employers save money.  They pick up day laborers at Home Depot parking lots and the like and drop them off.  The Labor Board does not have enough manpower to keep up and some of them are subjected to unsafe conditions which Trump aims to make more unsafe.

1 minute ago, DramatistDreamer said:

Doesn't know what START is??!!  This man is dangerously obtuse.

I posted a Reuters link to that earlier.  I also read that he spent part of the call telling Putin how popular he is.  I am shocked that he is not bummed about his Fox pre-SB ratings not being higher than Barack Obama's.

2 hours ago, DRW50 said:

 

The only thing courageous about CNN is that Jeff Zucker can get out of bed in the morning after what he did. The media isn't some brave, noble warrior roused from years of inaction. They aren't even Keanu Reeves in that movie where he got upset because someone shot the dog. They essentially say, "You weren't very nice to the dog," and then go find other people who shot dogs to remind themselves and everyone else that it's not a big deal. 

If CNN wants to focus on sparring with Kellyanne Conway and the rest, so be it.  They're just giving them time to spread lies so that they can play their little fact checking games.  Unfortunately, gullible viewers believe some of these liars. 

They're also setting their own people up to get too emotional and end up like Chris Cuomo comparing journalists accused of fake news to using the N-word.

10 minutes ago, DramatistDreamer said:

 

Good, I'm glad! 

Trump administration is rushing out a bunch of executive orders steeped in goobledy-gook and causing chaos. Part of me thinks this is to try to quickly check-off a list of items just so they can claim to be active and also claim to fulfill their campaign promises.

The other part of me thinks they are performing some type of  sleight of hand while his blossoming kleptocracy springs into action robbing public coffers (e.g. severely weakening Dodd-Frank).

 

In the meantime, hopefully, Trump and his cabal will be tasting bitter defeat after bitter defeat.

That.

Plus Trumpkins are all over the internet claiming how hard he is working because they think having a bunch of meetings is the same as accomplishing something.  He's going to take another golf trip this weekend so the Secret Service can make some more money for his Mar-a-Lago resort.  His people claim he's going to pay for the Japanese Prime Minister's portion of the bill.  If he does, he will find a way to reimburse himself on the taxpayers.

"Counseled" as in good job but don't do it again for awhile because the haters are whining.

The Office of Government Ethics is being overwhelmed by phone calls and emails of people complaining but they have no enforcement powers.

Bill Moyers posted this:

I Thought CNN Was Taking A Courageous Stand Against White House Lies. I Was Mistaken.

http://billmoyers.com/story/lamentation-bill-moyers/

As much as he badmouths China and waxes on about made in America, he's mad because her made in China products are not selling.

And as for violating laws, I am convinced that they could set up a yard sale of Ivanka and Melania products on the White House lawn and apart from security, there would be no repercussions. 

It will probably take nothing less than a public revolt for any of their ethics violations to become a major issues because their activities have been normalized.  He attacks a judge and threatens to destroy someone's career and he's just "expressing himself."

Now this should concern elected officials http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-putin-idUSKBN15O2A5

Trump's base is going to stick with him no matter what.  He blames everyone for his failures so they'll go along with him.  I think more of them are too in love with how he speaks his mind because for some ridiculous reason they want a President who is one of them.  I'll never get that way of thinking because I prefer a President to be smarter than I am and certainly knowledgeable about global politics and diplomacy.

The stock market should react to actual policies and not temperamental tweets.  All that's done is cause businesses to allow him to take credit for plans some of them already had in place.  It gives the impression that they are instantly able to create jobs because he said so and appearing to placate him won't help them in the long run. 

I don't believe I've ever heard of a President using his position to parade executives in and out of the White House like it's some sort of Let's Make a Jobs Deal reality show.  I'm guessing he's the biggest attention seeking President this country has ever had.

CNN must have decided that Kellyanne Conway was good for ratings because they are click baiting it as the interview you need to see. 

At this point the lies are nothing but low hanging fruit and since they don't care about substance, they may as well introduce a daily segment on how many lies will she tells during their interviews complete with animations and a bell or buzzer for each lie.  Then they can have John what's his name stand in front of a yuuuuuge chart pointing out all the lies.  And since it's such a thing to mock music of the eighties, they can just use the Thomspon Twins as the theme.

I don't even know what to say...

http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/06/news/economy/donald-trump-beattyville-kentucky/index.html?iid=ob_lockedrail_bottomlarge

Here are some excerpts:

Trump won 81% of the vote in Beattyville. People here love that Trump doesn't "sugarcoat" anything. They feel he understands them, even though he's a billionaire.

"Donald Trump's got all the money he'll ever need," says Steve Mays, judge-executive for the county and life-long Beattyville resident. The 49-year-old says he's never been more excited about a president than he is now. "Trump will be a president for the common man."

and:

Today, the town is a ghost of its former self. The vast majority of Beattyville residents get some form of government aid -- 57% of households receive food stamps and 58% get disability payments from Social Security.

"I hope [Trump] don't take the benefits away, but at the same time, I think that once more jobs come in a lot of people won't need the benefits," says Hayes, who currently receives about $500 a month from government assistance. She's also on Obamacare.

also:

President Trump talks about substantial change. That's what has people in America's poorest white town fired up.

"I believe he wants to take care of us, the little people," says Coomer, the gas station manager. "I think he's going to quit giving money to all these other countries and take care of America. I truly do."

I don't understand the stock market well enough to get why Trump's negative comments about a company is used to drive the value down.  Nordstrom apparently dipped earlier because he went on twitter to criticize them for dropping Ivanka's line, then retweeted the criticism from the POTUS twitter account.  I saw a few days ago that there were threats to not shop there and whining about liberals not being the only ones to shop there.  I doubt that they can take down Nordstrom so his tweet having an effect seems ridiculous.

Regardless, he should not be allowed to use his position to threaten businesses over his family's business ventures. 

All those people who gleefully repeat his pledge to take $1 must not be able to tell the difference between the $400,000 (plus $50,000 for expenses) and the millions his golf weekend cost and the millions his wife and son cost living in NY. 

Throw in Melania's money grab lawsuit and you've got the first family grifters.

Today has been one of those days which reminds me of why I became an independent.  I truly hate partisan politics.

This morning I watched some of Maxine Waters on Democracy Now and it's great that she and her fellows are all in on fighting Donald Trump, but I am still dismayed by what little some of them have accomplished over the decades they've been in public office.  And it's sad that some of them have not done much to prepare the next generation for office.

Fight to get things for people but also work on putting together networks to help the people be a resource to themselves and others.  

I've heard complaints about old textbooks being used in California public schools for years, but an old textbook is no reason for a child not to learn how to read. Some basic problems can be addressed and Betsy Devos is not an excuse either.

Then there's this post on Huffington in which H.A. Goodman blames Trump's elections on the Democrats "cheating" Bernie Sanders.  I don't agree with what the DNC did but there's no guarantee how Bernie Sanders would have fared--maybe he would have been a counter to the anti-woman voters.  It is all moot and the blame game does not fix anything.  

The whole thing could be discouraging because it shines a light on how broken the Democrats are as a party, and coupled with the gerrymandering, makes the chances of them doing much mid-term weak.  

Instead of being discouraging though, it's tiresome.  Republicans are pushing through harmful legislations while Trump creates chaos and the media keeps insisting that everyone stand at the roadside and watch the wreck.  Meanwhile the Democrats are watching the wreck and in this constant state of outrage during breaks from finger pointing.  

And Fear Mongering 101 has taken an odd turn.  Rep. Sean Duffy went on CNN to defend the Muslim ban and basically shrugged off Dylan Roof and others because there's nothing that can be done about them.  But, in his eyes, the bright side is that Nikki Hayley took down the confederate flag.

ITA with Bette Midler about the damage caused by Prop. 13 but that's a state issue. 

Unless there is some sort of quitclaim loophole then eventually it will die but there's probably nothing stopping it being killed in some other way.  California is special that way.

What if he's right though?  You know they covered up the Bowling Green Massacre and we would never have known about it if not for Kellyanne Conway.

I don't know how much of the first season of this show I watched but I let it go once I knew Elena was going to be with Damon.  I don't think I am ever going to be there for any show with siblings switching mates. 

By the time I learned that Jodi Lyn Okeefe was on the show, it was too late for me to enjoy her on it as she was killed in the episode I watched. 

I thought it was crappy to tie Bonnie's death to Elena being able to wake up--especially since ND left the show. 

Anyway when I read all the complaints from shippers who hated Bonnie being paired with Enzo, I was curious and started watching again.  I don't know how well Jo's romance was written but Bonnie and Enzo are definitely more romantic to me than how Stefan and Caroline are written.  It was sort of laughable to hear Cade refer to Caroline as the love of Stefan's life when she already told Stefan that she knew he placed Damon ahead of her. 

The only thing missing from the flashback relationship is the moment Bonnie and Enzo declared their love for each other.  That should have been written imo.  I don't bother with the episodes they're not in because they're the most entertaining aspect of this show to me.  Everything else is just repetitious except maybe Cade.  The sirens were interesting but dragged on a bit too long.  And I get tired of Damon being told to do this or that because of Elena.  Stefan is not written to be remotely motivated by Caroline's love which is kind of sad for her character.  It's also odd that only Enzo was written to be able to fight for love without being reminded.

I noticed a few things that stick out of all the other writing issues: 

Elena's voice was used to lure him into Sybil's initial trap, but Sybil didn't seem to know about Elena until an episode in this season in which she put her hands on his head to find his weakness.  Maybe I missed something.

When the tuning fork was used on Sybil after she sent Damon outside to kill Bonnie, the sound had no effect on Bonnie at all who was just standing by the car watching them take down Sybil.  I guess it wasn't convenient to have Bonnie react to the sound until she and Enzo could decide that she must be psychically connected to Cade and the sirens.

In  this last episode the writers needed an explanation for how Stefan could go into a house without being invited in so they got super clever and tried to make sense out of it instead of just sticking to something trite and took it to an absurd level.  If a realtor could just sign a house over to herself that she sold to someone else then realtors would own a lot of houses.  And why bother notarizing her own signature when the whole thing was a forgery anyway?  All of that just to be able to have her invite Stefan into a house she still didn't own. 

All that sappiness guaranteed Enzo's death.  I saw his heart on the ground next to him but his body was pretty much intact with no signs of blood or a hole or anything. 

It kind of seemed as if just by saying he would get to carry over the threshold one day for real, that he will do just that.  His death came to quickly to make it seem like nothing more than a plot point to evoke some change in Bonnie.

This season is missing a real villain.  Savitar is lingering out there like a waiting game.  The episodes feel like everyone is just sort of hanging around filling up time until the season finale.  Flashpoint should have been given more than one episode instead of being the usual Barry messes up the timeline and gets another lecture.

At least they finally got around to Barry and Iris although I don't see why they needed to move in together instead of just getting married.  They pretty much skipped over the dating which could have taken place a few episodes into last season since Barry's romance with Patty was unnecessary.  I get that they probably felt they needed to do Eddie and Iris in order to make Eddie's big sacrifice more dramatic, but Barry knew he loved Iris and that he would always love Iris and giving her a little time to mourn Eddie should have been enough.  

Cisco and HG are, imo, the best characters on this show. 

This was the show I liked best out of the four but I let it go after the first episode of this season.  They should have left Kara with her crush on James which could have eventually faded away or remained in a way that wasn't a focus.  The mistake was having him reciprocate and using Cat and Lucy to promote a romance between them which was ill advised and definitely premature.  So after all that build up and acknowledgment of their feelings over the entire season which ended with their date planning, they take all of a few seconds to blow the whole thing up.  Somewhere between her trying on outfits and getting a promotion, she has an epiphany that romance is a bad idea. 

I did not care about them being together but I hated how poorly their ending was written and how it was unnecessarily rapidly it came.  They could have at least taken part of that episode to show her having doubts and then had her tell him in the second episode.  I actually think they should stay away from romantic relationships unless they have someone who can write them better because The Flash is just as bad and I don't watch Arrow but I figure it's the same.

I heard a report the other day that all White House staff is encouraged to submit Executive Orders and they have stacks of drafts as a result.  

Omarosa's HBCU draft is probably an attempt to stick it to Barrack Obama who was accused of not doing enough for  the HBCU.  Basically a bunch of "we support you" fluff with nothing behind it, or maybe some dollars to make it look good.  

Yesterday I saw a clip of an Indiana rep speaking on the Congress floor about rolling back policy which makes it harder for the mentally ill to purchase firearms.  I could not figure out why it's important to republicans that someone be able to purchase guns other than them wanting to boost gun sales.  Stock has declined about 20% for a couple of gun manufacturers and I guess this rollback aims to help them gain customers.

Trump may be about to sell some more of America to Japan because I am pretty certain that this infrastructure pitch that their Prime Minister will be making this week is going to cost the U.S. in the long run.  The proposal seems to be to buy some of the U.S. debt to provide $150 billion over 10 years to fund projects such as bullet trains and tech.  This is supposed to create 700,000 jobs, most of which I believe will have to be outsourced.  It will sound good for Trump to say he's gotten all these jobs but at what cost and how many of them will even go to the American worker he's supposed to be championing?  

I highly doubt that they're going to want to have bullet trains in Kentucky, Virginia, or many of the other states where his support was greatest.  The most likely place will be California where this has already been "in the making" for years.  So if they were able to find workers from those states for that project they would most likely have to relocate.  And if they are able to find workers from those states to work on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence projects then they will most likely have to relocate as well.  But how many people are they really going to find that are that proficient in technology?  

This seems like a crafty move to ensure that the egomaniac will team up with them against China over geographical disputes to give him bragging rights about being the greatest job creator ever, while they try to amass more of the U.S. debt than China.

Anyone who figured that it would not take Trump long to go on twitter and insult the judge who issued the stay on the Muslim ban is unfortunately right.

First alternative facts and now made up massacres.  Trump is here to save us with a refugee ban to prevent the Bowling Green massacre from ever happening again...only it didn't but it's a teeny mistake and you know how the media makes stuff up all the time so Kellyanne Conway thinks she's entitled.

Once again they find a way to try to blame their nefarious activities on a former President who is also a democrat.  Chaffetz and Hatch might want to go read up on how Teddy Roosevelt designated national parks since some of them are fond of pointing out who in history was a republican.

I hope the Arkansas ACLU is ready because Arkansas has a new law which allows a man to block his wife's abortion.

The atheists are getting ready to come for Trump over his pledge to destroy the Johnson Amendment which prevents political activity by churches.

3 hours ago, Roman said:

That's all he's going to do each day he's in office...go after anyone or any entity that doesn't like him or calls him out for what he truly is. 

He got the brilliant idea to threaten Berkley from someone on Fox.  I read a couple of days ago how some of the Fox people use their broadcast time to send him their ideas because they know he watches.  Anyway he cannot take money from public colleges on the basis of his definition of the violation of free speech and they can claim that the speech was shut down because of the violence.  He can't do anything about the protests. 

Now there are states that want to shut down protests with legislation.  Someone in North Dakota wants legislation passed that would make it legal to run over and kill a protester who was blocking traffic. 

I heard about that Yemen attack Sunday morning and I am still surprised that it is not a big story.  As with the countries listed in the anti-Muslim ban, they are trying to scapegoat Obama but you don't even have to be much of a thinker to ask why they would use his intel since they found him so inept.

Why is anyone even buying Steve Bannon's new world order as having any Judeo-Christian basis when the Judeo part can be automatically ruled out?  His brethren should be the ones risking their lives not the very people they despise. 

If I were in the media I would run stories everyday about all the Trumpkins who signed up to go and defend the rights they claim they are losing and the nation they claim to love so much.  Then I would publish as many photos as I could of the people they despise who gave or continue to sacrifice their lives so that those Trumpkins can spout their venom.

Trump is pathological and generally ignorant.  I have never understood why people give him so much credit for being such a great businessman when he was born into wealth and has used the system to bail him out of bad deals he's made. 

His ignorance is on full display everyday now.

The greatest compliment he seems to be getting are from reporters/analysts fishing for something positive to say by constantly repeating how he's doing what he said he was going to do and no politician has ever kept their promises.  But is he really doing what he said he was going to do?  Is is he building on quicksand since these rushed through actions might not stand up to legal challenges?

All of his boasting has taken away his option of being able to fall back on goodwill if anything major happens.  He's made it much easier for other nations to be encouraged to unite against the U.S. by his tyrannical nature. 

I believe he's the biggest test of the legislative to come along in some time.

He's threatening Berkley's funds because of the protest against his supporter Milo Yiannopoulis and California is not the state for him to go after. 

Oh I will:

“I am very proud now that we have a museum on the National Mall where people can learn about Reverend King, so many other things, Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice. Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, and millions more black Americans who made America what it is today. Big impact.”

Maybe he thinks Frederick Douglass is an intern or someone walking around in the hallways--doing a great job and people are like "look at what Frederick D. is doing."

CNN gave Trump daily access to free campaign promotion beginning some time around the summer in 2015.  Both Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon took turns at interviewing him daily and basically brushing off his rhetoric by presenting him as some sort of friend.  In so doing, they normalized his words and gave him some degree of credibility.  Maybe they saw it as a harmless way to get ratings since they probably didn't think he'd get elected but giving him all that airtime to spout off certainly helped him reach more people than had they not.  I don't think they started to show concern until it was too late to dismiss him.  CNN got the ball rolling and the other cable news networks just followed.

Their viewers might appreciate not being subjected to the daily lies and distortion of reality served up by Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer.  He's generally abrasive and easily irritated and she is unable and/or unwilling to answer a question.  She can't seem to even answer a "yes" or "no" question.  Everything has to be twisted into some tale of the media not appreciating and recognizing the greatness of Trump or some false equivalency used to try to excuse Trump's actions. 

Actually all three of them (Priebus, Conway and Spicer) are a waste of time.  They all try to spin everyone along in some intentionally convoluted web that has nothing to do with whatever the topic is.