The Trump Presidency - how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Hair

LeVeL said:
Every single one of my examples are things I've witnessed personally.
Click to expand...
So how do your anecdotes prove that personal decisions far outweigh all other reasons for income disparity and poverty?

Actually, don’t bother. You may be convinced that you’re as good as invincible - it’s apparent - but at some point, you, too, will realise that nobody is. You remind me of that guy in “Goldeneye” who ends up frozen.

 
Last edited:
Here is what you are not getting, LeVeL; you didn't succeed because of the system, you succeeded in spite of it. That says a lot about you, but your success doesn't mean there are not institutional and societal problems that keep poor people poor. This doesn't belittle what you have accomplished, despite our differences I sincerely admire you for what you have done with your life. I want more stories like yours, but ones that happen across an entire culture, not just a handful of anecdotes to trot out and try to gloss over the millions who are working just as hard but don't have the same access, knowledge, or resources.
 

https://opentextbc.ca/principlesofeconomics/

Economics is a difficult subject, I only got a B in it.

The actions taken by a president usually take years to have an impact on the economy. If any of you wish to read the text book that I provided a link to, I think that you'll see that many of the preceding posts are out of touch with what is commonly accepted in economics.
 
Blind_Io said:
Based on his history, which do you think is most likely? He's going to claim executive privilege over everything he can, slander anyone else in the media, and use stooges to disrupt proceedings whenever possible.

I expect at least a half dozen childish nicknames.
Click to expand...


I expect him to keep the same course. The more interesting aspect will be the other republicans, and the Trumpettes. Can't wait to see the mental gymnastics they will go through to defend Trump's actions, to smear the process, and the Democrats.
 
Blind_Io said:
Here is what you are not getting, LeVeL; you didn't succeed because of the system, you succeeded in spite of it. That says a lot about you, but your success doesn't mean there are not institutional and societal problems that keep poor people poor. This doesn't belittle what you have accomplished, despite our differences I sincerely admire you for what you have done with your life. I want more stories like yours, but ones that happen across an entire culture, not just a handful of anecdotes to trot out and try to gloss over the millions who are working just as hard but don't have the same access, knowledge, or resources.
Click to expand...

Blind, I think that you'll find this to be interesting.

https://www.npr.org/2015/10/20/4501...mpathy-for-people-facing-things-weve-overcome
 
Yep, there are a ton of biases that act on us every day; if we are lucky, we might be aware of a handful of them at any time.
 
LeV, I'll start by saying that on this subject (how to get out of poverty) I have a soft spot for what you say, because it is indeed true for some people and because so many people complain endlessly but than make poor, poor choice.

Yet I cannot really agree with you for the same reason why I cannot agree with those saying that each poor person is a victim of society: because they are both PARTIAL descriptions of reality.

I think this sentence from Blind_Io is revealing
you succeeded in spite of it
Click to expand...
On the same lines, I remember a fantastic joke from "The IT Crowd", where the multimillionnaire said "when I started this, I had only two things: a dream and six million pounds". It was irresistible, and it was because we all know it is true.

Most of the success we have, where we end up, what we can achieve and, in the end, the amount of money we can make, does not depend on us. If we are born rich or poor, that makes A LOT of difference and does not depend on us; if we are born healthy or sickly, that does not depend on us; if we are born in the right geographical place, that does not depend on us; if we are dumb or smart, that does not depend on us; if we get the right choices or the right education during childhood, that does almost entirely not depend on us; if we GET TO HAVE the right choices at the right moment during our life, that does not really depend on us.

What depends on us is to be ready, to be aware, to build up to be in places where the opportunities are more likely to pass by, to take them and to not let them go.

But then again, opportunities are far more likely to pass by if you are already in a good position, in a snowball effect manner. And not all opportunities end up well, DESPITE what you do. More than one people who succeeded in life told me that they bet on themselves. They could have succeeded or they could have stayed where they were or they could have failed. They had faith in themselves, and they were right. But success is not automatic even if you have all the right cards.

Yet more chances means more possibilities (as Trump's insuccess rate shows perfctly). Someone has just one opportunity, someone has many. It's easier to have many... At some point, someone who is already in a good position will achieve even more and someone who is in a lower position will not, the first one will end up with more money, more gratifications, even further opportunities, while the other will end up with less of each one of these things, and will have to put 10 times the effort of the first person to get just a bit of what the other gets easily.

This is a big problem, and mostly because it is common practice to consider the first person "better" than the other, when in fact it might just be an effect of the conditions upon which neither of them could do anything.

In that sense life itself is a better judge and a kinder rewarder, because it may give you depression if you have no goal or objective, even if you are rich, and may see you happy because you managed to improve from "oh sh*t!" level to "just tolerable". But then again, this depends often more on what cards we were dealt at start than on other things.

This is why we should try to give people one thing, just one: opportunities.

Give people opportunities to improve, to become better people, to develop and to express themselves, and they will be happy and thriving. Take them away and they will be sad and depressed and ultimately improductive and damaging.

To give people opportunities means to have them healthy, decently educated, able to move through the social ladder -at any time-, always able to give themselves time to develop, improve, and the chance to start over or change completely. And, of course, able to cope and go on in spite of whatever misfortune they may encounter.

Give them this, and you'll have happy, industrious, free people.

I have personally seen people who could be in jail become great, dedicated workers, because they KNEW it was worth the pain.

This is why I have a soft spot for your "make yourself" vision while retaining strong the knowledge that wealth must be distributed wayyyyyy better than it is now and that now things are getting worse rather than better, and the "countless opportunities for people with the right willpower" propaganda that we hear each day is just that: propaganda. Sometime you cannot get out of the dump you are in, no matter how hard you try. Once people realize this, they stop trying. This is why the "improvement through willpower" should work, but today is just propaganda.
 
Last edited:
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/28/7742...t-lt-col-alexander-vindmans-opening-statement

READ: Ukraine Expert Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman's Opening Statement

In his testimony in the House impeachment inquiry Tuesday, Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, is expected to describe his concerns with how the Trump administration handled Ukraine policy and with a July call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.


"In the Spring of 2019, I became aware of outside influencers promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency," he says in his prepared opening remarks, which were obtained by NPR. "This narrative was harmful to U.S. government policy. While my interagency colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic on Ukraine's prospects, this alternative narrative undermined U.S. government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine."

Vindman says he relayed "certain concerns" to national security officials internally "in accordance with my decades of experience and training, sense of duty, and obligation to cooperate within the chain of command."


Vindman also says he believed that if Ukraine actually pursued an investigation into the Biden family and Burisma, as Trump suggested it did, Ukraine would lose bipartisan support, and this "would all undermine U.S. national security."


Read his prepared testimony below and see the statement, as obtained by NPR, here.
Click to expand...

More at the links.
 
Another smoking gun: Audio recording of payday loan lenders bragging about donations to Trump specifically to fend off regulation in new quid pro quo.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...s-campaign-fend-off-regulation-audio-reveals/

More from Trump's transactional approach to his administration.

EDIT: I just had a scary thought - how will Trump try to distract from these impeachment proceedings? I strongly suspect he will try to cause a problem, like another government shutdown, or possibly start an international incident to derail coverage.
 
Last edited:
So, about that "word for word" transcript...
What a surprise, it looks like some rather key details were deleted before it was released. If Obama would have done this, the GOP would be screaming for his head on a pike.
 
I said that was going to be the case as soon or the transcript was released.

In other news.

.https://www.justsecurity.org/66767/exclusive-white-house-ignored-pentagon-warning-on-ukraine-funding/

Exclusive: White House Ignored Pentagon Warning on Ukraine Funding
 
Well, Trump also ignored the Pentagon warnings about pulling our troops out of Syria - those troops are not coming home as Trump claimed and Trump ended up sending them back in to "guard oil fields" and openly boasted about committing a war crime. It's no surprise he ignores people who don't tell him what he wants to hear, this is why he has such high turnover in his cabinet - you either agree with his insanity and make it happen or you are fired for being disloyal or incompetent for not making the world conform to his delusions.
 
"Two Democrats voted 'no'" is going to become a "Bipartisan opposition to impeachment" talking point before the week is out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top