The Trump Thread!!!

[DeadPresident]

Also all you lefty people need to stop letting yourselfs get so rilled up by Trump.

Donald Trump is a joke and has always been a joke. He won't make it past the first debates.

Desperate Americans elected a "joke" into power before, what makes you think they can't do it again?

 

[Smashlilman]

How come the United States never tried to make Mexico into a US territory, kind of like they do with Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands?

We did. The entire west coast of the US and Texas used to be Mexico. Also the Southern states planed on expanding into the rest of Mexico and South America and the only reason they didn't was because they were economically and militarily decimated during the Civil War.

 

[herakles]

Desperate Americans elected a "joke" into power before, what makes you think they can't do it again?

Who was the "joke"?

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Everyone knows W was/is a joke and one of the absolute worst presidents of all time

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Here are numerous quotes on how Trump feels about black people

http://gawker.com/the-collected-quotes-of-donald-trump-on-the-blacks-1719961925

 

[NYR94]

Who was the "joke"?

Obama.

 

[Leafar the Lost]

Obama.

Not a joke, he will go down as one of our greatest Presidents.

 

[NYR94]

Not a joke, he will go down as one of our greatest Presidents.

Thank you for that. I needed the laugh.

 

[redfirebird2008]

Trump definitely makes the political circus way more entertaining than usual.

 

[Webfoot Hero]

Trump definitely makes the political circus way more entertaining than usual.

It's a nice summer distraction. Although I could never see myself voting for someone as bombastic as him, it's actually nice to see a Republican political candidate go on the offensive on issues instead of playing defense and not risking saying anything so they don't offend anyone and get negative headlines.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

I think Hippie Hunter made a good point the other day, one of the big things that got Obama elected was the promise of change and even I can admit that not all that much change was delivered. So both sides are really clamoring for something more than the same old stuff Washington has been giving us for our whole lives. Trump speaks his mind no matter how vile and stupid and sadly a lot of the GOP base likes what he's saying. Nobody can shut him up since he bankrolls himself therefore he's not scared to step wherever he wants. The same thing is happening on the opposite side of the spectrum with Sanders who speaks to what a lot of liberals like myself want to hear. He came into the race with the mentality that he was not going to win and push Hillary more to the left. Nobody scares him either. It seems both sides are really wanting the same thing in a candidate which is being true to themselves and not being scared.

 

[Grievous]

Everyone knows W was/is a joke and one of the absolute worst presidents of all time

You mean Obama.

 

[Evelisse]

people taking that bait,

Who was the "joke"?

inserting any name was the wrong answer here

 

[Leafar the Lost]

Historians took a poll and they ranked George W. Bush as the 5th worst American President ever. When you look at what Obama actually did, with Republican opposition to everything he tried to do, he will definately be up there as one of our best Presidents. I have to remind people that under George W. Bush he led us to a unneccessary war against Iraq that cost billions and then he led the US economy to a 2nd Great Depression that was only stopped after a massive infusion of cash from the government.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Historians took a poll and they ranked George W. Bush as the 5th worst American President ever.

Bush doesn't deserve to be in the Top 5 of worse Presidents. He was mediocre for sure, but one can easily rank ineffectual Presidents like John F. Kennedy, James Buchanan, and Andrew Johnson; a traitorous John Tyler, the criminal Richard Nixon, people who should have never been President like Ulysses S Grant and Warren G. Harding; the one-monther William H. Harrison, etc.

And personally, I would rank others even worse than Bush like Bill Clinton and Andrew Jackson.

When you look at what Obama actually did, with Republican opposition to everything he tried to do, he will definately be up there as one of our best Presidents.

I think Obama will be seen more as a President of squandered potential. He ranks higher than Bush because at least he doesn't have an Iraq blunder on his resume, but he could have done so much more. And his biggest problem is that he's a politician that hates playing politics. Unlike Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton, Barack Obama doesn't like to play the game of politics. And many of his problems with the Republicans and other politicians were often self-inflicted wounds that could have been easily avoided.

And interestingly, I think he has somehow done the impossible in putting the Democratic Party in both a better and worse position for future elections.

I have to remind people that under George W. Bush he led us to a unneccessary war against Iraq that cost billions

While I certainly agree that the Iraq War shouldn't have happened, Bush's problem with Iraq isn't so much the war itself or the botched intelligence that led up to it, but the complete and utter inept handling of the post-Saddam Iraq. If the Bush Administration handled the Iraq War with competence and had a better plan to manage the peace in Iraq, his legacy probably wouldn't be bogged down by Iraq.

And if you want to use Iraq as a reason to rank Bush as one of the worst, then you should use the far more blunderous, far more avoidable, and far more dishonest Vietnam War against LBJ to rank him as one of the worst Presidents ever.

and then he led the US economy to a 2nd Great Depression that was only stopped after a massive infusion of cash from the government.

The core cause of the 2008 financial meltdown had nothing to do with Bush. If anything, his administration tried to point it out, but was stopped by Democrats in Congress. The roots of the 2008 financial meltdown come from the banking and housing reforms done during the Clinton Administration that were passed with a Democratic President and bipartisan support in a Republican Congress.

 

[redfirebird2008]

Hippie, I'm pretty sure most people do hold the Vietnam War against LBJ. He is a complicated figure in history given Vietnam and the Civil Rights legislation that he forced through Congress. Vietnam was obviously terrible, but who knows how much longer segregation would have stayed in place if he didn't take care of business on that front.

 

[Thundercrack85]

How come the United States never tried to make Mexico into a US territory, kind of like they do with Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands?

They did. It's now called the American Southwest.

 

[Leafar the Lost]

WASHINGTON — For his entire presidency, George W. Bush has tried to avoid the fate of his father: brought low by a feeble economy. Now, as the financial crisis radiates far beyond Wall Street, Bush faces an even grimmer prospect: being blamed, at least in part, for an economic breakdown.
"There will be ample opportunity to debate the origins of this problem," Bush said Friday in a televised address from the White House Rose Garden. "Now is the time to solve it."
But in Washington and on Wall Street, the debate has already begun. And while economists and other experts say there are plenty of culprits: Democrats and Republicans in Congress, the Federal Reserve, an overzealous home-lending industry, banks, and also Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton - they do agree that the Bush administration bears part of the blame.
These experts, from both political parties, say Bush's early personnel choices and overarching antipathy toward regulation created a climate that, if it did not trigger the turmoil, almost certainly aggravated it. The president's first two Treasury secretaries, for instance, lacked the kind of Wall Street expertise that might have helped them raise red flags about the use of complex financial instruments at the heart of the crisis.
To his credit, Bush accurately foresaw the danger posed by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and began calling as early as 2002 for greater regulation of the mortgage giants. But experts say the administration could have done even more to curb excesses in the housing market, and much more to police Wall Street, which transmitted those problems around the world.
In retrospect, "it would have helped for the Bush administration to empower the folks at Treasury and the Federal Reserve and the comptroller of the currency and the FDIC to look at these issues more closely," said Vince Reinhardt, a former Federal Reserve economist now at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning research organization here. Reinhardt said it would also have helped "for Congress to have held hearings."
Instead, voices inside the administration who favored tougher policing of Wall Street found themselves with few supporters. William Donaldson, a former Wall Street executive with respected Republican credentials who became chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission under Bush, quit in 2005 after facing resistance from the White House and Republican members of the panel, who criticized his support for stiffer regulations on mutual funds and hedge funds.
Today, even those sympathetic to Bush say he cannot disentangle himself from a home-lending industry run amok or a banking industry that mortgaged its future on toxic loans.
"The crisis definitely happened on their watch," said Kenneth Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard University who advises the Republican presidential candidate John McCain. "This is eight years into the Bush administration. There was a lot of time to deal with it."
To some extent, Bush was simply following a deregulatory pattern set by Clinton. Perhaps the most significant recent deregulation of the banking industry - the landmark act that allowed commercial banks to expand into other financial activities, like investment banking and insurance - was signed into law by Clinton in 1999.
Bush also inherited a culture of borrowing and a frothy housing market that has become "deeply embedded in the American psyche," Rogoff said. And Reinhardt said the markets seemed to be doing so well that few analysts, either in government or the private sector, had a critical eye.
"When everybody is doing better," Rogoff said, "it is difficult to see the underlying weaknesses."
Still, the White House, in the view of critics, fostered a free-market hothouse in which these excesses were able to flower. It avoided regulation of banks and mortgage brokers, leaving much of that work to the Federal Reserve, which, under Alan Greenspan, showed little appetite for regulation. By the time Bush's current Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson Jr., proposed an overhaul of regulations governing the financial sector in April, the storm was already brewing.
The administration did push hard on Capitol Hill to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, only to find itself stymied by Congress. But the administration's intense focus on fending off what it foresaw as a looming housing crisis did not extend to the proliferation of fiendishly complex mortgage-backed securities, said Harvey Rosen, an economist who served on Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, briefly as its chairman.
"Maybe there should have been," Rosen said, "but we were focused more on the fact that if these entities just held plain-vanilla mortgage-backed securities, it was still a disaster in the making."
Beyond its deregulatory bent, some economists argue that the administration's fiscal and tax policies made the United States more dependent on foreign capital, which fueled the bubble in housing prices.
"A different Treasury would have taken a different approach," said Lawrence Summers, who served as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration. "I don't think the economy has been well-managed, and that has certainly been crucial for the problems we're facing."
The White House and Congress wanted to make housing affordable to more Americans, and freeing up the lending markets was a way to do that. As Rogoff said, "It was a market-based way to help poor people. There was an incredible belief in free markets."
For all that faith, Bush's first two Treasury secretaries, Paul O'Neill and John Snow, came from top jobs in industry, not Wall Street. They were viewed in Washington as advocating the interests of business, and being less comfortable with the mysteries of the markets.
Neither was seen as having much influence with the White House, and the Treasury lost some of the primacy in economic policy it had enjoyed under Summers and his predecessor, Robert Rubin. O'Neill and Snow declined to be interviewed for this article.
"The primary agency responsible for keeping an eye on these things is, and should be, the Treasury Department, and I think the president erred in the first place by appointing two secretaries who had no background in finance," said Bruce Bartlett, a Republican economist who was an adviser to President Ronald Reagan and an official in the Treasury Department under President George H.W. Bush.
"If we had had a Treasury that was fully supported by the White House," Bartlett said, "and a Treasury secretary such as Hank Paulson who was really attuned to what was going on in the financial markets, maybe some of these things could have been perceived in advance."
The White House did name people well-versed in the markets to other posts, not least the chairmanship of the Securities and Exchange Commission. But Bush's first SEC chairman - Harvey Pitt, a prominent securities lawyer - was brought down by political missteps. Pitt was replaced by Donaldson, who quit in 2005.
Critics, including McCain, say the SEC has been less active under its current chairman, Christopher Cox, a former Republican congressman from California. It has spent less on enforcement and levied less in fines on wrongdoers, according to the Government Accountability Office.
"You can't overestimate what happens when you encourage regulators to believe that the goal of regulation is not to regulate," said Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Columbia University.
In other areas, the Bush administration's failures seem more a case of inaction. The administration, economists said, did little to curb the practices of mortgage brokers, who are regulated by the states. But Democrats in Congress were equally to blame for this, these economists said.
"The Democrats pushed affordable housing goals, even in the face of evidence that people who got the loans shouldn't have gotten them," said Robert Litan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a research organization in Washington. "The no-money-down loans of 2005 and 2006 were a key part of the problem."
"I blame the Democrats for demanding that Fannie Mae keep buying these loans," said Litan, who was a budget official in the Clinton administration. "I blame the administration for going along with it."
White House officials note that the administration did propose reforms of real estate settlement procedures and the Federal Housing Authority, two areas it had identified as posing the greatest systemic risk to markets. Democrats in Congress, they said, blocked these efforts.
When Bush named Paulson to replace Snow in 2006, the Treasury Department finally got an expert in markets. But early on, his focus was on improving the competitiveness of the U.S. financial sector, which he feared was losing ground to Europe and Asia.

 

[Thundercrack85]

I am not an economist and I don't really follow economics unless it's in the headlines; But, even I know that Bush was a terrible president economically.

He started two wars, one for no reason at all squandering a surplus. We'll probably still be paying for that long after he's gone. He deregulated Wall Street, and we all know what a great idea that was.

His tax cuts have to be the most reckless and selfish thing a president has done in recent memory. Then there's the business with the unions...

Bush is the worst thing to happen to America since Vietnam.

 

[herakles]

Historians took a poll and they ranked George W. Bush as the 5th worst American President ever. When you look at what Obama actually did, with Republican opposition to everything he tried to do, he will definately be up there as one of our best Presidents. I have to remind people that under George W. Bush he led us to a unneccessary war against Iraq that cost billions and then he led the US economy to a 2nd Great Depression that was only stopped after a massive infusion of cash from the government.

It takes 20-30 years before anyone can give a non-bias assessment of an Administration.

 

[herakles]

Everyone knows W was/is a joke and one of the absolute worst presidents of all time

I think that distinction would be better suited for William Henry Harrison, Warren G. Harding, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan.

 

[herakles]

Not a joke, he will go down as one of our greatest Presidents.

bhawhahahahahahahahah! PLEASE! Obama is NO where near one of the greatest US Presidents! I admit he is also NO where near one of the worst! But man put down the koolaid!

 

[hippie_hunter]

I am not an economist and I don't really follow economics unless it's in the headlines; But, even I know that Bush was a terrible president economically.

I would say he was more of an ineffective President economically.

He started two wars, one for no reason at all squandering a surplus. We'll probably still be paying for that long after he's gone.

Surpluses and deficits really aren't a strong talking point for or against a President. As long as they're responsibly done, deficits really aren't that problematic. It's why I don't use the deficit as an argument against Obama, and I won't use it against Bush.

He deregulated Wall Street, and we all know what a great idea that was.

Except he didn't de-regulate Wall Street. That was the Clinton Administration. Where the Bush Administration deserves criticism in regards to their actions with Wall Street is their lax enforcement of existing law.

His tax cuts have to be the most reckless and selfish thing a president has done in recent memory.

More reckless than the Iraq War? Because the Bush Administration's handling of that one is outright criminally negligent if you ask me.

Then there's the business with the unions...

The one where Bush re-opened the ports? Or required more transparency with unions?

Bush is the worst thing to happen to America since Vietnam.

I actually rank Bill Clinton far lower than Bush personally. The man decided to have short term success which resulted in long term pain.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Hippie, I'm pretty sure most people do hold the Vietnam War against LBJ. He is a complicated figure in history given Vietnam and the Civil Rights legislation that he forced through Congress. Vietnam was obviously terrible, but who knows how much longer segregation would have stayed in place if he didn't take care of business on that front.

A very valid point. But my point is that if people are going to rank Bush as one of the worst ever in history for his bungling of the Iraq War, the same standard should be applied to LBJ and Vietnam. But oh wait, Democrats don't do that because he has a (D) attached to his name and was one of the most effective progressive Presidents we've ever had. It's hypocrisy.

While I am certainly not mitigating the criminally negligent of the Bush Administration's handling of the Iraq War, but then the same standard should then apply to the man who started a war that caused far more casualties, lasted much longer, was based upon proven lies, etc.

 

[Leafar the Lost]

bhawhahahahahahahahah! PLEASE! Obama is NO where near one of the greatest US Presidents! I admit he is also NO where near one of the worst! But man put down the koolaid!

Whenever I hear the Koolaid comparison, I find it very insulting. I recall Jim Jones making his followers, including children, drink poison Koolaid and all of them dying. Its insulting. Just because I like what President Obama is doing for our country, does mean I am an idiot.