Donald Trump

[Peter]

From Fox News. Donald Trump Jr. warns of ‘silenced majority’ as RNC speakers say freedom, safety on the line in November/ Paul Steinhauser

I like the sound of ‘SILENCED MAJORITY.’ In other news I received a chain email from President Trump but he asked me to not “share it,” and I won‘t.

[Peter]

From Real Clear Politics. National polls. On August 25, 2016, Hillary Clinton was ahead of President Trump by 6.0 percent. On August 25, 2020 Biden is ahead of President Trump by 7.6 percent.

I checked some battleground states and it looks like Biden is currently ahead in all of them but North Carolina, Texas, Georgia, and Iowa. It will be interesting to see if there are changes after the last day of the Republican Convention.  Peter

 

Battle for the White House RCP Poll Averages

Election 2020	Biden	Trump	Spread
RCP National Average	50.0	42.4	Biden +7.6
Betting Odds	55.3	43.7
Electoral College	212	115
Battlegrounds	Biden	Trump	Spread
North Carolina	46.4	47.0	Trump +0.6
Florida	50.3	45.3	Biden +5.0
Wisconsin	50.0	43.5	Biden +6.5
Pennsylvania	49.5	43.8	Biden +5.7
Arizona	47.0	45.0	Biden +2.0
Congress	Dems	GOP	Spread
Battle for Senate	44	46
U.S. House	214	190
Generic Ballot	48.2	41.6	Dem +6.6

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

What a picture.

Wow...

Michael

 

EDIT: Here's another version by the same photographer. I don't know which was edited, probably both were.

 

 

[merjet]

Hey, BIG Spenders by John Stossel

I add the following about Mr. Bombast.

Federal spending has increased every year since Obama left office. The number of federal government employees has increased during Trump’s term. The number of “deep state” contractors and money flow to them have likely increased, too.

For each of the 3 fiscal years under Trump the federal deficit has been greater than any of Obama's last 3 years. When fiscal year 2020 is complete, the deficit will be far higher than any deficit that occurred under Obama, including the whoppers of 2009-2011. The 2020 deficit will be the largest in US history in $$ and near 3 times Obama's highest. It will be the largest in US history as % of GDP since WWII. If Trump wins in November, his fiscal year 2021 deficit will be another whopper. He wants to make it even bigger by cutting the payroll tax. If he doesn't win, a chunk of it will still be his legacy. So, yeah, Trump is the greatest -- at creating deficits, expanding government, and increasing federal government spending and the US national debt.

During his 2016 campaign, Trump promised to reduce and eventually eliminate the deficit. He promised whopping GDP growth. He promised huge infrastructure spending with a sham finance scheme. He said Mexico would pay to build a wall. He promised to fix the taxation of carried interest. He promised to drain the swamp. He has delivered none of them and won't. He merely changed a few creatures in the swamp. “Draining the swamp” requires sharply curtailing the money flow to it, which Trump has not done. That makes him a great big fat liar, which he has amply proven in many other ways.

 

[tmj]

Oh my those Presidents and their spending , terrible and obviously blame worthy.

Trump needs to clean up his swamp spending. Presidents need to run tighter budgets, if they don't well .. just..  all this spending and spending.

So don't forget to pay special attention to all that presidential spending.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

T,

It's zero sum thinking.

I'm not a big fan of the National Debt increasing, but a booming economy ends up paying it off. I saw Larry Kudlow on TV not too long ago and he gave some interesting numbers about how this was already working before the virus hit. By lowering taxes and getting production moving, a lot more money was coming into the Treasury than before.

So it will work again now that the economy is opening back up.

Wealth is created, not just printed.

Trump's economy is one of producers, which means wealth producers.

When the Dems increase the National Debt, they print money to keep up payments. Or they borrow money from places like China. Ditto for those asshole Neocons and other establishment Republicans.

I've said ever since my Brazil days that the USA exports its inflation by printing eurodollars, which are dollars held in foreign banks the world over, oddly enough, not just European banks. President Trump is bringing a lot of those dollars back into the USA and encouraging the owners to invest in production.

Watch what happens to the debt in President Trump's second term, especially when the Republicans get the House back. It will go down and the zero sum thinkers will be scratching their heads wondering how in hell he did that magic trick...

 

Michael

[tmj]

I'd like to believe in the magic, too, I think there could be a scenario just like you say, all things possible and all. (there never can/will be no wealth creation, if there ever is/was most of us will be dead, lol, but not really we would be dead).

I was just pointing to the blame the Executive branch bs, Congress has the purse strings and the two major parties have been utilizing the blame game for eons , that's what has gotten us to this point.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

7 minutes ago, tmj said:

I was just pointing to the blame the Executive branch bs, Congress has the purse strings and the two major parties have been utilizing the blame game for eons , that's what has gotten us to this point.

T,

There's actually a hidden point underlying your comment that is important. The presupposition is that the government is the source of wealth and it spends more than it can make, which has gotten us to this point. But it doesn't matter wealth-wise whether it's the Executive or Congress. It's all government.

The truth is the producers in the economy are the source of wealth and the government has been putting a straitjacket on production while confiscating more and more of what people created for themselves. Except for cronies, of course. they get to freeload. To keep this from seeming as ugly as it sounds, the government keeps taking on debt as a smokescreen. After all, you can't ship a person's job overseas and then take his shit at the same time. You have to do all this slowly, like boiling frogs, if you want to keep the good times rolling for the ruling class.

President Trump doesn't stay within the Executive versus Congress paradigm to get more money for the government. He makes the economy boom, punishes bad-faith foreign actors with tariffs, gets the USA out of stupid giveaway treaties, encourages people to repatriate dollars, constantly cuts away massive waste in government projects, etc. etc. etc.

And when he can't get money for a project like the wall, he knows enough about money to find it one way or the other.

 

The Executive versus Congress check and balance is a good one to impair immediate grifters, but it also also allows for the slow creep of stagnation and the slow steady growth of bureaucratic grifting when the government people are more interested in their own money and power than they are in doing their jobs. And boneheaded evil projects like endless wars for profit are allowed to grow and flourish like cancer. 

That's all we've seen for the last I don't know how many decades until President Trump came along.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Wow!

Charlie Kirk sounded a lot like Ayn Rand (fundamentals-wise) in talking about President Trump in this clip. His interviewer was gob-smacked at the end and it took him a few seconds to get going.

Wow again...

Just wow...

 

Michael

[anthony]

The eminent historian Victor D. Hanson shared his insights recently.

 

[william.scherk]

On 8/13/2020 at 4:29 PM, william.scherk said:

Can anyone remember the tune to "Let's Play Dirty"?

In re Michael Cohen's book, it's out on Tuesday. Cue propaganda barrages.

Quote

Cohen expresses little to no remorse for his federal crimes, saying he was "railroaded" by the government and pleaded guilty after prosecutors threatened to indict his wife.

He writes that Trump's three oldest children came to Cohen's office after Trump's campaign announcement in 2015, in which Trump referred to people coming to the U.S. from Mexico as rapists and murderers. Cohen says they asked him to convince their father to drop out of the race, arguing his rhetoric was "killing the company."

Cohen says Trump was unconcerned with any harm to his businesses. "Plus, I will never get the Hispanic vote," Trump said, according to Cohen. "Like the blacks, they're too stupid to vote for Trump. They're not my people."

The funniest/saddest bit is the video prepared for the 2012 Republican Convention. The video has been on YouTube since 2013, apparently.

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

36 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

In re Michael Cohen's book...

Who's book?

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Just throwing this one out there.

They have prostituted this thing so much, the only value is symbolic in a gamification kind of way. (I won, yayyyy! That kind of thing.)

But it's nice to see and it kinda speaks for itself.

Trump nominated for Nobel Peace Prize by Norwegian official, citing Israel-UAE peace deal

Michael

[Peter]

The usual place I donate is at:

contact@victory.donaldtrump.com

However, there is another site that also accepts donations, MAY more directly go to the President, and they sell Trump clothing, hats, signs, etc., and that site is:  

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/

NOTES. Trump campaign warns supporters about scam groups, says to donate to these four organizations May 7, 2019 | Zachary Leeman. 

The Trump campaign also gave supporters four approved groups to donate to when supporting the president: the RNC, the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, Trump Victory and America First Action. The campaign said the four groups were the only ones authorized by either the president or the RNC.

“There are only four official fundraising organizations authorized by President Trump or the RNC: Donald J. Trump for President, the Republican National Committee, and two joint fundraising committees with the RNC, The Trump Make American Great Again Committee (TMAGAC) and Trump Victory,” the statement from the campaign read. “In addition, there is one approved outside non-campaign group, America First Action, which is run by allies of the President and is a trusted supporter of President Trump’s policies and agendas.”

This public statement from the Trump campaign comes after a Sunday report from Axios alleged that former Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie raised millions of dollars to support the president and other conservative politicians, but that only a fraction of the money actually went to political causes.

The report claims that only $425,442 of the tens of millions raised by the group went towards donations to candidates, political committees or candidate ads in 2017 and 2018.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Hey, ya'll,

I just want to mention that President Trump has been nominated for TWO Nobel Peace Prizes.

Michael

[KorbenDallas]

Professor with history of correctly predicting elections forecasts that Biden will defeat Trump

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/510754-professor-with-history-of-correctly-predicting-elections-forecasts-that

American University professor Allan Lichtman, who has a record of accurately predicting presidential races, said he expects former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, to defeat President Trump in November.

Lichtman was one of the few forecasters who predicted the Trump's election in 2016. Over decades of observing presidential politics, he has developed a system of 13 “key factors” to help determine whether the party in the White House will maintain its hold. The factors range from whether the party has an incumbent president running to short- and long-term economic conditions.

“The keys predict that Trump will lose the White House,” the professor said in a video op-ed published by The New York Times on Wednesday.

Lichtman claims to have accurately predicted the winner of every presidential election since 1984, though he predicted that former Vice President Al Gore would win the election in 2000. Although Gore won the popular vote, former President George W. Bush won the electoral college.

[...]

____________________

I find his system to be interesting, he doesn't specifically make judgments about the candidates, except for a subjective "charisma" metric, so his system mostly disregards who the actual candidates are and instead focuses on other things.  Despite the fact that he has a near flawless track record of predicting the eventual presidential election winner since 1984, I disagree that Trump will lose in 2020.  I'm not a fan of Trump but I think he will win in 2020.  Economic health is a big factor, and despite perhaps a slow start to a coronavirus response, the economy is doing well during the pandemic and Trump did eventually find his footing in his coronavirus response.  Pushing for the governors to re-open when he did was the right call, despite the media backlash the economy did begin to recover once that set things in motion.  If there was any question about that, Trump can just hold up a stock market chart showing the V-shaped recovery it made that correlates to his efforts.

Professor Lichtman has been seen in previous videos hating the fact that Trump won in 2016, even though he predicted it would happen.  Some of his keys require his judgment, and perhaps this time around he is letting his biases color his prediction--although I think for Trump to win in 2020, it would take some electoral college kung-fu like last time.

[william.scherk]

14 hours ago, KorbenDallas said:

Despite the fact that [Allan Lichtman] has a near flawless track record of predicting the eventual presidential election winner since 1984, I disagree that Trump will lose in 2020.  I'm not a fan of Trump but I think he will win in 2020.

If Trump can reproduce this 2016 national map of Electoral College votes, he wins a second term.

[The map is clickable -- will take you to the interactive map at 270toWin]

Here is today's updated interactive map. Visitors can use it with soundings and intuitions about the final outcomes. The greyed-out (so-called swing states) states may deliver victory to one of two men ...

 

Notable in this rendering today are what is reflected from polling.  Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania are currently "Leans Democrat," which could definitely change in the next six weeks or so.

A few interpreters from Wonk World have suggested a "Shy Trump Voter" effect should be baked in to any prognostications, guesses, bets and forecasts.

Another effect that is essentially unknown -- what patterns of turnout might we expect in the grey and lightest pink/blue states?

I'll expand on some of these details in an All Polls Are Wrong comment later on, perhaps sooner than October.

-- Korben's points about Trump relative strength on "the economy" are salient. Tim Pool's video from yesterday adds some support to this idea:

There is one demographic that should probably get a lot of attention -- the over-65 cohort of voters. Will Trump manage to hold on to his majority from 2016?

Spoiler

In national head-to-head polls conducted since April 1, Trump is barely breaking even with most older Americans — and in some age groups, he’s even trailing Biden by as much as 1.4 points (see 45- to 64-year-olds). (Pollsters don’t all use the same age brackets, so there is some overlap in the different age categories.)

Trump is polling worse with older voters than in 2016

Comparison of Donald Trump’s 2016 vote margin and the average margin in national head-to-head polls between Trump and Joe Biden since April 1, by different age groups

Age group	Trump 2016 margin	Trump 2020 margin	Difference
45 to 64	+4.0	-1.4	-5.4
50 to 64	+5.8	+0.6	-5.2
55+	+9.9	-0.4	-10.3
65+	+13.3	-1.0	-14.3

Polls were averaged by pollster to avoid overweighting one pollster.

Source: Cooperative Congressional Election Study, Polls

The most startling shift, though, is among voters age 65 and older. Four years ago, Trump bested Hillary Clinton by 13 points, 55 percent to 42 percent, according to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, a survey of more than 60,000 voters organized by Harvard University and administered by YouGov. But now Biden narrowly leads Trump 48 percent to 47 percent, based on an average of 48 national polls that included that age group.¹ If those figures hold until November, they would represent a seismic shift in the voting behavior of America’s oldest voters.

[from 538 in May 2020]

 

Edited September 13, 2020 by william.scherk
Added seniors line; added spoiler; removed a "from"

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

William,

Just to be clear for people skimming your post, the 2016 map represents the 2016 election AFTER people voted. The 2020 projected map represents guesses (some call them polls) BEFORE people vote.

For people skimming, the way you presented it gives the impression President Trump lost support and that's a fact. But that's not a fact and that's not what is going on.

To have a notion about the validity of this method to reflect reality, why not show a map of, well... let's see... it's September 12, 2020 right now... so why not show a guess map of polled voters from September 12, 2016--meaning Hillary Clinton sweeping almost all states?

 

Then you could compare that map with the one AFTER people voted in 2016, and, in parallel, you could compare that map against the 2020 map of guesses you presented.

That, I believe, would factor in the unreliability of this method in a way that would make the impression slightly more credible. Meaning, people could look and think, Trump appears to be in trouble compared to last election. And, at the same time, they could look and think, man, was the polling fucked back then. I wonder if it still is...

That way is not as sexy since it doesn't spin anything, but it does give a balanced perspective.

Michael

[Peter]

10 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

That way is not as sexy since it doesn't spin anything, but it does give a balanced perspective.

Brilliant~ 

[william.scherk]

12 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

[T]he unreliability of this method in a way that would make the impression slightly more credible. Meaning, people could look and think, Trump appears to be in trouble compared to last election.

Michael's compare/compare notes are fair -- in that "William was looking to show a map that Trump won in 2016" and that "William was looking to show a map that Trump won in 2020."

-- of course my aim was to remind folks we can go fix up our own "Map that Trump Won" at 270toWin. Use your own individual mix of as I said intuition and soundings to inform your best guess. The Clinton/Trump electoral college scoreboard is your benchmark.

In other words ...

12 hours ago, william.scherk said:

If Trump can reproduce this 2016 national map of Electoral College votes, he wins a second term.

Comparing poll/maps to poll/maps at a given concurrent time four years in distance -- this is for wonks. I will shortly introduce a YouTube wonk youngster who does this in a visually entertaining form.  I should also note that if you don't keep up with pollsters and their interpreters, you won't know that regular comparisons have been made against the "State of the Race Then and Now" (in terms of prospective voter soundings). This kind of systematic comparison is among the obsessions of Harry Enten, for example.

If the Polls Are Wrong more or less similarly to how exactly wrong they were in 2016, then to generally 'correct' any findings ... you could discount one or two percent across the board, and maybe add in another shy Trump voter percentage, and then begin to figure out how to systematically re-count key demographics (eg, Seniors 65+).

You can also mine surveys for indications of which folks in particular are fired up to vote, according to the "Are you fired up?" surveys, and so on. Loaves and fishes of lovely data.

What could that data we've crunched indicate to us in any particular state competition between the GOP and Democratic ticket? What does it look like poked into the map at 270toWin?

You don't know until you jump in and entertain your own guesses.

You can have your own "ideal" map be beside you as you watch vote tabulations begin on Election Night.

Edited September 13, 2020 by william.scherk
Tidied up what was a ramblin'

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

5 hours ago, william.scherk said:

-- of course my aim was to remind folks we can go fix up our own "Map that Trump Won" at 270toWin.

William,

And, of course, I want to contest that.

I would agree that your conscious aim was to remind folks... etc...

But we are all motivated by our biases, not just by our conscious intentions.

Just looking through that lens for a moment, let's take into account:

1. The visual cortex is the largest part of the cortex. This is why visual influence is more powerful than just words. The brain literally has more integrated brain cells processing images than it does any other sensory input.

2. In addition to the visual cortex, there is an automatic pattern processing routine that goes on in several parts of the brain, and these all work sort of like a fractal. This means it doesn't matter whether the pattern processing is for small or short patterns, or humongous and light years of patterns, the process has the same algorithm (for a wonky metaphor).

The moment a pattern is detected at the subconscious level, automatic assumptions kick in and these prompt action or further assumptions. These will run as if they were true until further, slower and more detailed examination prove otherwise. That's the fractal.

Here is a good example of what I mean. A man goes out into his yard on a part where weeds are high. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees this long S shaped thing in the weeds and has an immediate fear-flight reaction. He heart starts beating fast, he jumps back slightly, and his mind immediately focuses on looking hard at the S shaped thing to see where that damn snake is going. Then he sees it's a garden hose.  

You can say "of course" all day long, but that event happens that way with all of us. And, when you go out onto a piece of land, if you do not have an "awareness antenna" (so to speak) specifically aimed at detecting things crawling on the ground, it will happen that way every time.

So when you present two images of a USA electoral map that are identical in their contours, color schemes and layouts, people don't come across them in full focus on the numbers. The come across them reading a forum (in the case here) and thinking about all sorts of other things, including daydreaming. When they see the two maps, their brains make an automatic assumption that the two similar images represent the same thing.

And, before you posted that, your subconscious, which is always looking for a way to throw rocks at your enemies, so to speak (we all do this on autopilot), detects that these two maps close together give an impression unfavorable to Trump (the enemy your subconscious wants to stone to death  ). It doesn't matter what the details are for an initial impression, just as it doesn't matter that the garden hose doesn't have teeth for the guy who jumped.

So, to your subconscious, the two maps with a critical and somewhat hidden difference looks like a much better way than presenting just words and numbers. It allows you to make a point, that is, engage in election speculation, while still throwing rocks at Trump.

Human condition... And we all do this...

So my criticism was not aimed at you, William, meaning your conscious intent (you evul liddle thang, you  ), but instead at exposing the images and patterns you used and their meanings to a different angle of sunshine, one that lights up where the shadow is cast. Then we get to see the snake lurking there in the shadow.

 

Consciously, I am pretty sure you didn't even know it was there. Subconsciously, you did. 

Of course.

 

Michael

[Peter]

From Rasmussen – Tuesday, September 22, 2020. The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday, sponsored by Whatfinger News – The largest Drudge Report alternative, shows that 50% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-nine percent (49%) disapprove.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Holy crap.

Say what you want, there is no way for the world or his enemies inside the US to ignore President Trump.

I can't think of anyone else who would have delivered this speech to the UN.

Michael

[Peter]

Rush Limbaugh was speculating that Joe Biden is a “sundowner.”

From Web MD. When you are with someone who has Alzheimer's disease, you may notice big changes in how they act in the late afternoon or early evening. Doctors call it sundowning, or sundown syndrome. Fading light seems to be the trigger. The symptoms can get worse as the night goes on and usually get better by morning. Although you may not be able to stop it completely, you can take steps to help manage this challenging time of day so you both sleep better and are less tired during the day. Let your loved one’s doctor know what changes you have seen, too. Symptoms When someone is sundowning, they may be: Agitated (upset or anxious) Restless Irritable Confused Disoriented Demanding Suspicious They also may: Yell Pace Hear or see things that aren’t there Have mood swings Up to 1 out of 5 people with Alzheimer’s get sundown syndrome. But it can also happen to older people who don’t have dementia.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This is how to do an eye for an eye.

President Trump is one of the most compassionate forgiving people, in addition to his eye for an eye policy.

To disentangle this, the way I understand his beliefs and actions, he does eye for an eye with bullies. And he is compassionate with people totally broken (like sick or mentally ill), or struggling to rise.

That describes exactly the way I believe.

I see President Trump's archetype as The Protector.

I also see The Producer.

Michael