kpete
kpete's Journal
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Just in case you thought something changed last night...
https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/836781297578164224https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/836781223926194181
MORE:
At Tuesday’s grand opening of Vancouver’s Trump Tower, the property owners put their best foot forward, ignoring the controversies surrounding its namesake – U.S. President Donald Trump.
http://globalnews.ca/news/3278122/at-vancouvers-trump-tower-grand-opening-two-worlds-collide/
http://www.newsy.com/stories/canadians-protest-opening-of-trump-tower-in-vancouver/
https://twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/836943193363132418
Putting THIS here before Trump tweets HIS speech was best ever...
https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/836813065404428293
While the 57% who said they had a very positive reaction to Trump's speech outpaces the marks received by his predecessor for any of his recent State of the Union addresses, they fell below the reviews either Barack Obama or George W. Bush received for either of their initial addresses to Congress. In 2009, 68% had a very positive reaction to Obama, while 66% gave Bush very positive reviews in 2001. Likewise, the 69% of speech-watchers who thought Trump's policies would move the nation in the right direction lagged behind the share who felt that way about Obama's or Bush's policies in the first year, and ranks around their low-marks on this score. Obama's low-mark on that score was 68% last year and his high was 88% in 2009. Bush topped out at 91% in 2002 and hit a low mark of 67% in the final year of his presidency.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/28/politics/donald-trump-joint-address-poll/index.html
VOX: He doesnt want to be president, he just wants to play one on TV.
Trump is performing the role of president, not doing the job
the rest:
http://www.vox.com/2017/2/28/14764894/trump-speech-congress-boring
Putting THIS here before Trump tweets HIS speech was best ever...
https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/836813065404428293While the 57% who said they had a very positive reaction to Trump's speech outpaces the marks received by his predecessor for any of his recent State of the Union addresses, they fell below the reviews either Barack Obama or George W. Bush received for either of their initial addresses to Congress. In 2009, 68% had a very positive reaction to Obama, while 66% gave Bush very positive reviews in 2001. Likewise, the 69% of speech-watchers who thought Trump's policies would move the nation in the right direction lagged behind the share who felt that way about Obama's or Bush's policies in the first year, and ranks around their low-marks on this score. Obama's low-mark on that score was 68% last year and his high was 88% in 2009. Bush topped out at 91% in 2002 and hit a low mark of 67% in the final year of his presidency.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/28/politics/donald-trump-joint-address-poll/index.html
Media: His optimism is presidential.
https://twitter.com/MikeGrunwald/status/836920485426384898Salesman-in-chief
Last night Trump promised America could have all the cake it wants, and lose weight too.
What happens when he needs to deliver?
By MICHAEL GRUNWALD March 01, 2017
President Donald Trump basically told Americans last night that he’s going to make sure we can have our cake and eat it, too—and by the way it will be a spectacular cake, it won’t cost much, and it’s going to help us lose a lot of weight.
Trump used his first speech to Congress last night to lay out a heroic vision of an America where “every problem can be solved.” He promised to ensure clean air and water while getting rid of environmental regulations. He vowed to ratchet down taxes on corporations and the middle class while jacking up spending on the military, immigration enforcement, infrastructure and veterans—and at the same time somehow rescuing America from its crushing national debt. He suggests that he'll increase tariffs on foreign goods, and that foreign countries would respond by lowering tariffs on U.S. goods. And he pledged to replace Obamacare with terrific reforms that “expand choice, increase access, lower costs, and provide better health care.” He didn’t explain in much detail how those reforms would work, or whether they would also do something about those embarrassingly skimpy gowns patients have to wear in the hospital.
The media takeaway was that Trump’s speech sounded optimistic, which was true compared to his dyspeptic inaugural address, and also true in the sense that infomercials promising baldness cures or eight-minute abs are optimistic. But there’s a fine line between optimism and magical realism. Politicians routinely deploy sunny rhetoric about “cures to illnesses that have always plagued us” and “American footprints on distant worlds,” but Trump was playing a high-risk game by promising just about everything to just about everyone—especially when he also declared that “above all else, we will keep our promises to the American people.”
In the real world, policy choices have tradeoffs. For example, Trump vowed to kill Obamacare’s individual mandate, but he also complained that insurers are abandoning the Obamacare exchanges—a problem that would only intensify if the mandate went away, and young and healthy consumers weren’t required to buy insurance. He suggested he could fix the problem by lowering the overall cost of health care, but in fact Obamacare has already helped bring health care inflation down to its lowest level in half a century. As for the big goal of "repeal and replace"? He handed that ball to Congress, where some Republicans want to eliminate many of the subsidies that have helped Obamacare cover 20 million additional Americans as well as the new taxes on the wealthy that helped pay for it, and other Republicans hope to preserve some of Obamacare’s benefits for the working poor. It’s not clear how they’ll pass anything, much less how they could pass - or even think up - a cost-cutting, tax-cutting, coverage-expanding, care-improving plan that squared Trump’s various circles.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/donald-trump-salesman-214845
Dan Rather: Bubbling beneath surface of Trumps speech was a president who is stoking division
Dan Rather
9 hrs
·
We've seen this before. After a period of sustained chaos, Donald Trump ascends a podium, and for a moment at least, reads a relatively measured speech from a teleprompter. For the most part, in tone and temperament it is a world away from the Tweets, and the press conferences. In many ways it was standard conservative Republican fare on such topics as tax cuts, although watching Paul Ryan stand and applaud lines calling into question free trade and major spending on infrastructure shows how much the GOP elite has swung behind President Trump.
The President's call for economic populism is a popular instinct in the country, that I think cuts across party lines. If that was the centerpiece of his agenda, I suspect his poll numbers would be much higher. But of course there is so much more we have seen over the past several weeks that show how the most controversial rhetoric of the campaign has continued from the President in office. Tonight, Mr. Trump referenced history on many occasions, seeking to give his very unconventional administration the trappings of its place in sustained American values. There were many lines that will be seen as smoothing out the edges. But bubbling beneath the surface was still a President who is stoking division. I think the most noteworthy section, and one that history will mark, was his focus on crimes from immigrants. It is a dangerous and disingenuous strawman. Yes illegal immigrants have committed crimes. But what about the Indian worker who was just murdered in Kansas? Or the little children and teachers in Connecticut? Or African Americans in prayer in South Carolina?
Nevertheless, I think that this is a speech that will play well with the President's base. If Democrats or Independents hope that Republicans in Congress will challenge the Administration, the numerous standing ovations show how faint that expectation currently is. Democrats will read between the lines on health care, the President's language on "law and order," his framing of foreign policy. They will claim rampant disingenuity and a glaring lack of specifics. And some may sense the low rumblings of a demagogue. But that is not how most people watching speeches judge them. Overall, I think the effect was more successful than many had expected, perhaps because of the low bar of expectation.
But there is a fundamental difference between a campaign and a presidency. The first is about words and promises. The latter is about delivering. Whether President Trump and the Republicans who back him continue in a position of strength or falter in the election cycles to come will not be determined by a few lines read to a national audience. It will be measured by jobs, health care and education. It will be shaped by the general mood of the country - the level of anxiety versus safety, calmness versus chaos.
The news cycle doesn't stop. New challenges will emerge. New investigative reporting will be published. New legislation will be proposed, or it won't. And our 45th President will have to appease and persuade a volatile and engaged population in a diverse and divided nation that he is the right man for the job.
https://www.facebook.com/theDanRather/posts/10158277514615716
FBI offered to pay British spy to continue investigating Trump Russia connections
In a bombshell report from the Washington Post, it was revealed that the FBI was working in conjunction with a former British spy who was looking into connections between then-candidate Donald Trump and the Russian government.
The report states that the higher-ups at the FBI offered to pay former MI6 agent Christopher Steele to continue his investigation in the weeks before the election.
Communications between the agency ceased when the Steele’s report — alleging assignations between Trump and Russian hookers — became public and roiled the intelligence community.
According to sources, the FBI felt that Steele was a credible and was interested in what he was uncovering.
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/bombshell-fbi-offered-to-pay-british-spy-to-continue-investigating-trump-russia-connections/
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