pacino wrote:it's amazing to me that the conservative party has abandoned all their ideals for this man's fantasy about a Wall and tax

The Border Adjustment Tax predates Trump and was in the House GOP Better Way campaign stuff, and I think it was what Spicer was grasping towards yesterday.

https://taxfoundation.org/house-gop-s-d ... -explained

I'm not sure whether it's a good or bad idea, but it seems like an interesting one.

hope all the dipshits on my facebook ask how many homeless veterans we could save with that $xB trump is spending on the wall.

Youseff wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

td11 wrote:The majority of GOP voters watch Fox News 24/7 and have been for years, it's their main source of info. And now our president is one of those people

The majority of GOP voters, like the majority of all voters, maybe catch a bit of news while watching the local news for weather in the morning or see a bit of the nightly news in the evening or read an article they come across on Facebook, but are mostly disengaged from politics on a day to day basis. The majority of GOP voters have never heard of 4chan or Inforwars and don't know what Redstate or the Federalist is either. The majority don't have Twitter accounts, don't listen to Rush or Hannity, don't post about politics on the Internet, aren't watching FOX News on a daily basis, etc.

you're a east coast elite, man. you've never lived in the boonies. these are my people. you are wrong, wrong, wrong.

On a given night about 4 million people watch O'Reilly, the top rated show on cable news. 63 million people voted for Trump. The majority of voters aren't watching or reading this stuff.

ReadingPhilly wrote:hope all the #$!&@ on my facebook ask how many homeless veterans we could save with that $xB trump is spending on the wall.

Election's over, they forgot about homeless vets already.

ReadingPhilly wrote:hope all the #$!&@ on my facebook ask how many homeless veterans we could save with that $xB trump is spending on the wall.

Or how many times could they rebuild Flint's water infrastructure?

I caught an interview with former Mexico President Vincente Fox on CNBC this morning and he spent the entire segment (about 10 minutes) calling our overlord "CEO Trump". The anchors all seemed to be doing their best to tell Fox how wrong he was and that Mexico needs the US far more than he (or Pena) were willing to admit. Joe Kernan went so far as to say that Mexico should just agreed to pay for the wall since it has already spent/lost billions on measures to prop up a substantially weakened peso vs. the dollar. At least twice you could hear the anchors laughing in the background as President Fox spoke.

I do not recall what kind of president Fox was but I thought he did an outstanding job of stating Mexico's position and countering the anchors.

An engineer gave a description of what building the wall would entail

If we assume a border wall length of 1,954 miles (there are 600 or so miles of existing border barrier, but much of this would not qualify for Trump’s wall), then we can make some estimates as to the volume of concrete needed for the project:

•Foundation: 6 feet deep, 18 inch radius = 42.4 cubic feet •Column: 4 square feet area by 30 feet tall = 120 cubic feet
•Wall panels: 25 feet tall by 10 feet long by 8 inches thick = 166.7 cubic feet
•Total concrete per 10-foot segment = 329.1 cubic feet
•1,954 miles = 10,300,00 feet = 1,030,000 segments (10-feet long each)
•1,030,000 segments * 329.1 cubic feet per segment = 339,000,000 cubic feet = 12,555,000 cubic yards. (The cubic yard is the standard unit of measure of concrete volume in the United States.)

Twelve million, six hundred thousand cubic yards. In other words, this wall would contain over three times the amount of concrete used to build the Hoover Dam — a project that, unlike Trump’s wall, has qualitative, verifiable economic benefits. Such a wall would be greater in volume than all six pyramids of the Giza Necropolis — and it is unlikely that a concrete slab in the town of Dead Dog Valley, Texas would inspire the same timeless sense of wonder.

That quantity of concrete could pave a one-lane road from New York to Los Angeles, going the long way around the Earth, which would probably be just as useful.

CalvinBall wrote:Trump called the parks director and demanded they produce photos of the innaguration showing a big crowd.

I saw a comment from someone on a Facebook that accused the media of being obsessed with the inauguration crowd size.

The media

not DJT

is obsessed with the inauguration crowd size

according to at least one Trump supporter.

jerseyhoya wrote:

Youseff wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

td11 wrote:The majority of GOP voters watch Fox News 24/7 and have been for years, it's their main source of info. And now our president is one of those people

The majority of GOP voters, like the majority of all voters, maybe catch a bit of news while watching the local news for weather in the morning or see a bit of the nightly news in the evening or read an article they come across on Facebook, but are mostly disengaged from politics on a day to day basis. The majority of GOP voters have never heard of 4chan or Inforwars and don't know what Redstate or the Federalist is either. The majority don't have Twitter accounts, don't listen to Rush or Hannity, don't post about politics on the Internet, aren't watching FOX News on a daily basis, etc.

you're a east coast elite, man. you've never lived in the boonies. these are my people. you are wrong, wrong, wrong.

On a given night about 4 million people watch O'Reilly, the top rated show on cable news. 63 million people voted for Trump. The majority of voters aren't watching or reading this stuff.

feel like you're being purposefully obtuse on this. there's a reason literally half of your party thinks Obama is a Muslim. honestly, it's probably higher if they were just conversing with their friends. you literally had a hissyfit when I even suggested Alex Jones was a GOP media member, and now that's been proven correct. you and your Georgetown friends might now follow those sites, but you live in Blue States with a bunch of richies. It's different in the rest of the country.

His secret plan for ISIL has been revealed. He's going to ask the Pentagon to do more on it.

Oh, and it includes artillery on the ground in Syria.

I watch MSNBC about once a month, but Chris Hayes is definitely a guy that informs my political thinking. The daily numbers of viewers is not an all encompassing number.

traderdave wrote:I caught an interview with former Mexico President Vincente Fox on CNBC this morning and he spent the entire segment (about 10 minutes) calling our overlord "CEO Trump". The anchors all seemed to be doing their best to tell Fox how wrong he was and that Mexico needs the US far more than he (or Pena) were willing to admit. Joe Kernan went so far as to say that Mexico should just agreed to pay for the wall since it has already spent/lost billions on measures to prop up a substantially weakened peso vs. the dollar. At least twice you could hear the anchors laughing in the background as President Fox spoke.

I do not recall what kind of president Fox was but I thought he did an outstanding job of stating Mexico's position and countering the anchors.

Fox was better than the guys that followed.

Nikki Haley syas that there's a "new UN" and that "for those who don't have our backs, we're taking names."

This from a tweet by Maggie Haberman.

Unrelated/related note, I just set up push notifications on Twitter for some political figures because I figured life isn't depressing enough without real time reax regarding this administration.

Youseff wrote:I watch MSNBC about once a month, but Chris Hayes is definitely a guy that informs my political thinking. The daily numbers of viewers is not an all encompassing number.

Not to mention that I'd venture a guess that most people take in Fox News because it's on when they're at the bar, getting their hair cut, etc., not because they're sitting down and watching Hannity or Tucker Carlson for an hour.

On a related note, I wanted to throw something at the TV yesterday when I was getting my haircut. The Fox News ticker had POSITIVE employment news and was talking about XX consecutive months of (fill in the blank positive stat). Suddenly things are good because it's after Jan. 20th? Fucking infuriating.

slugsrbad wrote:Nikki Haley syas that there's a "new UN" and that "for those who don't have our backs, we're taking names."

This from a tweet by Maggie Haberman.

Unrelated/related note, I just set up push notifications on Twitter for some political figures because I figured life isn't depressing enough without real time reax regarding this administration.

It always seems like a good idea until my phone starts blowing up constantly.

pacino wrote:His secret plan for ISIL has been revealed. He's going to ask the Pentagon to do more on it.

Oh, and it includes artillery on the ground in Syria.

"Lawrence of Arabia" is one of my favorite old movies. I've quoted from it before here because, in addition to chronicling T.E. Lawrence's exploits in the Middle East during the first World War, it does so against the politics leading to the post-War Middle East. For those of you who may not be familiar with the subject, after the War, the Allied powers (primarily England and France, with Russia's assent) carved up what had been the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East to suit their own interests.

Throughout his campaign with the Arabs (who were fighting on the side of the Western powers in an effort to oust the Ottmans) Lawrence had been telling the Arabs that their efforts would be rewarded after the War with an independent Arab state. In an enormously cynical way in order to keep the support of the Arabs, Lawrence's superiors did nothing to counter Lawrence's assertions even though they had no intention of giving the Arabs an independent state after the War. In fact, even before the War had ended the British and French had signed a secret agreement named the Sykes-Picot Agreement (after the British and French civil servants who had negotiated the deal) defining their respective post-War spheres of influence in the region.

All this is still relevant today because because the consequences of the Sykes-Picot Agreement still reverberate. Among other things, Sykes-Picot led to the creation of Mandatory Iraq and the British mandate in Palestine was the precursor to the establishment of Israel.

During the War the British were faced with very much the same dilemma now facing the United States: How to help the Arabs defeat a common enemy (then the Ottomans; today ISIS) without arming them so well so as to create a threat after the War and, in the context of Lawrence's campaign with the Arabs, to satisfy Lawrence that he would be given all the support he needed without letting him know that the Allies were deceiving the Arabs about their post-War intentions.

In the movie Lawrence has just returned from a particularly brutal (including to him personally) campaign and tells General Allenby (in charge of the British forces in the Middle East theater of war and officially "Field Marshal Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby, GCB, GCMG, GCVO") that he (Lawrence) does not want to return to the field to continue to lead the Arab uprising.

By this point in the War Allenby has become reliant on Lawrence's efforts and needs to convince him to return. There is a scene with Allenby, Lawrence, Mr. Dryden (a French diplomat) and Colonel Harry Brighton (one of Allenby's senior staff officers). In the scene Allenby induces Lawrence to return by promising, among other things, artillery for the effort.

After the scene Lawrence leaves and Allenby, Dryden and Brighton depart together. Dryden and Brighton debate Allenby's promise to provide Lawrence's Arabs with artillery:

Dryden: Are you really going to give them artillery, sir?
Brighton: I was wondering that, sir. Might be deuce difficult to get it back again.
Dryden: Give them artillery and you've made them independent.
Allenby: Then I can't give them artillery, can I?
Dryden: For you to say, sir.
Allenby: No, it's not. I've got orders to obey, thank God! Not like that poor devil - he's riding the whirlwind.
Dryden: Let's hope we're not.

Sorry to be so long-winded but I find it fascinating that here we are over 100 years later and the same questions about the Middle East are still being debated even down to the granular level of whether to supply artillery.

I think that the importance of the call to the Park Service is being misunderstood. It is not what he was looking for (alternate views to support his position or if there were other photographs or what have you), but rather that what was on his mind his first day as POTUS was the he wanted to support his claims of having the best ratings, biggest crowd sizes ever, etc.

That relates exactly to the fair point in this thread that if he can build a giant wall that could be seen from space, then that is a physical monument to himself and his self perceived greatness. Now if someone points out that the Great Wall is over 5500 miles, then we have a new problem (but we would be prebuilding those dikes around Florida for when the not happening sea rise happens).

About that other wall:

Other purposes of the Great Wall have included border controls, allowing the imposition of duties on goods transported along the Silk Road, regulation or encouragement of trade and the control of immigration and emigration. Furthermore, the defensive characteristics of the Great Wall were enhanced by the construction of watch towers, troop barracks, garrison stations, signaling capabilities through the means of smoke or fire, and the fact that the path of the Great Wall also served as a transportation corridor.

HeHeHe...

While we are rolling through the making good on campaign promises via Exec Order, when does the WH demand the issuance of an arrest warrant to lock her up?

Youseff wrote:I watch MSNBC about once a month, but Chris Hayes is definitely a guy that informs my political thinking. The daily numbers of viewers is not an all encompassing number.

i like hayes and maddow a good bit