Quote:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
lol

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by second:

Quote:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
lol

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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What is funny...

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Quote:

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Originally posted by second:
What is funny is that Trump is exactly like Roy Cohn, who didn’t pay his bills, all but daring his creditors to sue him for what he owed — tailors, locksmiths, mechanics, travel agencies, storage companies, credit card companies, stationery stores, office supply stores. He didn’t pay people back, “friend or foe,” wrote Cohn's biographer, Nicholas von Hoffman, who reported that a captain of his yacht called Defiance “had a mental map” of “ports we couldn’t go into because we owed thousands of dollars.”

He didn’t pay his taxes, either, racking up millions of dollars in liens. Taxes, he believed, went to “welfare recipients” and “political hacks” and “bloated bureaucrats” and “countries whose people hate our guts.”

The less discussed but arguably much more trenchant lessons of Cohn’s life are not his decades of dark-arts untouchability but his brutal comeuppance. Cohn did not, in the end, elude the consequences of his actions. He could not, it turned out, get away with everything forever. He was a braggart of a tax cheat, and the Internal Revenue Service closed in; he was an incorrigibly unethical attorney, and he finally was disbarred; and only six weeks after that professional disgrace, six months shy of 60 years old, Cohn was dead of AIDS.

Now, less than 14 months out from next year’s election, with Trump facing historic legal and political peril, it’s getting harder and harder not to wonder what he might or might not have gleaned from watching Cohn’s wretched unraveling.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Quote:

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Originally posted by second:

Quote:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
lol

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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What is funny...

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You're always telling me what is funny.

THAT is what is funny. You seem like one of the most clueless people in the world when it comes to humor.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by captaincrunch:

Amazing similarities. He learned from the "best." Reminds me of Madoff or Epstein - total scum. Which... most of us have known for some time.

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Originally posted by second:

Quote:

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Originally posted by captaincrunch:

Amazing similarities. He learned from the "best." Reminds me of Madoff or Epstein - total scum. Which... most of us have known for some time.

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I would not be surprised if Trump had HIV, same as Roy Cohn. Modern medicine could be keeping Trump from going all the way to AIDS and early death like Cohn, but Trump sure had extensive experience with prostitutes. The way Trump acts, syphilis might have been chewing on his brain. I asked google: "What do you know about Trump's sex life?" Whatever perversions exist, Trump has been there and done that. Maybe he has the STDs to prove it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegatio
ns

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

"If True", Trump might not make it until 2024.

lol...

Like trained little doggies.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Yeah. I got your drift the first time you posted it.

I'm just laughing at the "If True" stuff. You guys are starting to sound like the MSM when you post that shit.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

What democrats, who want better environmental policies, need to do is get an appropriate president elected, WHO WILL USE THE POWER OF THE BULLY PULPIT TO CHANGE THE DYNAMIC.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:
I'm putting this here for fact-checking later on.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:
"The only power that exists is 40 or fewer GOP Senators. With 41 Senators, the GOP can stop anything."

And HOW does one get from the 47 GOP senators there are now, to 40 or fewer?

NOT BY DOING MORE OF THE SAME, SLOPPY. Not by whining about Trump. Not by trying to impeach him. Not by being quiet and hiding (like the senate democrats). Not by playing political back-room games (like the house democrats).

You do it by showing the people what's important, why it's important, and what can be done about it. You bring people on board.

And people will bring the senate on board.

It's about changing the dynamic.

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Originally posted by second:
"It’s time the world ghosts Trump and gets down to real work"

An article out of India about how Trump's mouth has made the World less safe.

https://qz.com/1712963/

Why is the world economic system so reliant on one person, who effectively drowns out the voices of other presidents, prime ministers, and policy leaders?

By extension, why is the world so reliant on one country as an example of a rational, just, and economically-sound voice?

As outrageous as Trump’s rants and tantrums are, he merely reflects a mindset of American exceptionalism that has plagued the world for years and years.

There are examples in the article of Trump saying the most unwise things. The World knows what a nut Trump is, even if Republican voters aren't capable.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So, as election is closing in, I'm going to revive this thread and take an accounting of what Trump has managed to do, and not do.

And no, tweets don't count.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

#WEARAMASK

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So, as election is closing in, I'm going to revive this thread and take an accounting of what Trump has managed to do, and not do.

And no, tweets don't count.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

#WEARAMASK

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Originally posted by 1KIKI: I think it'll be an interesting tally, but I'm not sure people will vote that way.

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Originally posted by reaverfan:
3 Months Of Hell: U.S. Economy Drops 32.9% In Worst GDP Report Ever
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/07/30/89671
4437/3-months-of-hell-u-s-economys-worst-quarter-ever?origin=NOTIFY

He's made America broke again. To see more about what a piece of shit he is, scroll up.

Worst economic crisis ever, and it's all on him.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:


lol

No.

That was Democrats and the legacy media destroying the American economy over manufactured fear and panic of a virus that hardly kills anybody who gets it.

You're complicit in that as well. You have more responsibility for the economic failures than Trump does.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well, let's see! A lot has happened in the past three years, by now enough to get a bead on Trump's performance as President! It will take me a while to go back over the record and process what has happened, but here's my top-of-the-head reaction

Trump has actually been relatively successful at getting traction on illegal immigration issues. The wall is getting built, without help from Congress. Visitors from wartorn jihadist-filled nations are blocked. Policy is changing on asylum, which economic migrants have been abusing for decades. Most successfully, Trump or one of his appointees did some out-of-the-box thinking and put pressure on Mexico to stem the surge of Central American migrants passing thru Mexico instead of just funneling them to the border, which has reduced pressure at the border by something like 50% from its peak. I think when Trump puts his mind to it, he knows how to accomplish.


Trump does seem to have a penchant for breaking up old agreements and old arrangements that he didn't have a hand in negotiating.

Sometimes that's a good thing, like with TTP and TTIP

Sometimes it's a neutral thing, like with the Paris Climate Accord (which was a feckless attempt at window-dressing a serious problem).

Sometimes that's a bad thing, like with the JCPOA and the INF.

Sometimes that's a nascent thing yet to occur like with NATO, the EU, N Korea, Israel, the Mideast, and Russia.

Sometimes that's a thing with many moving parts, like our trade relationship with China, which needed a serious reset but has both good and bad effects, yet to be determined.

In any case, Trump is a disruptor, or ... as I called him BEFORE the election ... a loose cannon. Now, I happen to believe that many of our former alliances, agreements and arrangements needed serious disruption, so shaking things loose is a necessary step towards improvement. OTOH, Trump has not been able to reach good conclusions for these disruptions. Part of this may be his combative approach of applying "maximum pressure" and sending out mixed signals before "the big ask"; part of this may be internal contradictions in his own set of goals (make nice with Russia, make war on Iran which I pointed out even before he was elected couldn't both be accomplished); and part of this may be resulting from neocon/deep state interference.

I think this requires a serious picking-apart. I suspect quite a bit of this chaos is due to deep state interference, given the CIA's feeding bad info to Trump via Gina Haspel (Syria, Skripal) and people like Bolton constantly monkey-wrenching Trump's foreign policy (N Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, etc) It didn't help that Trump was being pressured by an internationally-coordinated covert operation and psyop against the American people.

But at this point it may not matter whether this is Trump's innate combative and disruptive approach to negotiations or lack of clarity of objectives or whether this is the deep state constantly throwing Trump's initiatives off track, because at SOME point the various negotiators across the table are going to throw in the towel and say that the Trump administration is (as the Russians say) "not agreement-capable" and I believe that point has been reached. And even if Trump manages to fire some of the sabateurs in his administration and rein in the rest, it's too late to pull the foreign policy bacon out of the fire.

Wittingly or not, thanks to sanctions and threats, what Trump has managed to do is consolidate Russia, China, Iran, and (sometimes) India, plus most of the 'stans into a trading and security bloc which will not be using either SWIFT or the dollar. For example, India just announced a deal to invest in Russia's northeast energy sources (I'll try to get the value, but it's in the realm of "billion"), while China just announced a $400 billion dollar deal to invest in Iran over 5 years, with Russian partners. (For comparison, Iran's GDP is about $400 billion, the same as the investment amount.) All of this investment will be in "soft" currencies ... ie not the dollar.

He is also consolidating the EU to some extent, since both France and Germany realize that the USA isn't going to automatically swoop in and save their hide in a conflict with Russia.

I personally think that this decentralization is a good thing; if you've read my posts about "robustness" you'll understand why but not going to re-explain it here. And this may in fact be Trump's overall goal: to reach a state whereby other nations disengage from the USA, instead of fighting his way to "our" disengagement" from "them". If that's the case, then he's one wily guy, because that effect will persist even when Trump is out of office.

*****

In any case there is much to discuss about Trump's effects on our trade balance, the value of the dollar, our economy, Federal budget, overall level of indebtedness, military preparedness, health care, media monopolization and "fake news" and so forth, I'm looking forward to a good discussion about the good, bad, and ugly of Trump's tenure so far. But please leave the trolling and delusions at the door.

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Mexico promised to finish carrying through on its new labor laws, as required under the new trade deal. The labor reforms give Mexican workers the right to vote in independent unions and cast secret votes. The Trump administration, Democrats and labor unions are expected to pay close attention to whether Mexico meets those commitments.

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The past year [2019] has arguably been the Trump administration's most successful one in its quest to restrict asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, overhaul the nation's legal immigration system, crack down on undocumented immigrants, alter America's status as a safe haven for refugees and challenge decades of bipartisan consensus that robust immigration is key to America's economic and social prosperity.

...In March, President Trump moved to end foreign aid to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, faulting their governments for not doing enough to stop their citizens from fleeing. The next month, Mr. Trump announced a "tougher" direction at the border that fueled the ouster of top officials at the Department of Homeland of Security, including its chief, Kirstjen Nielsen.

In May, U.S. border officials apprehended more than 133,000 migrants, a 13-year monthly high. Border officials warned of a "breaking point" and "full-blown emergency."
Immigration. But in the months since, border apprehensions have plummeted, reaching about 33,000 in November. Along with more aggressive immigration enforcement by the Mexican government, the administration has attributed the sharp drop to a series of restrictive and controversial policies it implemented this year.
The most effective policy, from the administration's point of view, has been the so-called "Remain in Mexico" program, through which the U.S. has returned about 56,000 asylum-seekers to Mexico to wait for the duration of their U.S. immigration proceedings.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So. to summarize what I think so far:

Trump (as I have posted many times before) is a loose cannon. His MO is taking things apart. That is a GOOD thing for many aspects of the established order, particularly taking apart the parasitic relationship that the USA has with China and NATO.

TRUMP AND TRADE
On the positive side he withdrew from the TTIP and the TTP, and these have not been replaced with other "free trade" agreements.

He renegotiated NAFTA into USMCA. There is ONE provision in USMCA which might make a difference to Mexican labor:

Quote:

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Mexico promised to finish carrying through on its new labor laws, as required under the new trade deal. The labor reforms give Mexican workers the right to vote in independent unions and cast secret votes. The Trump administration, Democrats and labor unions are expected to pay close attention to whether Mexico meets those commitments.

---

the success of USMCA depends heavily on what Manuel Obrador can do in Mexico. USMCA also attempts to require auto manufacturers to make more parts in the USA, but these have 3 to 7-year implementation schedules so effect is not visible yet.

The elephant in the room is China: no special trade deal has been reached with China, and it is unlikely that one will be. Trade will continue under WTO rules, but Trump is doing his best to piss China off and it's working, so expect a continued "decoupling".

IMHO THIS IS A GOOD THING. Also, it is unlikely to be reversed by the next President. China has been parasitizing the USA middle class for decades.

Trump has levied more sanctions against more businesses and nations than any previous President. I can't find a complete list, but he has sanctioned Russia AND GERMANY over NordStream2, Russia over supposed elections violations, Chinese businesses bc of Hong Kong, Venezuela, Iran; France, Germany and Canada (aluminum) ... really, I can't track them all.

This has made America an unreliable trade partner, and downgraded the USA dollar (USD) as the universal trade currency. Also, IMHO, a good thing, since I believe America should MAKE WHAT IT CAN AND TRADE FOR WHAT IT MUST. It has also thrown Iran, China, and Russia into eachother's arms ... not a good thing.

Altho it is Trump's goal to reduce our trade deficit, just like illegal immigration, the TRADE DEFICIT first rose, then fell under Trump. This is partly due to his inability to get lenders to invest in production in the USA, as opposed to speculation. Trump - or any USA President- simply doesn't have the authority to require investment in steel, aluminum, textiles, chemicals, tech etc.


IMMIGRATION
He's also done some "out of the box" thinking and gotten Mexico to control the flow of migrants to the USA, and restored some sanity - and honesty - to the use of "asylum" as an entry into the USA. He also restored sanity on the use of illegal migrants in counting for representation.

Quote:

---

The past year [2019] has arguably been the Trump administration's most successful one in its quest to restrict asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, overhaul the nation's legal immigration system, crack down on undocumented immigrants, alter America's status as a safe haven for refugees and challenge decades of bipartisan consensus that robust immigration is key to America's economic and social prosperity.

...In March, President Trump moved to end foreign aid to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, faulting their governments for not doing enough to stop their citizens from fleeing. The next month, Mr. Trump announced a "tougher" direction at the border that fueled the ouster of top officials at the Department of Homeland of Security, including its chief, Kirstjen Nielsen.

In May, U.S. border officials apprehended more than 133,000 migrants, a 13-year monthly high. Border officials warned of a "breaking point" and "full-blown emergency."
Immigration. But in the months since, border apprehensions have plummeted, reaching about 33,000 in November. Along with more aggressive immigration enforcement by the Mexican government, the administration has attributed the sharp drop to a series of restrictive and controversial policies it implemented this year.
The most effective policy, from the administration's point of view, has been the so-called "Remain in Mexico" program, through which the U.S. has returned about 56,000 asylum-seekers to Mexico to wait for the duration of their U.S. immigration proceedings.

---

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-2019-the-year-trump-restricte
d-legal-immigration-and-effectively-shut-off-asylum-at-the-border/

The M$M puts the most negative spin on this, but IMHO this is a GOOD thing. It puts the interests of Americans and American workers above the interests of agribusiness, contruction and sweatshops and the interests of non-citizens.

I call this a "win" for Trump, and for America.

OVERSEAS MILITARY
Well, the big plus is that Trump hasn't started any new wars. For an American President, that's amazing!

However, for whatever reason he hasn't been able to either fully remove troops from the ME (a giant boondoggle if you ask me) or stop the neocons and warhawks from their incessant meddling in other nations. So we have not seen a budgetary "peace benefit".

FINANCES
Trump and the "everything bubble". I'm not sure whether to lay this at the feet of The Fed, or Trump, or both. The Fed has been hemorrhaging money into speculation at a rate faster than any previous time except 2008, causing an irrational rise in stocks, bonds, homes, AND especially tech stocks, and supporting banks. Technically The Fed is independent of the President, but Trump has publicly owned the stock market rally so he would also own the crash.

COVID
Oh, my. EVERY nation has seen a wobble in their economies because of COVID, but the USA's has wobbled the worst.
It's been CITIES AND STATES that have ordered lockdowns, not Trump. OTOH his administration has not been able to provide consistent messaging on a "STEP 2", which is what you're supposed to do AFTER the lockdown, has not helped the states emerge from lockdown. Since SARS-Cov2 had been noodling around in the population for quite awhile before action was taken, I suppose a lockdown would have to be instituted as a circuit-breaker, but it should have been done in tandem with universal masking. And once the infection rate was reduced to something manageable the states should have been ready with a robust test and contact tracing program. Unfortunately, on advice of the CDC Trump bobbled the masking message and the DCDC bobbled the testing rollout for a month, if not more.
And you can't just open up and cross your fingers.

POLITICS
Trump had laid bare the presence of the deep state: un-elected officials in government, particularly in the spook agencies and State Dept, and their collaborators in foreign intelligence (MI6 particularly) and the M$M. Despite being the target of a wide-ranging and nefarious campaign to spy on him and his staff and smear them with false charges and "anonymous" leaks, he has withstood RUSSIA!RUSSIA!, Ukraingate, and a host of other smears which would have felled a lesser person. He is to be congratulated.



-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

#WEARAMASK

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Democrats and CoronaKarens need to own the 2nd Great Depression they've put us in.


One good thing that will come of it is that everybody is going to be up the creek without a paddle. Poverty the likes of what we're going to see does not discriminate.

Maybe we'll find a sense of unity at the end of all of this. It won't be a long time from now before it's over though. Kids that aren't even born yet today will grow up thinking that what's about to happen is just the way life is.


Hope it was worth it.

And I hope you're prepared.



Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Quote:

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Originally posted SIGNYM:
So. to summarize what I think so far:

Trump (as I have posted many times before) is a loose cannon. His MO is taking things apart. That is a GOOD thing for many aspects of the established order, particularly taking apart the parasitic relationship that the USA has with China and NATO.

TRUMP AND TRADE
On the positive side he withdrew from the TTIP and the TTP, and these have not been replaced with other "free trade" agreements.

He renegotiated NAFTA into USMCA. There is ONE provision in USMCA which might make a difference to Mexican labor:

Quote:

---

Mexico promised to finish carrying through on its new labor laws, as required under the new trade deal. The labor reforms give Mexican workers the right to vote in independent unions and cast secret votes. The Trump administration, Democrats and labor unions are expected to pay close attention to whether Mexico meets those commitments.

---

the success of USMCA depends heavily on what Manuel Obrador can do in Mexico. USMCA also attempts to require auto manufacturers to make more parts in the USA, but these have 3 to 7-year implementation schedules so effect is not visible yet.

The elephant in the room is China: no special trade deal has been reached with China, and it is unlikely that one will be. Trade will continue under WTO rules, but Trump is doing his best to piss China off and it's working, so expect a continued "decoupling".

IMHO THIS IS A GOOD THING. Also, it is unlikely to be reversed by the next President. China has been parasitizing the USA middle class for decades.

Trump has levied more sanctions against more businesses and nations than any previous President. I can't find a complete list, but he has sanctioned Russia AND GERMANY over NordStream2, Russia over supposed elections violations, Chinese businesses bc of Hong Kong, Venezuela, Iran; France, Germany and Canada (aluminum) ... really, I can't track them all.

This has made America an unreliable trade partner, and downgraded the USA dollar (USD) as the universal trade currency. Also, IMHO, a good thing, since I believe America should MAKE WHAT IT CAN AND TRADE FOR WHAT IT MUST. It has also thrown Iran, China, and Russia into eachother's arms ... not a good thing.

Altho it is Trump's goal to reduce our trade deficit, just like illegal immigration, the TRADE DEFICIT first rose, then fell under Trump. This is partly due to his inability to get lenders to invest in production in the USA, as opposed to speculation. Trump - or any USA President- simply doesn't have the authority to require investment in steel, aluminum, textiles, chemicals, tech etc.


IMMIGRATION
He's also done some "out of the box" thinking and gotten Mexico to control the flow of migrants to the USA, and restored some sanity - and honesty - to the use of "asylum" as an entry into the USA. He also restored sanity on the use of illegal migrants in counting for representation.

Quote:

---

The past year [2019] has arguably been the Trump administration's most successful one in its quest to restrict asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, overhaul the nation's legal immigration system, crack down on undocumented immigrants, alter America's status as a safe haven for refugees and challenge decades of bipartisan consensus that robust immigration is key to America's economic and social prosperity.

...In March, President Trump moved to end foreign aid to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, faulting their governments for not doing enough to stop their citizens from fleeing. The next month, Mr. Trump announced a "tougher" direction at the border that fueled the ouster of top officials at the Department of Homeland of Security, including its chief, Kirstjen Nielsen.

In May, U.S. border officials apprehended more than 133,000 migrants, a 13-year monthly high. Border officials warned of a "breaking point" and "full-blown emergency."
Immigration. But in the months since, border apprehensions have plummeted, reaching about 33,000 in November. Along with more aggressive immigration enforcement by the Mexican government, the administration has attributed the sharp drop to a series of restrictive and controversial policies it implemented this year.
The most effective policy, from the administration's point of view, has been the so-called "Remain in Mexico" program, through which the U.S. has returned about 56,000 asylum-seekers to Mexico to wait for the duration of their U.S. immigration proceedings.

---

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-2019-the-year-trump-restricte
d-legal-immigration-and-effectively-shut-off-asylum-at-the-border/

The M$M puts the most negative spin on this, but IMHO this is a GOOD thing. It puts the interests of Americans and American workers above the interests of agribusiness, contruction and sweatshops and the interests of non-citizens.

I call this a "win" for Trump, and for America.

OVERSEAS MILITARY
Well, the big plus is that Trump hasn't started any new wars. For an American President, that's amazing!

However, for whatever reason he hasn't been able to either fully remove troops from the ME (a giant boondoggle if you ask me) or stop the neocons and warhawks from their incessant meddling in other nations. So we have not seen a budgetary "peace benefit".

FINANCES
Trump and the "everything bubble". I'm not sure whether to lay this at the feet of The Fed, or Trump, or both. The Fed has been hemorrhaging money into speculation at a rate faster than any previous time except 2008, causing an irrational rise in stocks, bonds, homes, AND especially tech stocks, and supporting banks. Technically The Fed is independent of the President, but Trump has publicly owned the stock market rally so he would also own the crash.

COVID
Oh, my. EVERY nation has seen a wobble in their economies because of COVID, but the USA's has wobbled the worst.
It's been CITIES AND STATES that have ordered lockdowns, not Trump. OTOH his administration has not been able to provide consistent messaging on a "STEP 2", which is what you're supposed to do AFTER the lockdown, has not helped the states emerge from lockdown. Since SARS-Cov2 had been noodling around in the population for quite awhile before action was taken, I suppose a lockdown would have to be instituted as a circuit-breaker, but it should have been done in tandem with universal masking. And once the infection rate was reduced to something manageable the states should have been ready with a robust test and contact tracing program. Unfortunately, on advice of the CDC Trump bobbled the masking message and the DCDC bobbled the testing rollout for a month, if not more.
And you can't just open up and cross your fingers.

POLITICS
Trump had laid bare the presence of the deep state: un-elected officials in government, particularly in the spook agencies and State Dept, and their collaborators in foreign intelligence (MI6 particularly) and the M$M. Despite being the target of a wide-ranging and nefarious campaign to spy on him and his staff and smear them with false charges and "anonymous" leaks, he has withstood RUSSIA!RUSSIA!, Ukraingate, and a host of other smears which would have felled a lesser person. He is to be congratulated.

*****
REAVERBOT: More Q-tard talk.

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