R_P wrote: 
Riiight. Just as only the peasants pay taxes - not really smart people.

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
Only traitors will pay! Real loyal patriots only buy American...

White House says Mexico border wall might be funded by tax on imports

Which means: WE still pay for his goddam wall.

I really hope his meltdown occurs before he wrecks the economy.

 R_P wrote: 
With today's declaration of war against the press, it's become obvious who the real president is.

 kurtster wrote: 
We will see what happens in the future to the market.  I was simply pointing out that market went up — a lot — during Obama's administration, and I recall hearing from many critics (perhaps you, as well) that no credit was due Obama. I am not arguing that credit necessarily would be due, but it seems rather premature to give Trump credit for market increases, which, as you point out, can be due to many circumstances.  If the market has gone up because of speculation nf what Trump may do and what that might mean for economic growth, then we will need to see if all that speculation proves true in the longer range.  That sound reasonable?      

Trump's Sanctuary Cities Plan is Straight Out of Breitbart, Radical Right Playbook | Southern Poverty Law Center

Trump vows to tax Mexican imports to pay for border wall
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto cancels his planned U.S. visit, vows 'Mexico will not pay for any wall'

 islander wrote: 
Well it sure didn't trickle down from the government under Obama as he had promised.  Wealth redistribution, riiiiiight.  Under Obama the wealth gap grew to be greater than prior to the Great Depression meaning he made the rich richer than ever before.

I may watch too much TV but you watch too many shiny objects.  OTH, hope you hung on to your Netflix.  Hit another all time high yesterday.  

And one thing I noticed this week as I was out and about is that Help Wanted signs have sprung up like mushrooms overnight.  They have been very hard to find in the past 8 years.  You'd think that with the unemployment rate at record lows, they would have been everywhere all this time with workers so hard to come by based upon what is traditionally considered full employment with these historically low rates.

 kurtster wrote: 
a) you watch too much TV.

b) weren't you the guy cheering when all the rich guys had lost money on when the futures were down at election eve?  You realize most of that 2 Trillion in new wealth went to people who were already plenty wealthy right?  But be patient, I'm sure some of that new wealth will trickle down on to you. 

 

 steeler wrote: 
So what is your point in regards to Krugman's dire prediction ?  The Dow closed at 20,100 today.  Up about 1.3% since November 8, 2016 with no signs of faltering anytime soon.

Using the same standard for Obama, on November 3, 2008 the Dow closed at 9319.83 and fell to 7949.09 between then and his inauguration.  A decline of 1370 points or about 15%.  That is an accurate measure of confidence in the new Obama administration.  

We all know what really drove up the market during Obama's two terms, right ?  Interest rates of Zero and trillions of dollars printed by the Fed that had no where else to go but into the market as no one was loaning any of it out, right ?  Is it fair to consider the cratering of industrial commodities and no recovery during Obama's terms as a valid measure of industrial / manufacturing performance ?    

No one is printing money right now and the Fed raised interest rates and still the Markets went up since Trump's election.  Usually a rate hike causes the markets to fall.  Not this time.  Curious, eh ?

Wait...what? Despite the tax dollars that would be spent on it, this should be investigated.

 

 kurtster wrote: 

From Forbes:

 When Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States on January 20, 2009, the U.S. stock market was in free fall. The financial crisis was in full swing following the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, a popular measure of the U.S. stock market, closed at 805 points on Inauguration Day.

Eight years later, the S&P 500 index has risen to 2,274 points after one of the great bull runs in stock market history. With Obama as president, the U.S. stock market, as measured by the S&P 500, returned 235%, or 16.4% annualized.

 

Other sources:

When President Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average slumped to 7,949.09, the lowest inaugural performance for the Dow since its creation.

On November 8, 2016: The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) advanced 2.1%, to close at 18,259.60. The S&P 500 gained 2.2% to close at 2,131.52

 

The Doomsday Clock just advanced, ‘thanks to Trump’: It’s now just 2 ½ half minutes to ‘midnight.’

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 
By putting up two parts of the total instead of the one that would be enough for me to make a point ?   

I think that the primary reason that people opposed to Trump fail to figure out how to read Trump is that the context is ignored, for what ever reason.  The context that I and I suspect a majority of Trump supporters use is that it is one thing to have views, feelings, ideas and notions, many of which conflict with law and social norms, but acting on them is another.  I believe that this applies to everyone, universally.  So with that, while Trump has feelings on things, as POTUS, they will all be tempered by the rule of law and the laws on the books.  Note that in his speech at DHS yesterday, he stated that the only thing he was changing was enforcing existing laws, not putting in place anything new.

So to torture, yeah, I'm against it, yet also feel that it does work, sometimes.  Its the old ends justify the means thing.  One thing that set the USA apart from most of the rest of the world is not allowing torture, period.  Now we discuss it in terms of semantics.  But the law is the law, and Trump has made it clear he will do what the law says, regardless of how he feels.

But.  Its also good to know that Trump feels that torture does work.  I would like to think that if presented with the scenario of a ticking nuclear device found in the heart of NYC and the bomber in custody, that Trump would be willing to make that executive decision that only he could make, to do what ever it takes to get the disarm code out of the bomber, including torture if that is what is needed.  And the scenario I just used is not farfetched by any means.

That is how I read Trump.  And including the conflicting piece supports the context.  The context could not be supported without showing conflicting information.  That's how to read between the lines with Trump works or not.  

Oh and since Krugman wrote his piece cited below, $2 trillion in new wealth has been created in the rise of the stock markets.  That ain't chump change no matter how anyone looks at it.  In less than a couple of months.

Mexican president cancels visit to Washington as tensions with Trump administration intensify

also...

The State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned

 kurtster wrote: 
Kurtster, you confuse me. You claim that the President does not mean what he says.. "I feel torture works"  (feel????) by producing an alleged draft of the executive order which bans torture in Sec. 98 though it was widely acknowledged that Bush's original allowed torture through the back door and was therefore revoked by Obama - yet you go on to shoot yourself in the foot by linking to a report in which Spicer claims this document is not a White House document and he has no idea where it comes from.. thereby voiding the very evidence you provide to assert the president wants to ban torture..  What???  

edit: oh and btw.. torture is not a partisan issue. A ban on torture is something that should be absolutely fundamental to western democracy no matter what side of the spectrum you are on.

Paul Krugman: The Economic Fallout

11/09/2016  12:42 AM ET

 It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover?

Frankly, I find it hard to care much, even though this is my specialty. The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of things to fear.

Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.

Today, the markets (Dow, S&P and NASDAQ), have just hit all time highs with the Dow topping 20k for the first time ever.

Krugman is such a tool.  Why does any one still listen to him ?

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 
In the spirit of your charge against me, I will hold all who elected and re elected Obama personally accountable for the 500,000 deaths in Syria and the mass migration of millions of refugees from same which are a direct result of Obama drawing his famous Red Line and then doing absolutely nothing once it was crossed.  These deaths and the migration can be directly held against Obama and those who elected and supported him (in the spirit of your charge against me and those who voted for Trump) due to his empty words being interpreted correctly that no help was coming as promised giving all the actors free reign to do as they wished.

Now on to Trump and the alleged executive order draft of which you refer to.  Have you read it ?  Here it is for your perusal.  Please note the top of page four which directly states that no torture will be allowed.  And please read this as well which refutes the alleged document and places Trumps remarks into a proper context.

Now what say you ?

 

For some reason I cannot reply to Miamizsun's post...

Of course there are larger issues in the torture debate. Let's keep it simple.
Trump wants to reinstate practices which are illegal, ineffective, and immoral. Torture, in this case, has already been defined.  His statement(s) must be disavowed by all, but especially by those who would be responsible for carrying out an illegal dictate.   Trump continues to manifest his unsuitability to be POTUS.

In his first major TV interview as president, Trump is endlessly obsessed with his popularity Imagine that.