What the hell is he thinking? Trump's Marijuana and Trans problems.

By now we've heard about the the Trump Marijuana Enforcement Controversy, and the Transgender Bathroom controversy.  These were MAJOR persuasion fails, and there's not a lot of options to fix either, but before we get into that, we must first recognize the root of the problem.

"Unifying the Party"

We can blame Mike Pence and Reince Priebus all day, and we would be right to do so.  But even they would carry no sway with Trump if they didn't present a compelling case.  The reason Trump has been doing these idiotic things, and much, much more, is that they are pushing the message of unifying the party. 

Despite that being an epic press conference, the "unifying the party" thing is quite troubling.  What it means, in lamen's terms, is that he is making concessions to "principled conservatives".  I don't have to tell you that this is not the platform he ran on.  Sure, compromise is part of governing, but not with ONE fringe group of old, dying ideals that was only ever niche to begin with (seriously, no one wants the retirement age raised except people who don't need SS later in life).

He needs to focus not on unifying republicans or democrats, but on unifying the American People.  McCain and Graham are dead set on hating him, he'll NEVER win their favor.

How to fix his Marijuana Fail

It's not something he can ignore, and he can't just say Sean Spicer was wrong.  It may help, but a lot of people are going to think he simply tested the waters, then doubled back.  Middle Aged and old voters will forgive him, but not the younger ones, and the youth vote matters more than most people think because these voters will be around for much longer.  Marijuana and the war on drugs are serious issues that these voters will not forgive or forget if you screw up on.

There's only one way to win these voters back, and it's not Medical Marijuana.  That ship sailed the moment Sean Spicer opened his dumbass mouth.  It would reduce the damage, sure.  But to completely undo it, he will have to push full, federal legalization.  He's been on the fence about it, but he'll have to now come off and support it, push it through congress if he can, and if he can't, Executive Order.

The EO may be struck down in court, but at that point, his response must be to order Jeff Session to make ZERO Marijuana arrests.  That is, make a national stand down order with respect to marijuana.  He may not wanna do it, but he got himself into this mess, and this is now the only way out.

How to fix his Transgender Fail

This is a bit more complicated.  He can't simply undo what he did because non LGBT voters are more hesitant to support bathroom choice.  And to LGBT voters, he'll look, at best like a buffoon who screwed them and only stopped when he faced backlash for it.

The best solution may involve one person bathrooms.  These are usually gender neutral.  By updating bathroom laws to require one of these at each business, with gendered bathrooms only required in bigger buildings, he can claim to be helping trans people.  It won't be enough on its own though, he will have to frame this bill as a pro-trans bill, and will need to explain away his previous move as a way to protect women from the small percentage of people who are rapists that would exploit such a rule.

This way, he can claim that he was just trying to protect women, but also will show he cares that he hurt the trans community and wants to rectify it.  This will be widely approved of by non-LGBT voters, but the LGBT community itself will be more mixed, so he will need to make one final move.

He needs to take up Caitlyn Jenner's offer of outreach.  And he can't argue with Caitlyn, he needs to listen, and make a deal that he may not necessarily be comfortable with.  Perhaps it'll be a new trans rights bill (aside from his bathroom fix), or a federal LGBT relations office.  But it can't just be "Okay I invited Caitlyn and we talked", that won't be good enough, some sort of pro-LGBT action will need to follow, or he'll lose the LGBT vote again in 2020.

Thought Experiment, How the media can easily use FACTS to tell a LIE

Imagine for a moment that a religious establishment is suicide bombed:

-A mosque

-By a Muslim

-Who was white and non-ISIS

-But sympathized

-But regretted it and was forced to do so by ISIS

-But by the time they forced him, he had changed his mind.

You may notice that with each new "fact" the narrative completely flips.  If I can do this sitting at my keyboard, imagine what an experienced, Media propagandist can do.

Think about that next time you decide to buy into a media hit piece on somebody.  This stuff starts with PewDiePie and Milo, but it ends with you and me.  Don't think just because you're not famous that the media will not target you, George Zimmerman wasn't famous, neither was Justin Barker, or Eron Gjoni, that didn't stop the media from dragging their lives through the mud.

Why I'm not sure if I am still a Trump supporter

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/831846101179314177

I did NOT vote for Trump to get World War 3, that was Hillary Clinton's platform.  I did NOT vote for Trump to have the SJW Media control our laws, that Hillary Clinton's platform.  I did NOT vote for Trump to have ISIS control and influence our government, that was Hillary Clinton's platform.

I'm not saying Trump has gone full Hillary, he's a long way from that, SO FAR.  But I AM saying that he is headed that way, and I am NOT okay with this.  If he wants my vote in 2020, he needs to turn this crap around.

Easy D: Why Trump's tweet was no accident

I'm not sure Scott Adams will weigh in on this, but I will.

Trump has a long history of being pro-LGBT, the closest he's ever some to being anti-LGBT was when he said Gay Marriage should be done by all 50 states of their own volition, but that was more stupid than anti-gay.  Still, he's been branded a homophobe for:

-Running as a republican
--Having to work with people less pro-LGBT than him as a result.
-Being stupid and expecting the States to all legalize Gay Marriage on their own.

You might recognize this as confirmation bias, and unfortunately, he's also gotten little credit for the following:

-Opposing the NC Bathroom bill.
-Praising LGBT rights at the convention.
-Advocating that LGBT people be protected by the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
-Refusing to repeal Obama's pro-LGBT Executive Order.

So, what does this have to do with "Easy D"?  Well, I only know of one meaning for that, as do most people on Twitter.  Suffice to say, he intentionally made himself the butt of a gay joke, makes him look less homophobic.  Smart play.

The truth about the Trump/Manning controversy

Folks, I don't like what Trump said about Chelsea Manning, but let's be honest with ourselves, it was kinda obvious he felt this way.  He once called Snowden, who is and always was more popular than Manning ever was, a "Total Traitor", I don't think it was realistic to expect him to see Manning any more positively.

I also am not convinced that what Manning released was seen in context.  It might have been, or what looked like civilians being shot by Apache may have been "blend in with civilian" style terrorists.  Not saying they were, just saying I'm not 100% convinced that they weren't,  One of them was a journalist, sure, but it's not as if journalists can't ever sympathize with or join terrorists.  They're human beings like everyone else.

What I AM convinced of, is that, guilty or not, Manning's horrid treatment in jail was overkill.  I am also convinced that Manning meant well, and believed what s/he saw was wrong.  I believe that Manning wasn't given a fair trial, and that Manning has suffered enough and deserves to be let out, even if s/he WAS wrong.  I MAY feel different on that last one if Manning had been given privileges and wasn't tortured, but that's not what happened.

Lastly, I believe Obama released Manning for the wrong reasons.  That is, Manning was released for being trans, and so that Obama could leave office on a high note.  Those are NOT the right reasons.

All that said, I'm glad Manning is getting out soon, and hope s/he can live a good life now.

"Democrats" cry foul as Trump brings end to outsourcing, sweatshops, child/slave labor exploitation in US

10 years ago, if someone told me, you, or anyone else that republicans would oppose "free trade" deals that outsource jobs, even where it exploits horrid sweatshops that enslave children, and democrats would support them?  We'd all have a good laugh.

But yet, that's exactly what is going on right now.  TPP is officially over on both the international and domestic fronts, and NAFTA doesn't have much longer.  The democrats, who claimed to abhor these things apparently now hate that it is ending.

Truth, is stranger than fiction.

List of Obama's "accomplishments" as POTUS

1. Sold out Hard Working Americans to Big Insurance.
1a. When the Supreme Court made it worse by cancelling the medicaid expansion, he called this "A victory for Americans"

2. More than Doubled George W. Bush's Deficit
3. Expanded the Patriot Act.
4. Continued to get us into trouble in the middle east by going to war in Lybia and Syria
4a. Gave the Lockerbie Bomber back to Qaddafi, where he received a hero's welcome for his act of terrorism.
4b. Attacked Assad instead of ISIS in Syria, resulting in the Rapefugee crisis.

5. Expanded W's "Bailout" program, making the rich richer, while doing nothing for the poor.
6. Changed "Unemployment" from "Percentage of workforce looking for work" to "Percentage of workforce on unemployment benefits"
6a. Made it MUCH more difficult to receive unemployment benefits, while this screwed over poor Americans, it DID "conveniently" make the "unemployment rate" go down (see above).

7. Endangered innocent people all over the world in the name of "closing Guantanamo" (for the record, I support closing it, but not by dumping the inmates on other countries).
7a. Ghana for instance, ousted its leader over this.  It's Islamic North is being slowly radicalized by the "Gitmo 2".

8. Aggressively persecuted whistleblowers.
8a. Allowed Chelsea Manning to be:
-Denied all human contact
-Denied all forms of entertainment
-Denied her/his glasses
-Denied clothing, including, sometimes, even underwear
-Forced to sleep during daylight hours, and forced to face towards her/his cell's light bulb while doing so.
-Beaten for singing, dancing, and sometimes just making faces in the mirror.
-Denied food from time to time.
-On 23, sometimes 24 hour lockdown (s/he was sometimes denied the daily "exercise time")
-Would have been denied commutation if s/he wasn't trans.

9. Appointed dovish Fed Chairs, destroying people's savings and retirement plans due to a lack of reliable investment options.
9a. Many late Gen Xers will retire later than the Baby Boom generation because of this.

10. Signed the Trans Atlantic Partnership, exacerbating the wage stagnation and job out-sourcing problems brought by NAFTA.
10a. Tried to further this with TPP, thankfully, that failed.

11. Exacerbated existing tensions with Russia, and abused the Ad Council to spread anti-Russia propaganda through the media.
12. Exacerbated existing tensions with North Korea, leading to several Nuclear threats (granted, it's dubious if they were serious, but still)

NOTE; I'm no fan of North Korea, but they are there, and aren't going away.  They maybe shouldn't have nukes, but they do, and provoking them was idiotic.  W did it too, yes, but how is THAT an excuse?

My opinion on Trump's Job as President Elect

The PEOTUS era of Trump is coming to a close, and so far here are the results:

-Over 10,000 American jobs saved, some with deals, others with threats, others with encouragement.
-Some tweets were made, arguably more than necessary.
-Cabinet picks, some good, some bad.

The last point is pretty average, this happens with every president elect.  Though, I would say that's not much of a defense, as he was elected to be better than a typical politician.  We can give him that his choices may be limited, and a cabinet won't make decisions for him, but it's still at least slightly troubling,

The tweets, amazingly enough, are not causing nuclear war, despite fearmongering from Robert Cialdini to that effect.  It is annoying people though, and he perhaps shouldn't do this.  But that's more a problem for his re-election effort than for the American People.  It's NOT dangerous, and if he wants to bypass the press to reach the American People directly, there's probably a better way.

The jobs, honestly, there's no reason to criticize this.  Sure, he could have done better in many if not all cases, but even saving a single job is more than either Bush or Obama ever did for the American People.  I appreciate this, I think he could have squeezed in some more jobs, but a series of B moves by far outranks the straight F's of the Obama and Bush Administrations.  I do agree with Bernie Sanders that he could have done more, but I don't agree with downplaying what good he did do,  There's also the fact that no president ELECT that I'm aware of has ever done anything like this, especially in my lifetime.  Usually they just pick their cabinet and sit back, waiting for inauguration, Trump instead stepped up for the worker, and even if he could have done it better, we'd be wrong not to at least give credit where it is due,

So we can rank this:

-Jobs saved - great - Not Perfect, but it is unusual for someone to do this as PEOTUS anyway, so props.
-Tweets - Harmless - NOT creating actual problems, but can hurt his re-election chances, remains to be seen if reaching Americans directly really is his reason.
-Cabinet Picks - Bad - He fucked up here, no more than usual, but that's not an excuse because he was elected to be better than the status quo.

Overall - Good - But only because he continued saving jobs after some of his questionable cabinet picks.  This hints that they will not influence him much, but rather work FOR him.  That remains to be seen, but still.

All that said, there is a difference between being an actually good POTUS and a good PEOTUS.  10,000 jobs over a month and a half is great for someone who hasn't signed any laws, but for someone who has, well, it's ok, but he'll have the power to do more than this.  There IS cause for cautious optimism, but I do mean CAUTIOUS, we will have to wait and see,

Addendum - I haven't addressed US/Russia relations because he can't officially better than until he is sworn in, officially they are damaged, but that's Obama's doing, not Trump's.  Well, Obama and the media's.  Obviously, they will improve when he is sworn in, but I would say right now, at best, we're READY to have better relations.