Dark cloud of illegitimacy hangs over Donald Trump’s pending presidency

What a load of hogwash. The only dark cloud of illegitimacy is the bastard son of a commie whore who has been pretending to be an American.

And I have had enough of this popular vote BS. Take away the illegals, the dead and the fraud and killary isn't even close. Trump won, deal with it or leave the country.

 

We have 12,000 tariffs now. Where did you ever get the idea that the US has no tariffs. We have always had tariffs we adjust them regularly and we always will. Every nation does, even China!

Trump's not going to abandon it, an even if he did the next president would likely reinstate it and the rest of the nations of the world would likely continue it, even if Trump were to abandon it.

Skyrocket? I doubt it. Increase? Yes, if we use more expensive domestic labor rather than cheap imported labor, yes, prices will likely increase.

If prices rise more than wages, yes consumption will decrease or shift to less expensive items.

Nearly a hundred million Americans are idled now.

I expect a rough couple years as the Fed moves off Zero Interest Rate policies. That's already baked into the cake.

 

Let's put things into prospective here. We have all seen "Gotchya" journalism in the past. Every media source does it. They get ahold of someone's emails that shows they did something unethical or criminal, and post it for all the world to see. It happens all the time. This time it was the DNC's emails that were exposed. Let's not forget that the DNC is not a government agency. It is a political party, and if that political party is acting unethically or criminally, then we have a right to know. We can't depend on the media to provide the information, because they are knee deep in it. So, whoever hacked the DNC did this country a service.

But let's also not lose sight of what actually exposed. The use of ethical slurs, and underhandedly working to undermine every candidate that was not Hillary Clinton. Those things were bad, but it paled in comparison to Hillary Clinton committing Espionage and using a Pay-for-Play scam while serving as Sec of State. That is the information that doomed her campaign, and it did not come from any hacked emails. It came from the few elements of the Obama Administration that was actually doing their jobs.

So, there is no dark cloud, or a Trump-Putin conspiracy. Those are all imaginary elements of your wishful thinking. Everyone of you need to get a grip on the fact that Trump will be President for the next four to eight years. All the wishful thinking in the world will not change that fact. We had to endure 8 years of Obama. So, now it is your turn.

 

The OP title is funny and telling. 'The dark cloud of illegitimacy' hanging over Trump is the failed left wing.

 

The lack of examples is quite revealing as to the lack of foundation for an opinion.

 

Try expanding the criteria. The employment participation rate went up in the 1970's because of divergence between productivity and hourly wages that resulted from decline in the power of the unions. Instead of one person being able to earn the income necessary to support the family where the wife could stay at home to take care of the children it often required both parents to work to make ends meet.

In the 1950's and 1960's when the unions were much stronger and wages basically kept pace with increases in productivity the employment participation rate was almost always below 60% bottoming out at about 58% in the mid-50's and then it soared to over 66% because of the Republican "Reaganomics" during the 1980's. We're currently in the 62% to 63% range and wages will have to increase significantly, predominately in the service sector that provides over 70% of non-government jobs, if we're ever going to get back to where the middle class was actually earning a reasonable living so that the labor participation rate will fall below 60% like it should be.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate

The GOP and Donald Trump haven't proposed anything that will increase compensation in the service sector and that is mandatory if we want to reverse the trend of the disappearing middle class in America. In fact the GOP and Donald Trump are opposed to any efforts to increase compensation in the service sector.

 

We're not talking about a potentially small increase in pricing of 2% to 5% that could result from a minimum living wage increase to $15/hr.

We're talking about catastrophic price increases imposed by tariffs of over 40% that will dramatically reduce "per unit" sales of imported items by 50%-70% making it financially impossible for US companies to produce those same items because they won't sell enough to make production worthwhile and a huge loss of service sector jobs that are dependent upon the supply chain through the retail sales and services related to the imported goods.

I doubt that the GOP in Congress will support the Trump tariff proposal but the biggest threat is Trump ending the "one China policy" that he can do without any Congressional action. China will simply stop importing US goods and instead purchase the same things from Europe. You know, like 13% of all Boeing commercial aircraft that are sold to China and they'll just purchase from Airbus instead. That would reduce Boeing employment alone by over 20,000 manufacturing jobs plus potentially hundreds of thousand supplier jobs for Boeing commercial airplanes. That's just ONE company and thousands of corporations would be effected. There's about a trillion dollars of our GDP directly reliant on our trade with China and perhaps two trillion more that's indirectly dependent upon that trade.

 

Joint press release by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Department of Homeland Security:

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07...omeland-security-and-office-director-national

There is nothing "fake" about this news and we also know that the release of illegally obtained emails from top level Democratic leadership positions negatively effected the vote for Hillary Clinton so the Russian efforts were successful in corrupting the 2016 Presidential elections in the United States and that the corruption benefited Donald Trump.

The mainstream news media does not typically run any stories from anonymous sources within any government agency without first obtaining confirmation of the information provided. There is a high probability of the CIA conclusion that the Russian government was attempting to influence the election so that Trump would be elected based upon the fact that only damaging emails from the Democrats were provided to Wiki-Leaks and that those emails did benefit the Trump campaign.

The FBI is not in a position to determine the accuracy of intelligence gathered or the conclusions drawn from our international intelligence organizations like the CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and Department of Homeland Security.

We do have confirmation from the Russian government that members of the Russian government were in contact with members of the Trump election organization. The Trump election organization has flatly denied that any contacts at all ever took place, when we know that they did, and that creates serious questions and suspicion about why the Trump election organization is lying about it.

All of this combined from the actual corruption of the election by the Russian governments involvement in illegally obtaining the Democratic leadership emails, transferring them to Wiki-Leaks, the release of the emails that resulted in Hillary Clinton losing votes, to the possible connection of the Trump organization as well as potential involvement in the email requires a complete investigation. Once Trump takes office then that investigation cannot be carried out by our intelligence community that Trump will have control over so if the investigate drags on past January 20th then a special prosecutor needs to complete the investigation.

None of this is "fake news" because the actual election of the president was unquestionably corrupted by the release of illegally obtained emails from the Democrats and all of the known evidence points to the Russians as being intentionally involved in corrupting our election process.

 

Not at this time but the question is still viable because members of the Russian government have stated that they were in contact with people involved in Trump's campaign while the Trump campaign has denied that those contacts took place. So why is the Trump campaign apparently lying about it. There are numerous legitimate reasons for a presidential candidate's staff to be in touch with foreign government leaders, all of which they would have no reason to deny. The only reason to deny the contacts is if the reason wasn't for a legitimate reason but instead for nefarious purposes that the campaign wants to hide.

So we need to find out why. That doesn't imply that the Trump organization was in anyway complicit but the only way the Trump organization can be cleared of complicity is by the matter being investigated.

While IP addresses can be easily concealed, created, and abandoned I'm sure that our intelligence services tracked the IP addresses used. We can also be confident that the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence had extensive evidence of the involvement of the Russian government when they released their joint statement on Oct 7th stating that high level members of Russian government was involved. Much of that information is probably secret and we can't expect either agency, or the CIA, to release that information to the public.

We also know that the Wiki-Leaks release of the Democratic emails adversely affected the Clinton campaign and cost her votes in the general election and that alone constitutes corruption of our election regardless of whether it was a determining factor in the election outcome.

Finally, because the Trump organization is denying any contract with government officials in Russia while the Russian government officials are claiming that they were in contract with members of Trump's organization there must be an investigation of any potential involvement by any members of the Trump organization in the illegal acquisition of the Democratic emails.

So there are two valid reasons for an investigation. The 2016 US Presidential Election was compromised/corrupted by the illegally obtained emails and there is a remote possibility that members of Trump's organization were involved with the Russian government's efforts to corrupt our election.

I'm not a part of the "loser progressives" and the corruption of the 2016 US Presidential Election by the Russians is not a partisan issue. Both Democrats and Republicans are calling for the investigation to go forward. The only "scam and propaganda" is coming from Trump supporters that are denying the evidence and trying to cover-up any illegal or nefarious activities by members of the Trump election staff members... or perhaps to protect Donald Trump that could have personally been involved.

The only way the American People will know is if a complete and independent investigation related to all aspects of the corruption are investigated.

 

All of this is fake news.

Trump won. He won because the Democrats ran Hillary Clinton.
Get over it. Move on.

 

Yes, we do have many tariffs and I've never said we didn't. What we find is that either they're related to a very limited import item, like paperclips, or companies find ways to avoid the tariff, such as the tariff on canned tuna so companies like Bumble Bee and Starkist import bulk tuna and then have automated canning facilities in the US with very few workers to do the canning and avoid the tariff.

Trump isn't proposing a tariff on an individual product but instead proposes a tariff on all of the products imported from China.

By the time another president could re-instate the One China Policy the economic damage to the US would already be done and it would take a decade or more for the damage to be contained by a future president's reversal back to a One China Policy. In the meantime tell the unemployed American workers and the businesses that would go out of business, "Don't worry, the next president will fix this."

Donald Trump has proposed a 45% tariff on all Chinese produced goods and most of those good aren't produced in the United States at all.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/29/us-p...for-chinese-goods-will-hurt-us-consumers.html

So Americans will have a choice. Pay a lot more for the same product from China or don't buy it at all because it's not produced in the US. They myth is that US companies will start producing those products here but they won't. If they decide to produce the products at all, which is doubtful because the higher prices are going to drive down consumer demand, they'll just pick a country other than China for their manufacturing operations.

Republicans live in this fantasy world that really makes no sense at all. The "nearly a hundred million Americans" that are idle now refers to the labor work force participation rate where over this number would prefer to not be in the workforce. You know, people like mothers that are forced to work because of low wages for their husband.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate

Republicans often like to dream of the "golden age" for white middle income households depicted by the TV shows like "Ozzie and Harriet" (1952-1966) and "Leave it to Beaver" (1957-1963) where Ozzie Nelson and Ward Cleaver would go off to work five days a week leaving Harriet Nelson and June Cleaver at home to raise their two children. This was the certainly the "Golden Age" where the American middle class was created. It was also the time period when the unions represented up to 35% of all American workers and were able to negotiate increased compensation based upon productivity in the United States, taxes on the wealthy were high and low for the workers, and the US was benefiting from the expanded international markets created by globalism from the Harry Truman administration. The Labor Participation rate averaged about 58%-59% during this Golden Age for white Americans,

Then came the mid-1960's and the Democrats attacked organized crime involvement in the unions and cleaned up that problem while Republican backed corporate favoritism just started to attack the unions, taking away the power of organized labor to reduce their ability to negotiate against the downward pressure of the market in compensation. In 1973 the effects of eliminating the power of the unions resulted in a split between productivity and compensation that we've never recovered from. It also began the shift to greater and greater income inequality between the wealthy and the workers of America.

http://www.epi.org/publication/unde...-workers-pay-why-it-matters-and-why-its-real/

In the 1980's along came Ronald Reagan with his tax increases on workers with higher Social Security taxes and cuts for high income investors based upon "Supply Side" also called "trickle down" economics that didn't trickle down. The bottom 50% of Americans saw their real income decline under Reagan's economic policies and the ones hurt the most were those in the bottom 10th Percentile that lost 14.6% of their real income between 1979 and 1989.

At the same time, because the Republican economic policies were devastating for low to middle income households the labor participation rate soared to over 66% by the end of the Reagan administration and later going up even further to over 67% as more and more households became dependent upon two incomes just to pay the bills.

http://scalar.usc.edu/works/growing-apart-a-political-history-of-american-inequality/index

And today they complain about US manufacturing jobs that have been lost because of the Republican economic agenda of favoritism for investors and corporations that's destroyed real income for most Americans, decimating the American middle class, and leaving the American consumer with a choice of buying low price Chinese products or no products at all because they can't afford the cost for many American products. Hell, because of the Republican economic agenda often both parents working still doesn't provide enough income to support themselves and their children and they require government welfare assistance just to put food on the table for the whole month.

Republicans like to blame Obama but forget that President Obama hasn't been able to get any significant economic legislation through Congress because of Republican obstructionism in Congress and that obstructionism official began based upon a meeting of top Republican on January 24, 2009, just four days after President Obama took office, where they agreed that the best shot at winning the presidency in the future was by preventing Obama from doing anything good for the country.

Virtually every economic problem for working Americans and every requirement for government welfare assistance today can be traced back to the Republican economic agenda of the last 40 years.

 

For every $1 that the United States bought from China in 2009, the Chinese government only let its people buy 28¢ of American products.

Not even considering currency manipulation China maintains high duties on products that compete with their domestic industries. The tariff on large motorcycles is 30 percent. Video, digital video, and audio recorders and players face duties of approximately 30 percent. Raisins face duties of 35 percent.

http://www.ustr.gov/uploads/reports/2010/NTE/NTE_COMPLETE_WITH_APPENDnonameack.pdf

China's selective use of Value-Added Tax keeps out American phosphate fertilizer:

China exempts phosphate fertilizers except diammonium phosphate (DAP) from the VAT. DAP, a product that the United States exports to China, competes with other phosphate fertilizers produced in China, particularly monoammonium phosphate.

China uses procurement directives to keep out American telecommunication equipment:

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and China Telecom adopted policies to discourage the use of imported components or equipment. MIIT has rescinded instructions to telecommunications companies to buy components and equipment from domestic sources.

the Chinese government uses Quarantine Inspection Permits (QIPs) to keep out American agricultural products, causing costly delays while they sit on the docks:

China’s inspection and quarantine agency, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ), and MOFCOM impose inspection requirements that restrict imports of many U.S. agricultural goods.

China imposes restrictions in a number of services sectors that prevent or discourage foreign suppliers from gaining or further expanding market access.

China maintains restrictions on the right to import and distribute legitimate copyright-intensive products, such as theatrical films, DVDs, music, books, newspapers, and journals. These restrictions impose burdens on legitimate, IPR-protected goods and delay their introduction into the market. These burdens and delays faced by legitimate products create advantages for infringing (black-market) products and help to ensure that those infringing products continue to dominate markets within China.

China requires that American corporations move their R&D and patents to China:

In order to qualify as “indigenous” innovation under the accreditation system, and therefore be entitled to procurement preferences, a product’s intellectual property must originally be registered in China.

The United States government is letting the Chinese government practice mercantilism, the strategy of maximizing exports and minimizing imports. We freely receive Chinese imports without requiring reciprocity.

It's time to impose a tariff on Chinese goods proportional to our trade deficit with China. Such a tariff, permitted by a special WTO rule for trade-deficit countries would encourage the Chinese government be take down its many, many barriers to American goods and services.

 

Let's not forget the untold numbers of minorities in this country who couldn't vote because there was only one poll open in these areas, and the over 1.1 million voters purged off the voter list. http://www.gregpalast.com/election-stolen-heres/

 

Interesting, I haven't seen you undoing the stupidity with facts of your own?

 

Nope! Trump lost and everyone knows it. He lost the popular vote, they illegally purged 1.1 million voters off the voter rolls and kept untold numbers of minorities from voting by having only one polling station in each of the these areas with a high concentration of mostly Democrat voters. http://www.gregpalast.com/election-stolen-heres/

 

Very well.

"unnamed sources in the CIA" possess a "sekret document" that they released to "unnamed sources" in the NYT saying "da Russians".

Ok, fine.

Congress says "Hey CIA, come tell us whats going on so we can get to the bottom of this". CIA says "no we can't do that".

Any questions?

 

These are the facts I am talking about; http://www.gregpalast.com/election-stolen-heres/ I'm still waiting on the Right to undo this stupidity with credible sources of their own. We won't hold our breath.

 

As far as I am concerned, the main problem with this election was the candidates themselves. A couple of horrible candidates that most Americans wanted neither to be their next president. Now if there is a way to have another election without Trump and without Hillary Clinton, then I am all for it.

Tax returns, only avid Hillary supporters are clamoring for that. They want a gotcha. No one else gives a hoot. The problem isn't the Russians, it was the two candidates themselves. With a decent candidate, Trump would have been left in the dust. Just when will the Democrats admit they made a very bad choice in nominating about the only Democrat alive on this planet that could have lost to Trump. They went with a candidate under FBI investigation, who played very loose with our classified national security information, who was a very poor campaigner more interested in attending fund raisers in deep blue California and New York than even once visiting Wisconsin, although she did make it to Michigan, once. She was baggage laden and despised by most Americans right up there with Trump himself.

Quite a lot of Americans didn't want to choose between these two very horrible, terrible, unwanted and not liked candidates. 8 million of us went to the polls and voted for a third party candidate whom we knew had no chance to win instead of making a choice between two what we viewed as evil candidates. Probably that many more stayed home who hated both candidates.

Gallup put that number at 25% of all Americans who disliked both candidates, YouGov at 22%. Turnout was down', according to CNN it was at a 20 year low: Quite a lot of people, voters if you will decided their vote would go to no body, stayed home in protest over these two very terrible and unwanted candidates.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/politics/popular-vote-turnout-2016/

By all means, let's have another election without these two candidates. That's fine with me. But let me say this once again, the problem wasn't the electoral college, it wasn't the Russians, it was the candidate the Democratic Party nominated. A candidate the DNC and the leaders of the Democratic Party made her their nominee for 2016 back before the the 2012 presidential election. Then the DNC and the different state party leaders worked hard in her favor. She thought being next in line for the presidency and being the first woman president would guarantee her election. She forgot about campaigning, she was distrusted by the majority of Americans, viewed as dishonest and corrupt.

I don't like Trump, never voted for him. Frankly I didn't give a darn who won between Clinton and Trump. My goal was to get both defeated and I worked on that and failed. Darn pity one of them had to win. We had the election, its over. Next time perhaps the Democrats won't go giving their nomination for president four years in advance.

I've been following presidential elections since 1956, this is the most horrible one between the two most horrible candidates. I suppose one way or the other, horrible was apt to win.

 

What's crazy is republicans have been fine with conspiracy after conspiracy over the length of the Obama presidency. Alex Jones (or any right wing hate peddler) needed merely to let out a quiet fart and the right wingers would be frothing at the mouth. The CIA and FBI claiming Russian meddling though, that's nonsense and ridiculous. It would be funny if it weren't so sad.

 

Trump just said Evan Mcmuffin!



He was referring to Evan McMullen who ran and lost bigly! I am laughing my butt off!

 

In the meantime, Hillary lost the election November 8, she lost her recounts, and she will lose the election a third time n Dec 19, and a 4th time when Congress ratifies the election. Keep pretending Trump is illegitimate if that makes you feel like you were right in working for the loser.

 

Absolutely. It beggars belief that those liberal lunatics continue talking about the legitimacy as if they know the meaning of words such as constitution, law, legitimacy order etc...

 

Not to anyone but you losers!

 

More than one cloud hangin' over Illegit Don.

If it wasn't for that bum Comey, Russian nerds, and an antiquated, "rigged" election system, Illegit Don would be spending the winter at that Mar-a-Lago bar while Melania is up in the Dutch Room with the local cabana boy...

 

Liberals make it sound like 62 million Russians put him in.