***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[whywesteppin]

I just wonder how many times he opens his Bible and reads about idols and false prophets...

Or the parts about how it's difficult for a rich man to enter heaven.

or the proverb that says: "never bend to envy."

Spoiler

trump made it up

The Bible — the more you see it, the more you read it, the more incredible it is... I don’t like to use this analogy, but like a great movie, a great, incredible movie. You’ll see it once, it will be good. You’ll see it again. You can see it 20 times and every time you’ll appreciate it more.

Spoiler

that's trump attempting to reduce the Bible to the same level of a Hollywood movie. the funny part is he hasn't read the Bible once

 

[Belgium]

BRUH YOU CAN NOT MAKE THIS **** UP!!!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/18/politics/trump-gene-huber-rally/index.html

In all fairness, the guy doesn't exactly seem mentally right.

 

[whywesteppin]

BRUH YOU CAN NOT MAKE THIS **** UP!!!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/18/politics/trump-gene-huber-rally/index.html

In all fairness, the guy doesn't exactly seem mentally right.

of course he doesn't. but what about huber?

 

[ksteezy]

You wrong

 

[leavemeglazzies]

Trump inspires him so that he keeps a six-foot cardboard cutout of the President in his house.

"I salute that every single day and I pray and I tell him, 'Mr. President, I pray for your safety today,' " Huber said. "And I'm not lying,I do that every single day to the president, but he's cardboard."

The same material the real president's brain and heart is for that extra authenticity. 

 

[leavemeglazzies]

 

[whywesteppin]

did Cruz sit it out this year?

 

[Armada]

Cruz can only win that title but so many times he had to sit out to give someone else a chance

 

[whywesteppin]

like mj after winning 2 dunk titles...

 

[noskey]

Can we give it to Grayson Allen? I know it's like the same thing, but I cant think of a more deserving dbag.

 

[whywesteppin]

still no proof that they're not the same person.

 

[handullz]

still no proof that they're not the same person.

Never seen them in the same room

Not saying.

Just saying.

 

[noskey]

I mean, we all know they're the same person, even Cruz gave it up

 

[gry60]

https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifesty...ting-effect/yzMAVzeLvqywP8gEekoFsL/story.html

President Trump’s travel ban targeting nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries may not have held up in court, but it appears quite successful at keeping plenty of other people out of the United States.

Trump’s order brought with it a swift decline in the number of worldwide tourists and travelers looking to visit the United States, say people in the tourism industry. Some say it could be as damaging to the US tourism sector as the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

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Online booking websites reported that flight searches from international points of origin to the United States were down anywhere from 6 percent to 17 percent since Trump signed the executive order on Jan. 27. But experts say what’s more alarming is the icy message it sends to the world.

“The US is in danger of taking the same path it took after Sept. 11, which led to a decade of economic stagnation in the travel and tourism sector,” said David Scowsill, president and CEO of the World Travel & Tourism Council. “Strict visa policies and inward-looking sentiment led to a $600 billion loss in tourism revenues in the decade post 9/11.”

Just last week the US Travel Association reported that in 2016, the number of international tourists had finally returned to pre-Sept. 11 numbers.

“After 9/11, it took many, many years for the impression to be sent and received by our friends around the world that America was indeed open for business again,” said Jonathan Grella, executive vice president of public affairs for US Travel. “That’s why we refer to it as the lost decade in our industry. That was obviously a very different scale, but if something gives people pause, they’ll spend their vacation dollars elsewhere.”

In the weeks since Trump’s executive order was issued, the website Hopper found that flight searches to the United States were down 17 percent compared with the last three weeks of the Obama administration.


The decline rippled to nearly every region of the world, with the exception of Russia and Eastern Europe.



Although for now the courts have stopped the ban from being enforced, those in tourism say the message was sent: The country is not welcoming of outsiders.

“Every time a story comes out about challenges at customs and border patrol, a potential tourist to the US may get cold feet,” said Jason Clampet, editor and cofounder of the travel industry website Skift.

The travel research site ForwardKeys found a 6.5 percent drop in international flight searches to the United States after Trump signed the order, compared with the same eight-day stretch in 2016.

“The data forces a compelling conclusion that Donald Trump’s travel ban immediately caused a significant drop in bookings . . . and an immediate impact on future travel,” said Olivier Jager, CEO of ForwardKeys. The British company monitors travel patterns by analyzing 16 million flight reservation transactions a day.

The percentages may not sound large, but specialists caution that a drop in the 77.5 million international tourists who come to the United States, spending $133 billion here, could have far-reaching consequences for the economy. According to US Travel, tourism directly supported more than 8.1 million US jobs in 2015.

“I’ll tell you quite honestly, when I saw these reports my reaction was, ‘Oh, my God,’ ” said Douglas Quinby of PhocusWright, a travel-market research company. “To see a decline in search and booking volume in the 6- to 8-percent range is a profound shift.”

Particularly concerning to Quinby are the Trump administration’s comments regarding Mexico and China, as Mexican and Chinese tourists represent a large percentage of visitors to the United States. One of Trump’s key campaign promises was to build a wall along the US border with Mexico to keep “bad hombres” from entering the country, and insisting that Mexico will pay for it. The president has also often stated that he would like to raise tariffs on trading partners Mexico and China. Quinby said a trade war with China could have a profound effect on tourism.

“That’s a very big worry for me,” he said. “Chinese travelers, in particular, spend a lot of money in the US, and Mexico has grown to become the number two inbound market, right after Canada. Losing those visitors is especially troublesome.”

Before the election there were concerns that tourism to the United States would be down in 2017 based on the strength of the dollar. Other potential threats to the travel industry were warnings issued by the governments of the United Arab Emirates, the Bahamas, France, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Germany urging their citizens to take caution when visiting the United States, citing dangers such as mass shootings, police violence, anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT attitudes, and the Zika virus.

While those factors likely contributed, experts such as Grella, of the US Travel Association, said Trump’s executive order is a much greater factor.

Trump’s seven-country travel ban was unanimously rejected by a federal appeals panel last week. After the ruling, Trump indicated via Twitter that he would continue to pursue the ban through the courts, then days later alluded to reworking the executive order.

The continued uncertainty is rankling big players in the industry, prompting Airbnb and TripAdvisor to join the nearly 130 other companies that filed court papers declaring that Trump’s executive order on immigration “violates the immigration laws and the Constitution.”

“The executive order is not only unjust, but also creates uncertainty for visitors from many other countries about what the US’s policies will be in the future,” said Adam Goldstein, CEO of the travel booking site Hipmunk. The company also saw an 8 percent drop in international travel searches on its site.

Business travel is also taking a hit, according to Mike McCormick, executive director of the Global Business Travel Association. He said that as of Feb. 8, $185 million in business travel bookings have been lost because of the ban.

“What we began to realize was that this was going to be devastating to travel,” McCormick said. “The challenge with business travel is that when business trips are canceled, they’re seldom rescheduled. You don’t take two trips the following week to make up for one you missed the week before.”

Still, Grella said he’s optimistic that, as a businessman, Trump will address how the United States is viewed on a global level.

“Certainly as a marketing guru himself, he understands when a brand is putting its best foot forward around the world,” he said. “We have some confidence that our first CEO president understands this.”

And the fallout of the muslim ban **** storm is starting...

 

[Belgium]

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/095b...cratch-heads-trumps-suggestion-major-incident

"Look at what happened in Sweden yesterday" 

 
Swedes have been scratching their heads and ridiculing President Donald Trump's remarks that suggested a major incident had happened in the Scandinavian country.

During a rally in Florida on Saturday, Trump said "look what's happening last night in Sweden" as he alluded to past terror attacks in Europe. It wasn't clear what he was referring to and there were no high-profile situations reported in Sweden on Friday night.

The comment prompted a barrage of social media reaction on Sunday, with hundreds of tweets, and a local newspaper published a list of events that happened on Friday that appeared to have no connections to any terror-like activity.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Catarina Axelsson said that the government wasn't aware of any "terror-linked major incidents." Sweden's Security Police said it had no reason to change the terror threat level.

"Nothing has occurred which would cause us to raise that level," agency spokesman Karl Melin said.

Former Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt tweeted  , "Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking? Questions abound."

The Aftonbladet tabloid addressed Trump in an article Sunday, "This happened in Sweden Friday night, Mr President," and listed in English  some events that had happened in Sweden, including a man being treated for severe burns, an avalanche warning and police chasing a drunken driver.

One Twitter user said "After the terrible events #lastnightinSweden, IKEA have sold out of this" and posted a mock Ikea instruction manual  on how to build a "Border Wall," saying the pieces had sold out.

Sweden, which has a long reputation for welcoming refugees and migrants, had a record 163,000 asylum applications in 2015 and it has since cut back on the number it annually accepts. Its most recent attack was in the capital, Stockholm, in December 2010, when an Iraqi-born Swede detonated two devices, including one that killed him but no one else.

At the rally, Trump told his followers to look what was happening in Germany, and also mentioned Paris, Brussels and Nice, in apparent reference to the terror attacks there. He didn't specify what was supposed to have happened in Sweden, simply saying "Sweden, who would believe this, Sweden."

Over the past few weeks, Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway has also referred to a "Bowling Green Massacre" that never occurred, and she was caught up in a public feud with CNN.

 

[everysingletime]

Damn. Trump made up another Bowling Green?

Smh

 

[AEA18]

He really is a cult leader except he didn't isolate his sheeple from the rest of the world.

 

[everysingletime]

Republicans are going to be sorry that they took their time addressing the Trump issue.

We're all going to be sorry.

 

[rolaholic]

Damn. Trump made up another Bowling Green?

Smh

Swedens old PM put it the best

@TheHill: Former Swedish PM slams Trump: What has he been smoking? https://t.co/7Raz84m42c https://t.co/k1wlfJYhb7

If dude was genuine about his concern,he could've easily referenced the real life ISIS attacks that happened this week and killed dozens of people in Pakistan,Iraq or even Somalia but of course he's not gonna mention them since mostly Muslims were killed. As is the case for the vast majority of ISIS attacks but these people would rather BS and invent attacks rather than acknowledging actual ones, Trump still hasn't even said a word on the Quebec City Mosque attack

 

[mister friendly]

I believe Trump is talking about some segment I saw ran on the Fox News.

It basically said all these unemployed refugees are causing trouble in Sweden.

 

[AEA18]

I believe Trump is talking about some segment I saw ran on the Fox News.

It basically said all these unemployed refugees are causing trouble in Sweden.

He gotta stop watching that fake news. Faux News

 

[gry60]

He really is a cult leader except he didn't isolate his sheeple from the rest of the world.

He is. He keeps telling them to not trust any news source he calls fake and to only trust his twitter account.

 

[gry60]

 

[whywesteppin]

my heart goes out to the victims in Sweden. may they take out their revenge against the perpetrator of this tragedy: donald trump.

 

[IATT]

Video, for those who haven't seen it: