Trump approval ratings (Page 2)

There's two ways to deal with it.  Wipe out the threat and leave, or leave the threat in place and leave.  I'm with you that I want our troops out of there, but there's some work that needs to be done first.  ISIS was emboldened by the prior administration's weakness and grew unabated.  They're almost gone after less than a year of Trump.

LOL, they're not almost gone. Bush Jr said mission accomplished. Obama said the global war on terror is over. Meanwhile Trump just increased the number of our forces in Afghanistan by several thousand and told Mattis he can have as many as he needs. Trump will eventually get to claim that he's destroyed ISIS, and he'll be more or less technically correct. But before he's even done tweeting his own praise, some offset of ISIS will be rising up to fill the void. Or maybe it'll be a rival group of ISIS that hates us just as much will step in. We've been the Great Satan to them since the 70's, and every civilian casualty from our bombing creates an opportunity for those extremists to go recruiting. If (a big if) Trump clears out Afghanistan they'll just move the fighting to Egypt or Syria or Georgia or some other chithole country we got no business being in. 

And that's just the un-winnable war on terror. We're completely forked if Trump's tweets start a war with Iran, or if he goads lil' rocketman to launch one of those lil' rockets at the winter Olympics. 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't your BLS quote make my point?  "UI information cannot be used as a source for complete information on the number of unemployed"

To better understand the increase in revenue you have to look at how and when our government collects it's taxes.  You're absolutely correct (i checked the math) that a company would have to either become substantially more profitable or increase revenues substantially at the same profit level to generate the identical revenues for the Feds.  However, the government collects taxes almost every time money changes hands.  So if for example that company took the $22.5M in tax savings and used it to hire people the government would now collect less taxes from the company on direct profit, but they would collect more taxes on payroll to the new employees.  Then those employees pay income taxes, social security taxes, etc..
I'm super over simplifying it, but the general idea is that every time money changes hands the government gets their cut so the more money there is into the system the more opportunity there is for the government to make more tax revenues.  Of course companies aren't going to use all the money to hire new employees and quite frankly nobody knows how it will really pan out.  As Trump talked about after the tax cuts were passed into law, there was nobody on their economic team that anticipated companies giving $1000+ bonuses to employees as a result of the tax cuts.  For those the company was taking a portion of that money and paying their employees more money.  That money is taxed at ordinary income rates for those individuals so a cut of it goes right back to the government through income taxes.

I'm totally with you on cutting defense spending as well, but I have a slight shift in my justification.  I feel we can do just as much or more than we are doing today on far less money.  I was in the military in the 90's and saw first hand the atrocious waste and fraud that was happening.  Remember the $1000 toilet seat covers and coffee pots?  The defense department has so much waste that we could probably double our current military strength on half the budget.
I saw a headline a few weeks ago that the pentagon can't account for $10T in spending and it doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

You might be surprised how much we have in common on entitlement and SS reform.  There's a lot of waste in those areas as well that needs to be cleaned up outside of any reform.  Stop sending money to dead people and cut down on fraud, etc are easy ones.

lol, alrighty then

Personal anecdote...probably 10 years ago, I got done doing my taxes and my federal income tax liability and my state income tax liability were almost identical in spite of the federal rate being 15% and the state rate being 3.2%.  (Lots of kids, lots of deductions worth far more at the federal level.)  

That 35% is a marginal rate describing how the last dollar (after credits, deductions, exemptions, etc.) is taxed, not the overall tax rate.  A 15% rate with far fewer adjustments can easily generate more revenue.  

The "waste" in defense spending won't be cut as long as "defense" is secondary to economic impacts associated with "defense spending."  Cutting that waste eliminates jobs for constituents in someone's district.  

But that dime is still in circulation and gets taxed at every exchange of hands.  from employer to employee from employee to boat shop from boat shop to employee etc.
Don't get me wrong, if nothing grows or changes then you're absolutely correct that the treasury won't get dollar for dollar back so the concept is to have the economy grow as a result of all the new money changing hands that results in a bigger pie.
The tax cuts themselves were $5.5T and the conservative scoring used to estimate the total impact came up with $4T in growth based on a fairly conservative GDP growth number.  So if the GDP ticks up, even a little bit more than they forecast then the $1.5T goes down quickly. 

We're not at war with ISIS, we're at war with "Terror". Right now ISIS is the big name. Before that it was Al Qaeda, which we defeated (except they're back in Syria, fighting alongside the rebels we're aiding). And before that it was the Taliban, which we defeated (except they're back in control over much of southern Afghanistan). We've been messing around over there for 17 70 years, but Trump will end that. 

So yeah. We'll spend another trillion or so having our military chase ISIS down until they're nothing but a hundred guys hiding in rat holes and Trump will claim his victory over ISIS. And then we'll roll right along with our war on terror against Hezbollah or Tahrir al-Sham or Boko Haram or Hamas. We're not fighting a war against a country that can be beat down until they surrender. We're fighting religious fundamentalists. We'll win the war on terror about the same time we win the war on drugs. 

Here's my guarantee. When Trump leaves office, even if that's not for 7 more years, we'll still be in the middle east fighting our war on terror. I'll happily eat crow if Trump can find a way to "win" and get us out of there, but he won't. 

I hear you and agree in general.  The change of radical islam is something that will take generations to fix because, as you mentioned, it's a radical ideology and not confined within borders.

Trump has been doing a lot that doesn't get many headlines on that issue though.  The Saudi purge was massive and it took down some big players who have been funding these terror organizations.  I don't know if Trump or the CIA are involved in Iran, but there's a big revolution going on there right now with a lot of civilians dying fighting for freedom.  Our news doesn't want to cover it for some reason.
#freeiran

But I thought all the world leaders hated Trump...

Honestly the only thing the Democrats have to run on is DACA, climate, and feelings (Trump says bad words).  The Republicans should easily hold the majorities.

There's no such thing as a former Trump supporter.  When he won the election there were a lot of Republicans who believed he was a liberal in disguise and didn't vote for him.  After seeing his conservative agenda and court nominees they're all in now so his Republican support is far greater than it was before the election.  According to polling he's also more than doubled his support in the African American community.  Sure, it's still in the teens, but compared to low single digits during the election it's a game changer.  The AA community are not fans of illegal immigration because the potential jobs in the lower income areas tend to go to illegal aliens versus the AA community.  Since Trump has taken office the AA unemployment is at it's lowest rate in history.

Oh, and we're only one year in and have two and a half more to go before the election.  Not to mention the Democrats seem to be falling for the trap of carting out yet another uber rich out of touch old guy/gal for nominees (Warren, Kerry, etc.)

It's a combination of a lot of things.  The media has tried very hard to paint Trumps tax plan as bad and that he's as an imbecile and mentally unstable.  However, as his actual performance creeps out into the US the tide has been steadily shifting.  His economic approval rating is rocketing up as the tax cuts get passed and people are seeing the effects on the economy. 
We just had a crazy good jobs report with wages increasing the most since 2009 (when they were severely depressed to begin with).

But but but... The Blue Wave!!!
Polls swing toward GOP, easing fears of midterm disaster

We still have several more months of good economic news to roll in before the midterms as well.

Here's a big question.  If, and it's a big if, the RNC manages to hold onto their majorities or even God forbid add to their majorities will the DNC finally get a clue that they're out of touch with the American people?  I would vote no.  Will probably the China China that interferes with the next election.  ;-)