The Trump presidency

[bimble]

Bloody hell. A woman has just been sentenced to 8 years in prison, in Texas, because she voted but shouldn't have because she wasn't a citizen just a resident.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/...-years-in-prison-and-certain-deportation.html
The way this news is received by Fox and Breitbart readers is chilling.

 

[teqniq]

That stinks to high heaven and seems to be a combination of political motivation and local official in unashamed self-aggrandizement move.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

its a very long handshake but you have to hang in there and endure till the end, for the Japanese prime ministers' face.

I wonder if DT is over compensating after the appalling stuff with Australia and other nations. It's like the manchild is saying "look - we really get on - aint i doing well?"

 

[Yossarian]

I wonder if DT is over compensating after the appalling stuff with Australia and other nations. It's like the manchild is saying "look - we really get on - aint i doing well?"

Abe's face as soon as Trump lets go says it all.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Why? Do you think he's been cunningly pretending all this time, putting on an act of bonkers buffoonery to distract from his strategic genius? That is a hell of a conspiracy theory.

It's been mentioned elsewhere.

Opinion | How might Nixon’s ‘madman theory’ apply to Trump?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I'd be pretty certain this is normal.

Maybe to a lesser degree. I suspect that most Presidents did their homework on, say, China, before getting on the phone with China's leader. Got briefings from the State Department, etc. Trump has publicly stated that he doesn't need the daily National Security briefings because he's so smart; there's a good chance that he's not bothering to be fully briefed before these phone calls, either.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Politico What Trump Doesn’t Get About Nukes

...
Trump has suggested he is willing to launch a new nuclear arms race, despite the costs and the risks. In his phone call with Vladimir Putin last month, Trump reportedly rebuffed the Russian president’s apparent offer to extend the New START agreement that otherwise expires in 2021. This extension was a key aim of President Barack Obama, whose administration negotiated the arms deal. It would enable the United States to continue to closely monitor Russia’s strategic nuclear deployments and prevent Russia from uploading huge numbers of warheads onto those forces. Without the extension, the U.S. intelligence community would need to spend billions of additional dollars to monitor Russia. And the uncertainty and unpredictability of each side’s deployments would likely spark a costly nuclear arms race and increase the instability of a nuclear crisis and the likelihood of nuclear conflict.

After reportedly checking with his advisers to learn what treaty Putin was talking about (the White House says he was asking for an opinion), Trump apparently told the Russian leader the entire agreement was just another bad deal signed by his predecessor, even though its provisions impose identical obligations on both sides, and even though it was supported by the U.S. Senate and all the key national security players, including the U.S. Strategic Command and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Instead of seizing upon a good offer (as well as an offer to convene talks on a range of other nuclear issues, including strategic stability, according to a former U.S. official familiar with the call) that would strengthen U.S. national security, Trump signaled a willingness to embark on an expensive, pointless new arms race that he boasts the United States would win.
...

A bit more detail. So Trump just dumped Obama's deal.

...
Even if the United States could surreptitiously raise its nuclear readiness to a war footing and launch a surprise, full-scale nuclear strike that caught Russia flat-footed, the U.S. would suffer massive casualties. At least 145 Russian warheads could be delivered by surviving Russian mobile nuclear missiles alone, according to a new study by Global Zero. If those missiles were allocated one to every American city with a population above 172,000, nearly 150 cities would be utterly destroyed in retaliation. Twenty-two million people would die.

Trump’s hometown would suffer the most. Nearly 2 million people would be killed by a single nuclear detonation above Times Square in New York City. His newly adopted home of Washington, D.C., would suffer more than half a million fatalities.

After Trump received the nuclear codes, he described the experience as “very sobering” and “a very, very scary thing.” He could offer proof by announcing, together with Putin, that “nuclear war is unacceptable and must never be fought.”

I'm reminded of:

...
General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless *distinguishable*, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed.
President Merkin Muffley: You're talking about mass murder, General, not war!
General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.
...

Oh for the good old days when all there was to fear was some bearded numpty setting himself on fire in Departures.

 

[bimble]

Trump uses sticky tape to hold his tie together.
There are people theorising that he dresses the way he does on purpose, to send the message that he's not one of those elite efette establishment types etc.
But sticky tape on the inside of your tie? That is not the clever kind of contrived.

'Mr. Trump’s tie symbolizes one of the central questions of his candidacy, and now his presidency. Is his seeming ineptness genuine? Or is it part of a contrived performance, designed to deploy the symbols of power while rejecting the conventions of civility that have traditionally defined and constrained them?'

 

[Raheem]

Maybe to a lesser degree. I suspect that most Presidents did their homework on, say, China, before getting on the phone with China's leader. Got briefings from the State Department, etc. Trump has publicly stated that he doesn't need the daily National Security briefings because he's so smart; there's a good chance that he's not bothering to be fully briefed before these phone calls, either.

I have no idea how these phonecalls are supposed to work, but you'd imagine there is supposed to be some sort of agenda and prep precisely so you don't waste precious time having the President not being up-to-speed on the basics. Presumably, that's just not the way Donald likes to roll, or we wouldn't be getting things like the Australia call and the Putin call.

 

[Raheem]

(double post)

 

[CRI]

Weren't British schools asking parents to complete a questionnaire that asked where their children were born? Dodgy as.

Yes, they were - saying it was just to do with planning for future resources, but it wasn't about English as an additional language - it was about country of birth and passport. Lots of parents refused that I know, but not sure what happened next. Totally understand people being wary.

 

[TomUS]

Sarah Palin as ambassador to Canada? She can see it from her house.

Yet, there’s a real possibility the former Alaska governor could be joining the diplomatic corps before long: A long-standing rumor that Palin is being considered by President Donald Trump to be the next U.S. ambassador to Canada has gained momentum in recent days.

Ambassador Sarah Palin?

 

[CrabbedOne]

Maybe to a lesser degree. I suspect that most Presidents did their homework on, say, China, before getting on the phone with China's leader. Got briefings from the State Department, etc. Trump has publicly stated that he doesn't need the daily National Security briefings because he's so smart; there's a good chance that he's not bothering to be fully briefed before these phone calls, either.

Oh I'd agree that's remarkable. Perhaps Nixon had a similar snarling relationship with the CIA but Tricky Dick was very experienced and not so plainly at sea as The Donald.

It's one thing to ask for council in a call and Presidents are often in a protective bubble but Trump appears not even to want to try and engage with the facts or expert opinion. It's not just Trump his potty team are drafting EOs without proper oversight as well. The real technocrats like Mattis and Tillerson often seem to have been fearfully excluded from "The Loop" and off message. It all stinks not exactly of emboldened stupidity but of a group of people enormously impressed with themselves reaching peak braggadocio.

It's more like how Bashar Assad works. Disconnected from reality, surrounded by kin&cronies. Issuing edicts from the gilded Palace. Lacking any feedback loop on success or failure. Often given to falsehoods in interviews with a worrying decree of wily sincerity. Vindictively pursuing enemies and abusing important allies.

Mind you this isn't untypical of how a successful family owned business is mismanaged and that is what Trump is used to. Though Bashar at least has a cool head and is rarely hasty. The way Trump is looking in the polls he may soon have lower approval ratings than the Syrian despot.

 

[Pickman's model]

Truly parody is dead

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

When a judge who helped derail President Trump’s travel ban was hit with online threats, the abuse raised safety concerns among jurists across the country, and experts are worried that the president’s own attacks on the judiciary could make judges a more inviting target.

Trump attacks on judiciary raise safety concerns for judges

 

[CRI]

Bloody hell. A woman has just been sentenced to 8 years in prison, in Texas, because she voted but shouldn't have because she wasn't a citizen just a resident.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/...-years-in-prison-and-certain-deportation.html
The way this news is received by Fox and Breitbart readers is chilling.

Cripes! What happened to the woman who voted for Trump twice, because she'd heard about all the Democrat voter fraud and wanted to compensate for it or something?

 

[CrabbedOne]

"Mr President good news: you are twice as popular as Mr Putin in England and a full third of Limies hate Merkel."

 

[Pickman's model]

"Mr President good news: you are twice as popular as Mr Putin in England and a full third of Limies hate Merkel."

I am saddened that 14% of Britons have a positive view of Trump but I am sure it is a number that means a great deal to djt and his inner cabal.

 

[CrabbedOne]

 

[CRI]

Jeff Sessions’ DOJ withdraws request for stay of anti-transgender ruling

The U.S. Department of Justice, fewer than 48 hours after Sen. Jeff Sessions was confirmed as attorney general, began backing out of its support of Title IX protections for transgender students.

The newly minted attorney general has a record of opposing LGBTQ rights, earning him a zero from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). He also opposed hate crimes legislation while in the Senate, because he doesn’t think LGBTQ people “face that kind of discrimination.”

 

[Raheem]

"Mr President good news: you are twice as popular as Mr Putin in England and a full third of Limies hate Merkel."

"According to a very well-respected polling company, I'm the second most popular world leader among Brits. #MAGA"

 

[mauvais]

I also wonder whether a lot of what we are hearing, putting people on hold to have people explain things etc, is really so particular to Trump or whether it happened under Obama, Bush, Clinton and it just wasn't either leaked or reported on.

Noone expects a leader to know everything. But there's no fucking way any previous POTUS has got on the phone to Russia, with no prep, no background, no idea what they're doing, and then basically winged it during the call.

 

[CRI]

Steve Bannon Cited Italian Thinker Who Inspired Fascists

ROME — Those trying to divine the roots of Stephen K. Bannon’s dark and at times apocalyptic worldview have repeatedly combed over a speech that Mr. Bannon, President Trump’s ideological guru, made in 2014 to a Vatican conference, where he expounded on Islam, populism and capitalism.

But for all the examination of those remarks, a passing reference by Mr. Bannon to an esoteric Italian philosopher has gone little noticed, except perhaps by scholars and followers of the deeply taboo, Nazi-affiliated thinker, Julius Evola.

“The fact that Bannon even knows Evola is significant,” said Mark Sedgwick, a leading scholar of Traditionalists at Aarhus University in Denmark.

Evola, who died in 1974, wrote on everything from Eastern religions to the metaphysics of sex to alchemy. But he is best known as a leading proponent of Traditionalism, a worldview popular in far-right and alternative religious circles that believes progress and equality are poisonous illusions.

Whether or not Trump is a fool, or is just playing the fool, there are definitely some men with deeply sinister ideas in powerful positions in his administration.

 

[killer b]

I like how when a person or concept is unfamiliar to the journalist writing the article, it's because they're obscure or esoteric.

 

[CRI]

I like how when a person or concept is unfamiliar to the journalist writing the article, it's because they're obscure or esoteric.

Okay, I'm just a country bumpkin, but I didn't know who this dude was.

 

[CrabbedOne]

A belligerent JFK Tweeting about the "Missile Gap" and Fidel's awful dress sense; it doesn't bear thinking on.

 

[killer b]

Okay, I'm just a country bumpkin, but I didn't know who this dude was.

ok. He isn't 'esoteric' by any stretch of the imagination though.

 

[CRI]

America’s So-Called National Security Adviser

From the start, Michael Flynn, a retired army lieutenant general, was a disturbing choice as President Trump’s national security adviser. He is a hothead with extremist views in a critical job that is supposed to build consensus through thoughtful, prudent decision-making. The choice is now growing more unnerving every day.

A conspiracy theorist who has stoked dangerous fears about Islam, Mr. Flynn was fired by the Obama administration as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and led anti-Hillary Clinton chants of “lock her up” at the 2016 Republican Convention. He raised eyebrows by cultivating a mystifyingly cozy relationship with Russia, which the Pentagon considers a major threat.

Now we have learned that in the weeks before the inauguration, Mr. Flynn discussed American sanctions on Russia, and areas of possible cooperation, with Moscow’s ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak. They spoke a day before President Obama imposed sanctions on Russia for hacking the Democrats’ computers, probably in an effort to sway the election in Mr. Trump’s favor.

 

[CrabbedOne]

I like how when a person or concept is unfamiliar to the journalist writing the article, it's because they're obscure or esoteric.

Oddly enough yerman does seem to be a wee bit into what I would call esoteric.

...
Evola's text The Mystery of the Grail discarded the Christian interpretations of the mythical Holy Grail, maintaining instead that the Grail "symbolizes the principal of an immortalizing and transcendent force connected to the primordial state and remaining present in the very period of ... involution or decadence ... The mystery of the Grail is a mystery of a warrior initiation." He held that the Ghibellines, as opponents of the Guelf merchants and partisans of the Catholic Church who fought against them for control of Northern and central Italy in the thirteenth century, had within them residual influences of pre-Christian Celtic and Nordic initiatic traditions representing the Grail myth. He also held that the Guelf victory against the Ghibellines represented a regression of the castes, since the merchant caste took over from the warrior caste.[23] In the epilogue to this text Evola argued that the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory forgery the Protocols of Zion, regardless of whether it was authentic or not, was a cogent representation of modernity.[24] Historian Richard Barber stated that in this book, "Evola mixes rhetoric, prejudice, scholarship, and politics into a strange version of the present and future, but in the process he brings together for the first time interest in the esoteric and in conspiracy theory which characterize much of the later Grail literature."[24] The Nazi Grail seeker Otto Rahn admired Julius Evola.[25]
...

This appears to be straight out of Hellboy.

Probably another Bannon toilet break fav.

Lordy, and this badly read post-hippy twit is on the NSC deciding who to JDAM into component parts.

 

[teqniq]

Oddly enough yerman does seem to be a wee bit into what I would call esoteric.
This appears to be straight out of Hellboy.

Probably another Bannon toilet break fav.

Lordy, and this badly read post-hippy twit is on the NSC deciding who to JDAM into component parts.

Yup. sounds pretty esoteric to me.