The Trump presidency

[TomUS]

British government rejects petition to cancel Donald Trump state visit signed by 1.8 million people

Too bad.....would have been a fantastic humiliation for the orange clown.

 

[krtek a houby]

Too bad.....would have been a fantastic humiliation for the orange clown.

Shades of Blair ignoring the 2 million people march. This will come back to bite the May adminisitration.

 

[Spymaster]

Too bad.....would have been a fantastic humiliation for the orange clown.

The idea is that the petition was the humiliation. Nobody reasonably expected anyone to cancel the visit or change its status because of it.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

.

 

[krtek a houby]

FFS. There's a potentially interesting and informative thread on how and why socialism wasn't allowed take hold in the US. I'd like to read it but this is the Trump watch thread...

 

[CrabbedOne]

Shades of Blair ignoring the 2 million people march. This will come back to bite the May adminisitration.

I would not write Trumpismo off yet. I seem to recall the earlier balding, orange sprayed majesty still got reelected and with a handy majority. Like Bush Iraq being an obvious balls up didn't mobilise enough people against him.

Too many folk were too busy shopping until dropping and going long on real estate as governments actively tried to make the boom boomier as the inevitable bust came over the horizon. Might well be true of Trump once all those Goldman fellas he's hired start taking all the post-crash safety equipment off the US economy and let the old girl rip until she flames out once more in a financial götterdämmerung. But probably well into Trump's second term or even later.

And Trump supporters will mainly blame the resulting American Carnage that on the next struggling incumbent and not their God Emperor by then rich beyond the dreams of Russian oligarchs and so obviously beloved by The Lord.

 

[brogdale]

Doing the rounds atm...

 

[CrabbedOne]

Nat Security advisor Flynn has resigned (got fired).......too cozy with the Ruskies. Lasted 3 weeks. Good riddance.

Not a headline I'd have anticipated in 08.

...
Trump met with Petraeus to talk about the position on Monday, tweeting about the meeting immediately afterward, saying he "was very impressed" with the retired general.

Other names being floated for the position include 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.

Oh good John Bolton's in the running.

 

[CrabbedOne]

What is he doing?

 

[DotCommunist]

I dread to think how he would handle being offered a fistbump

 

[CrabbedOne]

On War On The Rocks I GOT A STORY TO TELL: WHO DOES WHAT IN NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY

How DC works dissected into Storytellers, Hobgoblins, Performance Artists, Wizards, Hill People and Operators.

Poor old Trump is like a Shire dweller stumbling into this strange land.

 

[treelover]

the history of the american socialist and american labor movements from the battle of blair mountain to the new left, to sacco and vanzetti, to the IWW and Joe Hill and everything before and inbetween and after bimble. Thats why its crap tbf, because it completely ignores americas proud socialist tradition- never happened, just grasping individuals. Theres a wealth of history to put the lie to that quote. No matter who was misquoting it, its just untrue.

Knew about Matewan, but not that, dropping bombs on the miners, who knew, one for the liberals who detest these states, etc.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Informed Comment Questions about Judgment: Trump appointed Flynn in the First Place

...
There is another investigation of Flynn that I also mentioned on Saturday, as to whether he took a fee from the Russian Federation to appear in Moscow at a dinner also attended by Vladimir Putin in honor of the Russian state-owned news service, Russia Today. This payment would violate the Logan Act, given that Flynn is a retired Lt. General and could have been recalled to service (as in a way he was, only on the civilian side, when Trump made him National Security Adviser).

Flynn had a lot of baggage. There are also questions concerning the about-face of Flynn with regard to Turkey. He had been a critic (he hates Muslims) but then when his consulting firm got a contract from a Turkish businessman close to President Tayyip Erdogan, Flynn abruptly switched around and became a big booster of Ankara.

These indications that the general is a man of easy virtue are not the only alarming things about him, of course. There is also his hatred of Muslims, what with calling Islam a cancer, and alleging that it is a political movement masquerading as a religion, his call for Arab and Iranian leaders publicly to confess that their ‘Islamic ideology’ is sick, and in need of ‘healing.’

What takes the cake is his allegation on Sirius radio in 2015 that Arabic signs had been erected on the border with Mexico to guide Muslim radicals into the United States.

This is tin foil hat stuff (and there’s lots more signs of mental instability in the man’s twitter feed, including buying into the bizarre pizzagate conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton was running a pedophilia ring out of a DC pizza joint).

Any normal person who knew anything serious about Flynn’s erratic and fantastic assertions and about his shady “consulting” with foreign powers should have known better than to put him in charge of advising on America’s national security. He had already been fired from the Defense Intelligence Agency.
...

My bold, after having been appointed to head the DIA by Obama previously in April 2012. He lasted less than two years. Was reported to have been abusive to staff, a bad manager and of failing to follow policy directions. A man not without abilities but not qualities that would suit a chap to running the NSC. You do have to wonder about Obama's judgement. An area he clashed with Flynn over was his administration's position on the rise of the "JV team" IS. Flynn here, for all his faults, was right. Even from open source material it was very evident the 2012-fall of Mosul period things were going badly wrong in Iraq.

Trump seems to take being fired by Obama as a badge of honour but you'd have hoped he'd have looked into the details. Trump evidently doesn't vet staff. He just trusts his gut. Here he seems to have been a bad judge of character.

Trump's drawing on a very limited pool of experienced folk in DC that share his worldview. With Gen Mattis at DoD we have another Obama dismissal who clearly is only partially aligned. Unlike Flynn being rather leery of Russia and not so willing to treat all of Islam as an enemy.

 

[treelover]

this is literally untrue. You don't know your own history cri, you really don't here. The 'liberal enclaves' bit gives it away. You've no reading here.

Liberal enclaves like West Virginia and the miners?

though there was a quite well known book, why socialism never took hold in the U.S, or something, mentions the role of immigration, etc.Though, of course, militants like Joe Hill were migrants.

 

[treelover]

so you are seriously going to ignore the entire history of american socialist and labour struggles including the largest internal ground war fought since the civil war? None of this is 'obscure lefty college history'. Its acknowledged historical facts. I don't want to say something rude to you so I shall just try to ask you to have a look at the history of american workers and the american left. You have no truth-claim for having grown up there. Thats not how it works. I appreciate you have a perspective first hand but I evaluate my sources. Heard of Pinkertons before?

and yes I know full well the dire misuse the word liberal has undergone in recent times but it has a particular, historical meaning. Long established in the political tradition it describes. Please don't assume that because someone has never been to america they are unaware of its history. And I'd like to thank myself for managing that without swearing, I dedicate this self award to my mum and god and all the fallen friends i once knew.

yes, the great american labour songbook, must have been about made up battles,disputes, CRI has no idea about working class life and culture, what about the huge steelworks fights, Fords, all documented in the great BBC series, The People's Century

 

[J Ed]

Liberal enclaves like West Virginia and the miners?

though there was a quite well known book, why socialism never took hold in the U.S, or something, mentions the role of immigration, etc.Though, of course, militants like Joe Hill were migrants.

You are thinking of the book 'What's the matter with Kansas?' by Thomas Frank. He has since published 'Listen, liberal' which excoriates the Democratic technocratic elite, I listened to an interesting interview with Thomas Frank recently where he said that while after publishing the first book he was constantly invited on to mainstream US TV, the interview invites dried up entirely after the second book. As CRI has demonstrated on this thread, for many US liberals the idea of countenancing any kind of critique of liberal elites, as opposed to just ordinary people, is just unfathomable. Which is why instead of accepting basic criticisms of neoliberal politicians like Obama or Clinton or Schumer we get this cod-history in which working-class people in the US apparently did not embrace socialism because it wasn't/isn't on the official school curriculum.

On the subject of Americans who very much embraced socialism, to the extent that they went to go and fight and die to defend it, here is a list of biographies of US volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War.

 

[J Ed]

yes, the great american labour songbook, must have been about made up battles,disputes, CRI has no idea about working class life and culture, what about the huge steelworks fights, Fords, all documented in the great BBC series, The People's Century

CRI is a good example of what happens when you get all your information from social media and you block anyone on social media who writes anything that might be a challenge to your beliefs.

 

[treelover]

You are thinking of the book 'What's the matter with Kansas?' by Thomas Frank. He has since published 'Listen, liberal' which excoriates the Democratic technocratic elite, I listened to an interesting interview with Thomas Frank recently where he said that while after publishing the first book he was constantly invited on to mainstream US TV, the interview invites dried up entirely after the second book. As CRI has demonstrated on this thread, for many US liberals the idea of countenancing any kind of critique of liberal elites, as opposed to just ordinary people, is just unfathomable. Which is why instead of accepting basic criticisms of neoliberal politicians like Obama or Clinton or Schumer we get this cod-history in which working-class people in the US apparently did not embrace socialism because it wasn't/isn't on the official school curriculum.

On the subject of Americans who very much embraced socialism, to the extent that they went to go and fight and die to defend it, here is a list of biographies of US volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War.

No, it was in the mid 80's, bit like those 'dummies' books, there were also ones on liberalism, cybernetics, etc,

 

[J Ed]

No, it was in the mid 80's, bit like those 'dummies' books, there were ones on liberalism, etc,

Oh OK, my mistake

 

[CrabbedOne]

...
Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the foreign affairs committee at the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, said in a post on Facebook that firing a national security adviser for his contacts with Russia is "not just paranoia but something even worse."

Kosachev also expressed frustration at the Trump administration:

"Either Trump hasn't found the necessary independence and he's been driven into a corner... or russophobia has permeated the new administration from top to bottom."

Kosachev's counterpart at the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, Alexei Pushkov, tweeted shortly after the announcement that "it was not Flynn who was targeted but relations with Russia."

Openly Flynn-ophile Russkis not helping an embattled Trumpski here.

 

[bimble]

Russia Today, today, has quotes from ' a former senior security policy analyst for the US Secretary of Defence' saying that this resignation " is a victory for mainstream media and for the Democrats. They don’t like this administration and they’re going to do everything they can to chip away its credibility, and this is just the beginning," etc.

 

[CrabbedOne]

In general what the neo-imperial Russians are up to is trying to weaken institutional structures that contain them. They don't actually seek collapse but want to reshape the world order so its good for their kleptocratic business. There's no real ideology and only a thin veneer of patriotism. It's more like dealing with Exxon-Mobile than the USSR. The proprietors wish to avoid a shooting war with the US and just secure safety for their vast personnel fortunes. For domestic security they need serf like loyalty from their population that actually requires more plausible enemies than IS. They don't want to be left in a state of enemy deficit like the post-USSR US.

The Russians already talk about being in a sort of war with the US. This is the continuation of politics by other means than war. This isn't about tanks rolling across borders. It's about collapsing the legitimacy of opponents in more subtle ways. The Russians are good at this but it can go badly wrong as the globalised world they rely on is a fragile construction.

I really don't think they intended to put Trump in power. Their slight capacity to tweak foreign and especially US elections isn't up to that. Trump is plainly too deceitful and treacherous a player in business and too frigging dangerous to trust even if he is genuinely sympathetic with Putin. A weakened but predictable Clinton administration was a more likely goal. Perhaps with Trump leading an increasingly conspiracy minded pro-Russian resistance against her that could have crippled the US. Now they've got something far worse than that: a US coming crashing off the rails in what could be a very messy fashion. Far more difficult to finesse and highly unpredictable.

 

[CrabbedOne]

McFarland is a former Fox New fly weight.

 

[camouflage]

In general what the neo-imperial Russians are up to is trying to weaken institutional structures that contain them. They don't actually seek collapse but want to reshape the world order so its good for their kleptocratic business. There's no real ideology and only a thin veneer of patriotism. It's more like dealing with Exxon-Mobile than the USSR. The proprietors wish to avoid a shooting war with the US and just secure safety for their vast personnel fortunes. For domestic security they need serf like loyalty from their population that actually requires more plausible enemies than IS. They don't want to be left in a state of enemy deficit like the post-USSR US.

The Russians already talk about being in a sort of war with the US. This is the continuation of politics by other means than war. This isn't about tanks rolling across borders. It's about collapsing the legitimacy of opponents in more subtle ways. The Russians are good at this but it can go badly wrong as the globalised world they rely on is a fragile construction.

I really don't think they intended to put Trump in power. Their slight capacity to tweak foreign and especially US elections isn't up to that. Trump is plainly too deceitful and treacherous a player in business and too frigging dangerous to trust even if he is genuinely sympathetic with Putin. A weakened but predictable Clinton administration was a more likely goal. Perhaps with Trump leading an increasingly conspiracy minded pro-Russian resistance against her that could have crippled the US. Now they've got something far worse than that: a US coming crashing off the rails in what could be a very messy fashion. Far more difficult to finesse and highly unpredictable.

At least one trap for intelligence is where more intelligence only becomes the potential for more elaborate departures from reality, increasingly well reasoned and increasingly well articulated but all founded from the start on back-of-head fluff.

 

[CrabbedOne]

A leaky swamp in DC is worrying other adversaries as well.

 

[CRI]

Okay, here's a screen-capped, uploaded, absolutely permanent, undoctored post. Enjoy!

View attachment 100408

However you view it, surely I'm not the only one who find this a tad worrisome.

For those so inclined, Richard DeAgazio's Facebook stream is full of posts fawning over Trump (maybe he gets a discount) and bog standard white supremacist fare.

Here's another snap from a random guest at the same dinner party at his resort. He's got one half of the nuclear codes. Someone else in this picture has the other half. Lovely.

View attachment 100409

Anyone posted this yet? Same guy who shared snaps during the security meeting that happened during dinner with his guests all crowding around to hear and get a look at national security reports also got a selfie with the guy who carries the "football" half of the nuclear code. That sounds really safe and secure.

 

[CrabbedOne]

 

[bimble]

Even kellyanne is having a hard time with this.
If Michael Flynn misled VP Mike Pence, that could be a ‘fireable offense,’ Chuck Todd says

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Politico Trump under fire for lax security practices

...
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), a member of the Intelligence Committee who pointed out the locked notebook incident on Twitter, said in an interview that he finds the ongoing violations concerning.

“There was a pattern there that sent the message that this is sort of a spontaneous … carelessness to the environment that is not appropriate to the office of the president,” he added. “It’s very clear that people are constantly trying to get at the classified information that the president receives on a daily basis and so you have to behave in a way that recognizes that.”

It's just as well he didn't make a big deal about such things in the campaign or this could be embarrassing.

 

[CRI]

Senators Udall and Whitehouse are still waiting for a response to their letter requesting urgent information on security at Trump's Mar a Lago complex (not to mention how Trump is creaming it from Uncle Sam, as tax payers are footing the bill not just for security but accommodation, catering, etc. while he hosts quasi-state events there with his wealthy guests.)