The Trump presidency

[Vitalik]

Yeh, i have , i think one is for sure, that Trump is the one the most eccentric president of the USA and another thing, for sure it will lead him to a very very far .

 

[CrabbedOne]

To channel the vengeful spirit of Pickman's model for a mo, I think you'll find that revelations was the work of John of Patmos, not the Baptist.

By a head and nearly a half century of Judean carnage.

 

[Vitalik]

I suggest hanging around for a while to get a feel for the place. It has its own culture, much as a country has a culture. Get to know it and you'll enjoy your experience so much more.

I get the feeling that English may not be your first language. Where are you from, Vitalik?

I really like English culture and language and the country itself , i am a citizen of the world. Is it so obvious that english isn't my first language ?

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

I really like English culture and language and the country itself , i am a citizen of the world. Is it so obvious that english isn't my first language ?

You have that formal tone that non-native English speakers often use. I have no cause to criticize your English. Being an American, many on here would accuse me of not speaking it.

 

[Vitalik]

You have that formal tone that non-native English speakers often use. I have no cause to criticize your English. Being an American, many on here would accuse me of not speaking it.

 

[Smangus]

Need actions not just simple talks that lead nowhere !

Mr Trump, is that you? Welcome to Urban 75!

 

[coley]

On Politico Internal White House battles spill into Treasury

The raving nationalist Bannonites at war with the very comfortable with globalisation Goldman folk clustered around the treasury over things like trade policy. Apparently Ivanka and Jared favour the latter in this. I can see Trump's radical trade agenda going the same way as his embarrassingly unconventional bromance with Putin.

While his 'big stuff' gets trashed, he is making major inroads in other areas, not filling various posts gets a lot of admin business in a stranglehold, and leads to The ACA being seriously undermined, the EPA is being seriously weakened and the Japanese are looking at defending themselves from the loons across the water, rather than depending on the US!
And he seems to be using his position in a particularly spiteful fashion to upset environmentalists, just for the fun of it, allowing snaring and Aerial shooting in national parks, WTF is that all about!?

 

[coley]

In Politico California governor: We won't 'bring stupid lawsuits' against border wall
Perhaps the second most powerful man in US politics.

After Bannon?

 

[coley]

Infowars apologizes for spreading 'Pizzagate' theory. What does that mean for fake news?

Seems the restaurant owners can't sue the arse off Jones then? Pity.

 

[coley]

I suggest hanging around for a while to get a feel for the place. It has its own culture, much as a country has a culture. Get to know it and you'll enjoy your experience so much more.

I get the feeling that English may not be your first language. Where are you from, Vitalik?

Infowars, Briefart?

 

[coley]

Yeh, i have , i think one is for sure, that Trump is the one the most eccentric president of the USA and another thing, for sure it will lead him to a very very far .

Aye, we'd all like him to be "very very far"
Like 'far away, in another Galaxy'

 

[coley]

I really like English culture and language and the country itself , i am a citizen of the world. Is it so obvious that english isn't my first language ?

Aye.

 

[coley]

Mr Trump, is that you? Welcome to Urban 75!

Nae, he has a much better grasp of grammar than TTT

 

[CRI]

White House refuses to condemn murder of black man by white supremacist

Wouldn't want to alienate the fan base, would they?

James Harris Jackson, a 28-year-old white supremacist from Baltimore, traveled to New York City and brutally murdered Timothy Caughman, a 66-year-old black man, with a sword.

On Monday, April Ryan, Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks, asked Press Secretary Sean Spicer if the White House had anything to say about this hate crime.

Spicer repeatedly refused to saying anything specific about the murder, stating that he was “not going to reference any particular case before the DOJ right now.” He later added the he didn’t “know all the details.”

One detail is that Jackson reportedly told authorities that he killed Caughman for the “rush.” Jackson, who has taken responsibility for the murder, traveled to New York “to kill as many black men as he could.” He also expressed regret that he didn’t kill a “young thug.”

Instead of addressing the murder, Spicer went on a number of bizarre tangents. He told Ryan that there has been “a rush to judgment in a lot of other cases,” specifically anti-semitic attacks, where people have demanded Trump condemn the violence. Later, Spicer said, people have learned that the attacks were not perpetrated by “people on the right.”

 

[CRI]

Guess he's changed his mind on this, now that he's in charge.

 

[CrabbedOne]

Guess he's changed his mind on this, now that he's in charge.

View attachment 103045

On campaign he did promise to bomb the shit out of IS and kill their families. He had a secret plan for dealing with IS that turned out to be to ask the Pentagon what to do and then tell them to do it. Like a lot of Trump's policy positions it was a matter of saying crowd pleasing things that often were inconsistent or unrealistic. The bit he's not making good on in the GWOT is being less interventional. The Pentagon involvement in Korea, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Somalia all look to be increasing.

 

[Yossarian]

Guess he's changed his mind on this, now that he's in charge.

View attachment 103045

At least he no longer seems to be under the impression that the US is entitled to vast reserves of Syrian oil.

 

[teqniq]

Still sounds like a spoilt child though.

 

[chandlerp]

Dumb leaders. Wow. He's like a schoolboy.

 

[chandlerp]

Just noticed that's from 2012 so he's always been a petulant twat

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Politico Congress may stiff Trump on wall funding

...
The White House made an initial request earlier this month for $1.4 billion in border wall funding as part of a package that boosts defense spending by $30 billion, with the thought that it would hitch a ride to the broader government funding bill due next month. Republicans expect the final price tag for the wall could be more than $20 billion.

The problem is that polls show the border wall is not all that popular, particularly if the United States is paying for it, and it does not unify congressional Republicans in the way Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch or even the basic goal of repealing Obamacare have done. That makes it a harder sell to the rank-and-file GOP — especially if pressing it means playing a government shutdown blame game with Democrats.

“The border wall is probably not a smart investment,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who proposes funding the wall as part a package legalizing some young undocumented immigrants and beefing up enforcement.

Several sources said it is unclear whether Trump wants to take the fight to Democrats over the wall or avoid a shutdown battle. His Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney in recent weeks has suggested the administration will focus more on the wall in the future, perhaps as late as fiscal 2019. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
...

The Mexicans simply ain't going to pay and once again it's going to be tough to persuade enough of the Republicans in Congress.

A dumb 25 billon dollar wall the US tax payer has to fund at the expense of other actually useful government programs loses its mojo.
The popular part of this policy was the promise of Mexican national humiliation.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Politico Gallup: Trump hits new low after health care flop

...
Trump’s approval rating is down from 41 percent in the prior three-day period. His previous low-water mark in the Gallup poll came earlier this month, when interviews conducted March 16-18 showed his approval rating at just 37 percent.

In the new survey, the percentage of Americans who disapprove of Trump’s performance is 57 percent, up from 54 percent in the previous three-day rolling sample. That’s one point shy of Trump’s highest disapproval rating: 58 percent in the March 16-18 sample.
...

The Trump Show's ratings are in the tank. It's worse than an Arnie take over of The Apprentice. Angry self justifying Tweet storm anticipated.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Politico The honeymoon's over for Trump and Putin

The Obama reset with Russia began on 6 March 2009 by July the Russians were allowing supply to Afghanistan went badly and was judged completely buggered by the Russian Annexation of Crimea on the 18 March 2014. Tovarich Trumpski has got that out of the way in three months and his administration is back to exchanging growls with the Russians. Talk about private sector efficiencies.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On The Cipher Brief Aligning the Pentagon Budget with Strategy

...
TCB: Is it only a question of having more or less money in the budget, or is there an opportunity for reallocating the budget towards defense priorities?

TH: While the total amount of the defense budget is important, how the money is spent is just as important. At the highest level, the tradeoffs that can be within the defense budget are among capacity (the size of the military), capability (the level of advanced technology and weapons), and readiness (the level of training and preparedness of the military).

The Obama administration prioritized capability and readiness, and was willing to accept a small force to pay for these priorities. So far, the Trump administration appears to prioritize capacity and readiness, and seems willing to sacrifice more advanced capabilities. This could result in a significant shift within the DoD budget, with a greater share of the budget going to pay and benefits of personnel (to pay for a larger military) and to maintenance and training accounts (to improve readiness). And it may be bad news for research and development funding, which may not benefit proportionately from the proposed increase in the budget.

For what purpose Trump wants to "add 90,000 soldiers to the Army, some 75 new ships to the Navy, and hundreds of new fighter jets to the Air Force." is not actually clear. You certainly don't need such a brute increase in conventional forces for the GWOT Trump puts at the top of his priorities. CT takes drones, SOF guys, intelligence capabilities not the expanding big battalions and a bigger blue water navy. If you had a big war land war in Asia in mind Trump's proposal is what you might do. It's the R&D inherent in building hi-tech capabilities that sometimes has valuable spin-offs like GPS. But Trump being a real estate guy thinks R&D is an overhead. Trump may think of he defence budget as a job creation scheme or simply owning the most lavish property to big himself up. If you've got it baby flaunt it! He did promise his voters he'd spend bigly here. He still has to get Congress to agree and it's not polling as a terribly popular measure facing 58% public opposition.

 

[CrabbedOne]

In The Atlantic Obamacare Won't Explode Unless Trump Wants It To

...
The problem is, Obamacare isn’t a grandfather clock that Obama set into effortless, perpetual motion. It’s more like a cantankerous old car, one that requires lots of maintenance to keep it purring. As my colleague Vann Newkirk explained last week, there’s a lot the administration could do to undermine the individual market further. House Republicans are currently fighting a lawsuit to stop Obamacare’s payments to insurers to help pay for their customers’ deductibles. It’s up to the Trump administration to either keep fighting that lawsuit or get the House to drop it so those payments can continue—otherwise, many insurers might leave or raise their prices.

“If the administration continues to dispute its obligation to pay health plans for the cost sharing assistance they provide and continues to refuse to pay the risk corridor amounts owed, then it will effectively be making the administrative decision to harm markets everywhere,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a health-policy professor at George Washington University. Together, stopping the enforcement of the individual mandate and stopping the payments to insurers would amount to a rise in premiums of about 25 to 30 percent, said Andy Slavitt, the former acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
...

Trump has been saying for some time that there's really no need to worry as Obamacare is going to collapse and the voters will all blame Obama not the new regime's inaction. I'm not seeing Trump rushing to do necessary maintenance in collaboration with House Dems. Oddly enough if you were going to pick a huckster to sell ACA based insurance to more healthy young people and reassure insurers Trump might actually be pretty good at it.

 

[camouflage]

Need actions not just simple talks that lead nowhere !

No no, what we do here is complex talk that leads nowhere, it's very different.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Vox 2 months in, and Trump’s Israel policy looks a lot like Obama’s

...
On the other hand, Trump fancies himself a master negotiator. It’s at the core of his personal brand, the thing he hammers home over and over again in his many books. He sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through that lens — a Gordian knot that, if cut, would prove that Trump is the best negotiator.

“That’s the ultimate deal,” Trump said in a post-election interview with the Wall Street Journal. “As a deal maker, I’d like to do ... the deal that can’t be made.”

But making a two-state deal requires getting the assent of, er, two different states. The Israelis can like Trump as much as they want — but if the Palestinians won’t deal with him, then the deal is off. If Trump really wanted to get to yes, to make the most impressive deal in history, then he would need to climb down from his hardcore pro-Israel stances.

“He [doesn’t] seem to have any real policy views other than that he wants to get to a deal,” Koplow says. “If the overriding priority for him was going to be, ‘I’m going to get to a deal,’ that was never going to involve letting the Israeli government set its priorities and do whatever it wanted without any kind of American pushback.”

So what we’ve been seeing, in the weeks since the inauguration, is dealmaker Trump winning out over ideologue Trump: of dealmaking pragmatism winning out over the right-wing populism that “Trumpism” has come to stand for.

Whether the crowd at AIPAC will see it this way is another matter entirely.

After a lot of Likudnik posturing and a loopy Ambassador appointment not much meat from Trump to please supporters of the Israeli right. Of course they were never going to be happy.

 

[coley]

Oh, he's been signing more EXOs repealing Obamas environmental acts, does he really have a clue? are his staffers telling him he is actually signing autograph books?
Coal isn't coming back, solar and wind and cheap fracked gas have made sure of that, but as an ex miner mesel, I do feel sorry for those he is leading down the garden path with his deluded promises.
Plus the orders he signed earlier, have in effect, destroyed this administrations (can it actually be called that?) role or influence in compliance with the Paris accord.
Does anyone in the echelons of the US government realise (or care) that he is making the US look more and more like a banana republic?
Alice in wonderland time.

 

[CRI]

Oh, he's been signing more EXOs repealing Obamas environmental acts, does he really have a clue? are his staffers telling him he is actually signing autograph books?
Coal isn't coming back, solar and wind and cheap fracked gas have made sure of that, but as an ex miner mesel, I do feel sorry for those he is leading down the garden path with his deluded promises.
Plus the orders he signed earlier, have in effect, destroyed this administrations (can it actually be called that?) role or influence in compliance with the Paris accord.
Does anyone in the echelons of the US government realise (or care) that he is making the US look more and more like a banana republic?
Alice in wonderland time.

I really doubt his main supporters care what other countries think of the US under Trump. Many were the same people who genuinely believe that everyone else in the world wishes they were American, that America is the most free and fair country in the world, blah blah blah. Many won't have travelled outside the US apart from maybe Canada to hunt and Mexico for a cheap holiday, or while serving in the military. They're already skeptical about anything "science-ey" so they're content to believe there's still coal to be mined, fracking is safe and climate change is a myth.

 

[CRI]

I suspect there's some kind of public health debacle just waiting to happen as Trump seeks to de-fund prevention programmes, monitoring and research.

Bird flu anyone?

For the second time in less than three years, avian flu is moving through industrial-scale US chicken facilities. Republicans in power seem too fixated on budget-cutting to notice.

First, President Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan pushed a health care plan that would have slashed funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency that tracks farm flu outbreaks and works with the US Department of Agriculture and local authorities to "minimize any human health risk" they cause.

Among the cuts being sought for 2017, the Trump team seeks to extract funds from a USDA program funded by Congress in 2015 to address the flu problem that swept through the Midwest that year, triggering the euthanasia of 50 million birds and causing egg prices to spike. Congress had allocated $1 billion for it, of which $80 million is left. Given that avian flu is on the march again, one might think it prudent to keep that cash around, devoted to monitoring the 2017 outbreak. Trump's budget people have other ideas—they want to take away $50 million of the $80 million left over.