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The Trump presidency

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chandlerp said:
Our Dishonest President

I'm looking forward to the next three parts of that bigly
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What is most worrisome about Trump is Trump himself. He is a man so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation. His obsession with his own fame, wealth and success, his determination to vanquish enemies real and imagined, his craving for adulation — these traits were, of course, at the very heart of his scorched-earth outsider campaign; indeed, some of them helped get him elected. But in a real presidency in which he wields unimaginable power, they are nothing short of disastrous.

Although his policies are, for the most part, variations on classic Republican positions (many of which would have been undertaken by a President Ted Cruz or a President Marco Rubio), they become far more dangerous in the hands of this imprudent and erratic man. Many Republicans, for instance, support tighter border security and a tougher response to illegal immigration, but Trump’s cockamamie border wall, his impracticable campaign promise to deport all 11 million people living in the country illegally and his blithe disregard for the effect of such proposals on the U.S. relationship with Mexico turn a very bad policy into an appalling one.
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At least they didn't call him a liberal.

After the impressive rack of Goldman appointees and the highly regressive Trumpcare debacle I think at this stage we can forget the populist bullshitting about helping the little guy. Trump's is just set on rewarding his big donors. Attempting to deliver refried Reaganism with an extra thick coat of crony capitalism and a side order of base pleasing xenophobia. And if anybody fucked Rust Belt voters it's beloved old Ronnie with his trickle down economics. Given the Trump's terribly flawed character this was utterly predictable. What perhaps wasn't was that the blundering twit would end up with nearly as adversarial relationship with Congress and the Senate as Clinton was doomed to.
 
CrabbedOne said:
At least they didn't call him a liberal.

After the impressive rack of Goldman appointees and the highly regressive Trumpcare debacle I think at this stage we can forget the populist bullshitting about helping the little guy. Trump's is just set on rewarding his big donors. Attempting to deliver refried Reaganism with an extra thick coat of crony capitalism and a side order of base pleasing xenophobia. And if anybody fucked Rust Belt voters it's beloved old Ronnie with his trickle down economics. Given the Trump's terribly flawed character this was utterly predictable. What perhaps wasn't was that the blundering twit would end up with nearly as adversarial relationship with Congress and the Senate as Clinton was doomed to.
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Given the Trump's terribly flawed character this was utterly predictable.
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This, with bells on. I can't be arsed with all the hand wringing, whether it comes from mainstream media outlets that enabled his win with their fawning puff pieces, ignoring of the red flashing lights throughout his campaign and hammering of his opponent over utterly inconsequential issues, or the voters who scratch their heads with a, "Well, he said he'd do that, but gee, I thought only people I don't like would suffer, not me and mine."
 
On Politico Did Obama Blow It on the Russian Hacking?
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“Our focus was really to make sure that the election process was not undermined, because here’s the thing: Whatever else was a subject of debate about motive, we knew, and everyone agreed, that one of the goals that Russia had in all of this was to undermine confidence in our democratic process, to sow discord, to sow confusion,” she says. “And so, we were very conscious that we not do their work for them by creating a partisan discussion about this. So, the Schiff and Feinstein statement, I think, one of the concerns was that it was not bipartisan.”

Why, then, I asked her a couple of times, did Comey seem to take a less than bipartisan approach in communicating publicly about the probes of Clinton’s private email server, which ended with no charges, while refusing even to acknowledge the ongoing investigation of Trump’s campaign and its Russia ties? Had he tarnished the ability of U.S. law-enforcement agencies to act independently?

“I think that’s regrettable,” Monaco says, “because I don’t think Comey is a partisan actor.” Justice Department investigations, she adds, “should be completely walled off from partisan political considerations and White House interference.” So, “to the extent that the events over the last year have tarnished that in any way, I think that’s really regrettable.”
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And I'd be pretty sure the Obama people were overconfident that the dull Clinton facing the execrable Trump would win. The big problem was going to be the inevitable resumption of the long GOP campaign to delegitimise a Clinton victory. Her insecure private email server, Benghazi etc, etc on and on remorselessly for eight years if necessary all led by a outraged Trump spouting conspiratorial allegations he'd been robbed by a child sacrificing limb of Satan. No need to feed that beasting.

And on the off chance that the no hoper did win Hell all this entanglement of Russia stuff would be lurking out there without even the need to make up fibs about missing birth certificates. Right back at you sucker.
 
On WaPo I worked for Jared Kushner. He’s the wrong businessman to reinvent government.
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Kushner’s claim to business knowledge, beyond admiring Silicon Valley, boils down to his work for his family’s commercial real estate company, which is hardly comparable to a government institution. And if industry dynamics are not transitive across the board, expertise isn’t, either.

On that count, I don’t even know how to quantify Kushner’s expertise, anyway. Yes, he ran the company — which he inherited, not uncommon in New York’s dynastic, insular real estate world. But he was sure he had the goods. When I worked for him, I didn’t think he had a realistic view of his own capabilities since, like his father-in-law, he seemed to view his wealth and its concomitant accoutrements as rewards for his personal success in business, and not something he would have had in any case. To me, he appeared to view his position and net worth as the products of an essentially meritocratic process.
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As if a wealthy heir punting not very successfully on his daddy's real estate empire was actually a preparation for the complexities of government.

Here the former editor of The New York Observer fears that Jared's role in the Trump Team may be similar to his adventure in the print media. It was a quite trendy paper that she complains Jared bought then ran into the ground by penny pinching, eventually staffed with cronies before putting it up for sale. And bear in mind Trump is loading up his inexperienced son in law up with Kissinger like responsibilities perhaps because he's the only person in his administration apart from Ivanka he trusts.
 
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Interesting piece. 97% of convictions in the US don't go to court, but are the result of plea bargaining. Poor people and especially people of colour are more likely to go for a plea, even if they aren't guilty as they are less likely to have resources to fund bail, hire a good lawyer or be treated fairly in court anyhow. Risk a trial and get 20 years or plead guilty and serve 5.

This is all part of the voter suppression that many seem to forget was a huge factor in the outcome of the November elections.

The voting rights issue no one talks about: Ending the disenfranchisement of felons will strengthen democracy

Elections are decided by who votes — and increasingly, in America, by who cannot. Barriers to voting participation skew policy outcomes and elections to the right in the United States. One of the most racially discriminatory of these barriers is felon disenfranchisement. Nearly 6 million Americans are disenfranchised due to felonies.

This may seem like a small share of the population, but the concentration of disenfranchisement in some states makes it enough to shift elections. In six Southern states — Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee and Virginia — more than 7 percent of the adult population is disenfranchised. Unsurprisingly, given the racial biases in the criminal justice system, the burden does not fall equally across racial groups. In the most definitive research, Christopher Uggen, Sarah Shannon and Jeff Manza find that “one of every 13 African-Americans of voting age is disenfranchised, a rate more than four times greater than non-African Americans.” New research suggests this is skewing democracy.
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CrabbedOne said:
On WaPo I worked for Jared Kushner. He’s the wrong businessman to reinvent government.
As if a wealthy heir punting not very successfully on his daddy's real estate empire was actually a preparation for the complexities of government.

Here the former editor of The New York Observer fears that Jared's role in the Trump Team may be similar to his adventure in the print media. It was a quite trendy paper that she complains Jared bought then ran into the ground by penny pinching, eventually staffed with cronies before putting it up for sale. And bear in mind Trump is loading up his inexperienced son in law up with Kissinger like responsibilities perhaps because he's the only person in his administration apart from Ivanka he trusts.
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Kushner is supposed to be in Iraq today. Why? Doing what? On behalf of whom? Who the fuck knows? :mad:
 
MrSpikey said:
For the sake of clarification - PP don't receive any federal funds for performing abortion services; that's illegal in the US. They receive federal funds for providing other healthcare services for the women that attend their clinics. All the Republicans will achieve in reducing that funding is reducing overall healthcare opportunities for women.

I have formed the opinion they don't particularly care about that, though, so presumably it's game on.
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Yes, I want to echo this too. PP doesn't use federal funds to provide abortions. There's been rules in place for years to prevent it, but yet, various politicians insist that we do. You even try to argue with people who want to defund PP and they'll insist that PP gets funding to pay for abortions. You can't tell them any different, even by quoting the chapter of the federal law that denies funding for abortion.
 
On Lawfare The National Security Consequences of Deregulation
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The new House bills upend this structure—including for seemingly ordinary rules that have huge national security implications. Here’s an example to start: The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), an office within the Treasury Department, issues rules under the Bank Secrecy Act that require financial institutions to conduct due diligence on customers. These regulations are designed to make sure that criminals, tax evaders, and money launderers are not using shell companies for illegal activities. Among other things, FinCEN requires banks to monitor accounts for suspicious activities. These rules aren’t just about illicit operations within the United States; they are also central to preventing terrorists from funding their activities.

Under the proposed Regulatory Accountability Act, however, FinCEN would have to use the “least costly” approach to regulation unless they can document the benefits of a higher cost option. The problem is that while it is relatively easy to measure the costs of compliance on the banks, it is difficult to measure the benefits. Any bank that doesn’t want to monitor accounts for suspicious activity, for example, could challenge the FinCEN rule. After all, one less costly (but far less beneficial) option is for a bank to politely ask criminals and terrorists to not to engage in illegal behavior.
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Donald Trump: Making America Great Again for criminals and terrorists.
 
In The Atlantic The Republican Identity Crisis
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Other people, meanwhile, shared more tragic testimonials. “I feel honestly like a part of my identity was stolen,” wrote Alycia Kuehne, a conservative Christian from Dallas, Texas.

But virtually everyone who wrote to me shared a common complaint: The traditional “Left ↔ Right” spectrum used to describe and categorize Republicans has become obsolete in the age of Trump. The question now is what to replace it with.
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This article discounts the Bannon thing of Nationalists V Globalists. I think that doesn't really work with Republicans. They where always mostly "America Fuck Yeah!" Nationalists. The party always existed to further the interests of top few deciles and still does. Folk who voted Republican in the deciles beneath that tended to patriotically believe that was the American Way. Wealth spreading Dems giving alms to the poor were abhorred.

The division that Trump represents I'd say is really an anti-establishment one as Trump has complete contempt for the folk who have run America because Trump believes Trump is best. This can be mistaken for some for him being some form of radical change agent but it's just his vaunting narcissism. He is an identity politician and that identity is Donald.
 
Christ this is awful, and will only become worse, and more common as funding to the EPA is slashed. :(

THE PLANT NEXT DOOR
A Louisiana Town Plagued by Pollution Shows Why Cuts to the EPA Will Be Measured in Illnesses and Deaths

When the Environmental Protection Agency informed people in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, last July that the local neoprene plant was emitting a chemical that gave them the highest risk of cancer from air pollution in the country, the information was received not just with horror and sadness but also with a certain sense of validation.

. . . The lifetime risk of cancer from air pollution in this area, which is less than 2 square miles, is a staggering 777 per million people, by far the highest in the country and more than 800 times the national average. . . DuPont opened the factory on a former sugar plantation called Belle Point in 1964, and its smokestacks have been pumping out chloroprene over this mostly African-American neighborhood since 1969.

For years, their fears about the plant hung over the neighborhood like the toxic gas. But the residents’ collective sense that they were being harmed wasn’t enough to get a response. It took the work of several divisions of the EPA over the course of many years to prove that people were in danger. And that was under administrations that at least nominally supported the agency’s mission.

Under the best of circumstances, the agency designed to protect public health can give communities like the one in St. John the Baptist a shot at vanquishing the pollutants that affect their health. Without it, they might not even have that.
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Loathesome creature.

C8gIYmiVwAAUcZL.jpg
 
CRI said:
Absolutely. :) I find myself almost hoping a band of Tea Party folk invades the board, just to see the righteous indignation of "How dare you call me that," punctuated by extensive explanations of the history of liberalism followed by solidarity fist bumps to the misguided but salt-of-the-earth-good-as-gold working class bros. :D:p
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Tea Party-ers would refer to just about everyone who posts on U75 [me included] , as 'libtards'.
 
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lib·er·al
ˈlib(ə)rəl/
adjective
adjective: liberal
  1. 1.
    open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values.
    "they have more liberal views toward marriage and divorce than some people"
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  1. 2.
    (of education) concerned mainly with broadening a person's general knowledge and experience, rather than with technical or professional training.
    synonyms: wide-ranging, broad-based, general
    "a liberal education"
  2. 3.
    (especially of an interpretation of a law) broadly construed or understood; not strictly literal or exact.
    "they could have given the 1968 Act a more liberal interpretation"
    synonyms: flexible, broad, loose, rough, free, general, nonliteral, nonspecific, imprecise, vague, indefinite
    "a liberal interpretation of divorce laws"
    antonyms: strict, to the letter
  3. 4.
    given, used, or occurring in generous amounts.
    "liberal amounts of wine had been consumed"
    synonyms: abundant, copious, ample, plentiful, generous, lavish, luxuriant, profuse, considerable, prolific, rich;
    literaryplenteous
    "a liberal coating of paint"
    antonyms: scant
noun
noun: liberal; plural noun: liberals
  1. 1.
    a person of liberal views.
    • a supporter or member of a Liberal Party.
      noun: Liberal; plural noun: Liberals
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Origin
upload_2017-4-3_13-56-6.png
Middle English: via Old French from Latin liberalis, from liber ‘free (man).’ The original sense was ‘suitable for a free man,’ hence ‘suitable for a gentleman’ (one not tied to a trade), surviving in liberal arts . Another early sense, ‘generous’ (sense 4 of the adjective), gave rise to an obsolete meaning ‘free from restraint,’ leading to sense 1 of the adjective (late 18th century).
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Yossarian said:
Trump has donated his first-quarter salary to the National Park Service. On the face of it, it seems like a pleasant thing to do, so of course there must be some horrible Trumpy catch somewhere - maybe he's bribing them to let him fuck a bald eagle.

Trump donates first-quarter salary to National Park Service
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Okay, so he'a donating just over $78,000 to the National Park Service, but about to cut 12% or about 1.5 billion to the Department of the Interior, which includes the National Park Service.

How generous of him. :rolleyes:
 
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Black Lives Matter Activists Turn Attention to Statehouses
A new initiative launched by Black Lives Matter activists seeks to re-focus the movement's efforts on state capitols, building on momentum at the national level to push back against President Donald Trump's political agenda on issues such as policing and immigration.

Organizers say people looking to get more politically active can have more influence at the state level, since state districts are smaller than congressional districts. Also, state lawmakers often run unopposed and legislating isn't their full-time job.

The imbalance of power gives state Republicans greater ability to shape laws as they pursue an agenda that includes proposals on abortion, unions, taxes, gun rights and school choice. In light of the Black Lives Matter movement, GOP lawmakers in several states want to crack down on protesters and challenge "sanctuary cities" that have resisted efforts to step up enforcement of immigration laws
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On Al Monitor Can Netanyahu outmaneuver Trump?
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Netanyahu has identified two basic problems in the Trump era that need to be addressed: The first is that, as opposed to Obama, who needed to be pushed into advancing a diplomatic process, Trump is the pusher. Obama was spurred into a process against his will by top advisers, including Rahm Emanuel and George Mitchell in his first term and by former Secretary of State John Kerry in his second term. Trump, however, is self-driven. He is the driving force behind the energies of his international negotiations representative, Jason Greenblatt. The new American president is full of motivation with everything connected to the Middle East and truly wants to put an end to the conflict, proving to the whole world that he is the ultimate “deal maker.”

This problem leads to the second problem: With Obama, Netanyahu could say, “No thank you,” and remain alive. Both times that the peace process fell through under Obama, he registered disappointment and simply cut contact. It was only in his last days as president that Obama pushed the UN Security Council to adopt Resolution 2334, reaffirming the illegality of the settlements. If Netanyahu would have known that that would be the only price he would have to pay for running wild for almost a decade, he would have grabbed the deal with both hands.
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Obama's instincts about this were entirely correct. His administration wasting political energy on the obdurate Israelis proved pretty foolish. It will under Trump as well. His clumsy bullying style of dealmaking will get nowhere as there isn't a viable deal to be made. The rise of the Israeli right has made this circus pointless.

If Obama had told Kerry to stop pointlessly tilting at windmills in Palestine and work on improving relations between the Turks and Kurds where he might have made some progress instead US Syria policy could be slightly less of a regional fuck up.
 
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