The Trump presidency

[ruffneck23]

Trump 'will definitely pull out of Paris climate change deal'

sigh

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Alabhama, for fucks sake.

States' rights eh?

 

[The Octagon]

In terms of the Supreme Court pick, can they be held up by the Dems or do the Repubs have enough control to force them straight through?

I'm still amazed at the gall to basically ignore Obama's nominee while he was still in office (albeit slightly lame duck).

 

[teqniq]

I think someone upthread was speculating on them looking for ways to de-legitimise the protests...

 

[petee]

Trial Balloon for a Coup?

Combining all of these facts, we have a fairly clear picture in play.

1. Trump was, indeed, perfectly honest during the campaign; he intends to do everything he said, and more. This should not be reassuring to you.
2. The regime’s main organizational goal right now is to transfer all effective power to a tight inner circle, eliminating any possible checks from either the Federal bureaucracy, Congress, or the Courts. Departments are being reorganized or purged to effect this.
3. The inner circle is actively probing the means by which they can seize unchallenged power; yesterday’s moves should be read as the first part of that.
4. The aims of crushing various groups — Muslims, Latinos, the black and trans communities, academics, the press — are very much primary aims of the regime, and are likely to be acted on with much greater speed than was earlier suspected. The secondary aim of personal enrichment is also very much in play, and clever people will find ways to play these two goals off each other.

 

[gosub]

In terms of the Supreme Court pick, can they be held up by the Dems or do the Repubs have enough control to force them straight through?

I'm still amazed at the gall to basically ignore Obama's nominee while he was still in office (albeit slightly lame duck).

Not under current system, requires 60 votes, Republicans have 52. Mr Trump favours changing the rules to make at it that it only needs 51....

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

How strange that Iran is on President Joffrey's ban-list despite being an enemy of ISIS, yet Saudi Arabia is not on the list despite about 3/4 of alleged 9/11 attackers being from KSA.

It's almost...hang on...no..it's almost as if the US perspective on ISIS isn't quite what we are led to believe...

 

[CRI]

see rest of thread for source, but shit

 

[Wilf]

Trump Hotels Just Asked Twitter To Share A Travel Memory. Their Responses Are SAVAGE

View attachment 99689

@TrumpHotels That time in Russia where the tiny-handed guy in the room next to me was getting peed on by two sex workers.

 

[gosub]

Rosneft - Qatar will invest €2.5bn and Glencore €300m for equal stakes in the a special purpose vehicle that is buying a 19.5 per cent stake in Rosneft from its government-owned parent company Rosneftegaz.



Looks like I'm in for an interesting pub chat Friday

 

[hot air baboon]

...just playing devil's advocate here but does anyone think that ISIS are definitely not interested in perpetrating a mass casualty event in the USA if they had the opportunity to do so...and that if they were so interested they would prefer to use a "soldier" infiltrated as a refugee ...?

 

[Idris2002]

GOOD NEWS EVERYBODY

 

[SpookyFrank]

...just playing devil's advocate here but does anyone think that ISIS are definitely not interested in perpetrating a mass casualty event in the USA if they had the opportunity to do so...and that if they were so interested they would prefer to use a "soldier" infiltrated as a refugee ...?

If it's mass casualty events he's trying to prevent then Trump really needs to start deporting all the white people.

 

[hot air baboon]

....I suppose I find we are flattering ourselves somewhat by reaching for the 3rd Reich analogies....Roosevelt's interment of Japanese-Americans seems a more fitting historical parallel

 

[gosub]

....I suppose I find we are flattering ourselves somewhat by reaching for the 3rd Reich analogies....Roosevelt's interment of Japanese-Americans seems a more fitting historical parallel

I didn't reference Himmler out of what is happening to the Joe on the street - for that Roosevelt's internment is a better parallel (German industrial sabotage during WW1 meant they at least had to think about doing something), was more reference to the inter Washington power plays that are going on along side it...


and then Billy Bragg pops up and now I really am depressed.

 

[hegley]

 

[existentialist]

I meant it's going to be a nightmare at airports with disruption, and anyone who isn't tickity boo with their contact list, social media histories, etc. being checked may find themselves on a plane back. Insurance doesn't cover things like this. WTF that has to do with the International Brigades is beyond me.

I rarely posted outside the funny pictures page until recently, but I know how sucky and unjust America has been, under all shades of executive, legislature and judiciary. The "oh, why are you so upset about this, but you're not saying your upset about that," comes straight out of Derailing for Dummies. Nah, not playing pal.

Your pal struggles sometimes with seeing past his own agenda. I shouldn't pay his comments too much attention...

 

[existentialist]

I think it's just plain stupidity. There's a long and proud history of politicians not understanding technology. Possibly it's there to obfuscate the effects of a racist policy, but I think first and foremost it's just stupidity. Anyone giving it a couple of seconds thought can see fundamental problems with it, so it makes the administration look stupid.

The thing about technology is...well, two things.

1. It's hideously complex. So complex, in fact, that nobody without a fair amount of knowledge and experience could even begin to realise how complex it is. I suspect that if someone posted just the top-level code to do an oauth login using Python, 95% of people's eyes would glaze over; show them the thousands of lines of library code, the stuff that talks to sockets across the 'net, the intriciacies of TCP/IP, the database queries, etc., and their heads would explode.
2. It looks so simple. So they assume it's easy - they log into Facebook and that's simple, so they assume that it works in a simple way: they don't see the layers of abstraction, the levels of code that allow an application on a computer pretty much anywhere in the world to connect to a server in North America which runs code to accept their credentials, validate them via some other server somewhere else in the world, and then assemble a web page to send back...

So the combination of those two things makes tech an ideal candidate for the Dunning Krueger effect - that thing where the less knowledgeable in a domain you are, the more your perception of knowledge is out of whack with the reality. I suspect Donald Trump (and quite a lot of his associates - just look at the 9/11 troofers on building design ) is a walking case study in the D-K effect.

 

[CrabbedOne]

How strange that Iran is on President Joffrey's ban-list despite being an enemy of ISIS, yet Saudi Arabia is not on the list despite about 3/4 of alleged 9/11 attackers being from KSA.

It's almost...hang on...no..it's almost as if the US perspective on ISIS isn't quite what we are led to believe...

It's not at all unreasonable to list Iran if you start from the assumption that such a "Muslim Ban" amounts to more than a very expensive act of security theatre.

Iran may be a weak 3rd world country but they have got far greater terrorist capabilities than IS or AQ. And while AQ has killed more US citizens IS has basically done diddly squat to Americans in comparison with Iran. Unless you count putting the wind up couch potatoes.

Lately it's Iran's been mainly a threat to Israel but that can change. It may be fighting IS but Iran does not regard the Great Satan as a partner in that. They say IS is a tool of the US while privately realising US airpower is handy against IS. They are probably going to be back to attacks on the US military in Iraq shortly. Once Mosul falls there isn't much reason to tolerate a dangerous US presence in Iraq.

The IRGC's Jihadis killed about 25% of US dead in Iraq during the occupation, over a thousand men. Like the Pakistanis they didn't want Uncle Sam empire building next door. Back in the day HA killed a couple of hundred US Marines in Beirut in one truck bombing. The Iranians do seem to have been linked to a daft plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador in the US recently. HA do still sometimes pursue and kill Israelis globally.

The A-Team of terrorism HA is bigger and beefier than ever before and thanks to the Syrian war they are backed by a new international of tens of thousands of Shia Jihadis. Terrorism is part of Iranian deterrence. It's cheap and it has worked well for them.

And it looks to me that Trump who now seems very close to Likud is pretty eager for a confrontation with Iran. The IRGC will cut up rough by all means available.

 

[Pickman's model]

...just playing devil's advocate here but does anyone think that ISIS are definitely not interested in perpetrating a mass casualty event in the USA if they had the opportunity to do so...and that if they were so interested they would prefer to use a "soldier" infiltrated as a refugee ...?

if you're going to ask a question why not make it one to which you can give a meaningful answer?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Iran really isn't a weak 3rd world country.

 

[Pickman's model]

trump's hands are out of proportion to his body

 

[teqniq]

 

[teqniq]

 

[not-bono-ever]

Iran = Terrorist outrages vs Resistance actions - Its all about your perspective innit.

I don't necessarily support either BTW

 

[mauvais]

The thing about technology is...well, two things.

1. It's hideously complex. So complex, in fact, that nobody without a fair amount of knowledge and experience could even begin to realise how complex it is. I suspect that if someone posted just the top-level code to do an oauth login using Python, 95% of people's eyes would glaze over; show them the thousands of lines of library code, the stuff that talks to sockets across the 'net, the intriciacies of TCP/IP, the database queries, etc., and their heads would explode.
2. It looks so simple. So they assume it's easy - they log into Facebook and that's simple, so they assume that it works in a simple way: they don't see the layers of abstraction, the levels of code that allow an application on a computer pretty much anywhere in the world to connect to a server in North America which runs code to accept their credentials, validate them via some other server somewhere else in the world, and then assemble a web page to send back...

So the combination of those two things makes tech an ideal candidate for the Dunning Krueger effect - that thing where the less knowledgeable in a domain you are, the more your perception of knowledge is out of whack with the reality. I suspect Donald Trump (and quite a lot of his associates - just look at the 9/11 troofers on building design ) is a walking case study in the D-K effect.

All that may be individually true, but doesn't really matter. Technology is a pyramid of abstractions. You never need to know everything.

I'm a software engineer producing Android applications for a living, but I know almost nothing about, in rough order downwards, the Java compiler, the Linux subsystem, the detail of TCP/IP, mobile processor design or machine instructions. I don't need it. Acting as a consultant, I don't even need to know about Android, just whether someone else can probably build whatever you want at an mutually acceptable price.

In this case, the case of inspecting Internet histories, all you need to know for feasibility is (a) whether the Internet is a neat and tidy place, and (b) whether accessing it is itself neat and tidy, verifiable and so on. So the only domain knowledge you need is having used the Internet a bit. Now, even if you hadn't, that's no disaster, as long as you defer and delegate to someone who does know, and don't just try and muddle through that ignorance by pretending.

 

[october_lost]

Which countries and why...

In the 40 years to 2015, not a single American was killed on US soil by citizens from any of the seven countries targeted - Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen - according to research by the conservative-leaning Cato Institute.

But the same research shows that in the same period nearly 3000 Americans were killed by citizens of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Turkey — most victims of the September 11 attacks.

And oops, wouldn't you know it, Trump has multimillion-dollar business operations in all those countries.

In 2015, he registered eight hotel-related companies in Saudi Arabia, according to The Washington Post; in Turkey, two luxury towers in Istanbul are licensed to use his name; in Egypt, he has two companies; and in the UAE, he has naming and management deals for two golf courses.

 

[Pickman's model]

Trial Balloon for a Coup?

I hear gulen's name being floated

 

[bimble]

On Naked Capitalism Nomi Prins: Trump Hearts Goldman as the Bank Continues Its Washington Conquest
It's let the Goldman Times Roll in Trump's DC.

Interesting vampire squid cartoon.

She talks about " the traffic pile up of Goldman personalities in Trump’s corner " but doesn't mention Steve Bannon at all, who also worked there, which seems peculiar.

Bannon's musings, looking back on what he learnt whilst at Goldman Sachs:
"We’re not conspiracy-theory guys, but there’s certainly — and I could see this when I worked at Goldman Sachs — there are people in New York that feel closer to people in London and in Berlin than they do to people in Kansas and in Colorado, and they have more of this elite mentality that they’re going to dictate to everybody how the world’s going to be run.."

I wonder how that will work out. The chief strategist and (for the moment) most trusted advisor has very different priorities from these other ex-goldman bankers whom she warns us to beware of.

 

[not-bono-ever]

beware of the bad capitalists