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The Trump presidency

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Perhaps Trump's just high on life as he competitively balls out Aussie PM Turnball down the blower.

Expect a lot of this; it's how he does business.
 
CrabbedOne said:

Perhaps Trump's just high on life as he competitively balls out Aussie PM Turnball down the blower.

Expect a lot of this; it's how he does business.
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He's teetotal, I have to say I have never heard of coke users who don't drink. Not that they don't exist, but I think that trying to explain Trump through drugs is an attempt to rationalise his behaviour somehow is a fool's errand.
 
CRI said:
Summary of today . . .

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Orange Wednesdays

And to think I used to miss them....!
 
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Two major U.S. rules aimed at curbing corruption and pollution in the energy sector may be entirely wiped from the books by next week, after the Republican-led House of Representatives on Wednesday voted to repeal them.

The Senate is expected to take up repealing the rules, both of which were years in the making, as soon as Thursday.
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Required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, the Securities and Exchange Commission's "extraction rule" was approved this summer to require companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp and Chevron Corp to publicly state the taxes and other fees they pay to governments.

Exxon, and other major energy corporations, fought for years to keep the rule from seeing the light of day. After a series of legal battles the SEC in June 2016 finally completed the rule, which supporters say can help expose questionable financial ties U.S. companies may have with foreign governments.

During Wednesday's debate, Representative Maxine Waters, the senior Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, raised concerns that Exxon's CEO during those fights was Rex Tillerson, just confirmed in the top diplomatic post of Secretary of State. During Tillerson's confirmation hearings, he raised Democrats' hackles by saying he did not know Exxon lobbied against U.S. sanctions on Russia, where he did business for years.

Republicans say the rule is burdensome and costly for energy companies, and also duplicates other long-standing regulations.

On the House floor Republican Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the Financial Services Committee, called the rule part of "a radical leftist elitist agenda against carbon-based jobs."

The stream buffer rule is intended to lessen the amount of waste from mountain-top removal coal mining deposited in local waterways.

Republican lawmakers, though, say it is hurting coal jobs by placing unworkable limits on the industry. Democrats, on the other hand, say it cuts down on water pollution.
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U.S. House axes rules to prevent corruption, pollution
 
On SWJ Bringing COIN to the Airport: On the Effectiveness of the “Muslim Ban”
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To gain the support of the population, effective COIN requires a base of trust from the population. As General Mattis wrote, "Commanders must follow through on any commitments made and, conversely, must avoid making any commitment that cannot be kept. The key is to avoid creating unattainable expectations and subsequent disappointment."[xvii] In a rare bit of excitement in an otherwise sober manual, Mattis returns to this point, “WHATEVER YOU SAY YOU WILL DO, YOU MUST DO.”[xviii] Given that the green card and refugee admission processes take years, failure to keep promises to those who have completed the long process to gain entry into the U.S. is ineffective COIN.

Translators form a key subset of people for whom trust must be inviolate. As Mattis wrote, "Translators are an invaluable asset...Take care of them; they are more than just mouthpieces, they are direct ties to understanding the local populace and force multipliers. They are generally committed and highly responsive when made a part of the team and treated with respect."[xix]

The Order fails to follow the lessons of COIN distilled above. To extend Mao’s analogy, the Order, by essentially treating all people of the same seven nations as identical, fails to distinguish between the fish and the water. This is no way to build the requisite trust of the majority of the population, especially with the “invaluable” translators who have actively assisted U.S. forces.

Moreover, although the Order itself does not say “Islam” or “Muslim” verbatim, its intent is clear. In 2015, Candidate Trump called for a “complete and total shutdown on Muslims entering the United States.”[xx] In drafting the Order, presidential advisor Rudy Giuliani stated, “the president tasked him with creating a "Muslim ban" that could work legally."[xxi] There are over a billion Muslims worldwide, and a broad ban makes the water in which insurgents could hide into an ocean. As would be expected from a group of over a billion people, the worldwide Muslim community is diverse. Over 50 years ago, Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual godfather of Al Qaeda and ISIS, wrote, “a Muslim has no nationality except his belief.”[xxii] The Order appears to accord with Qutb’s extremist worldview, which makes it more difficult to make the inroads into the population needed for effective COIN. People who do not trust the U.S. will not provide it with intelligence.[xxiii]
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My bold, it's typical Trump this order. He just loves to welch especially if the contract wasn't of his making. That his Art Of The Deal.

Also quotes Gen Flynn from a past life:
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An effective approach needs to separate the fish (our enemies) from the water (the population).

An alternative way to fight these enemies is to apply the lessons of COIN on a global scale. This is not simply a matter of killing our enemies; indeed, as General Flynn wrote, "merely killing insurgents usually serves to multiply enemies rather than subtract them… The Soviets experienced this reality in the 1980s, when despite killing hundreds of thousands of Afghans, they faced a larger insurgency near the end of the war than they did at the beginning."[xxvi] Indiscriminate targeting, whether with bombs, drones, or bans, is counterproductive because, once again, it harms our goal to “persuade the population.”[xxvii]

In COIN, “killing the enemy is easy. Finding him is often nearly impossible. Intelligence and operations are complementary."[xxviii] Thus, a better alternative needs to rely on better intelligence. In building better intelligence, it is worth reiterating General Flynn’s point, "local people who are far better than outsiders at spotting insurgents and their bombs and providing indications and warnings “left of boom” (before IEDs blow up)."[xxix]
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This inept approach is all going to blow up in Trump's big orange face. We are just “left of boom”.
 
Trump's pick for the EPA, Myron Ebell the “number one enemy of climate change alarmism” says Trump is working towards its abolition, devolving key roles to states.
Myron Ebell – who headed up Trump’s EPA transition team, said that agency’s environmental research, reports and data would not be removed from its website, but climate education material might be changed or “withdrawn”.

Ebell also signalled that a review of fuel efficiency standards for cars, rushed through by the departing Obama administration, is likely to be reopened despite its contribution to the US’s pledged emissions cuts in the Paris agreement.
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Ebell has described the environmental movement as “the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world.”
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Donald Trump 'taking steps to abolish Environmental Protection Agency'
 
On Political Violence @ A Glance Worried About NATO? Here Are Three Things to Watch
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The US 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division based out of Fort Carson, Colo., began arriving in Poland earlier this month. The Obama administration intended the US deployment “to be a continual, year-round presence of an armored brigade in Europe.” Will the Trump administration stick with this plan, or will it seek to change it? And if it does look to change US commitments of funding and personnel in Eastern Europe, will other NATO members follow suit?

For now, one thing is certain: Europe will be watching Washington closely on each of these fronts in the coming months.
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Other points to watch: who gets to be assistant secretary of defense (ASD) for international security affairs and if Trump attends the NATO summit in July.
 

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But what will be going through that Arabic translator’s mind the next time his or her supervisor says they have to stay late into the night on a priority tasking? What will a case officer be thinking when he or she is asked to move with their family to a part of the world where Americans are reviled and viewed as enemies of the state? Will a promising young gay officer decide not to take that critical overseas assignment because their partner could not accompany them as a legitimate family member? And what will a rising young analyst think before considering doing shift work on the production staff for the presidential daily brief that Trump has made clear he doesn’t value?
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J Ed said:
He's teetotal, I have to say I have never heard of coke users who don't drink. Not that they don't exist, but I think that trying to explain Trump through drugs is an attempt to rationalise his behaviour somehow is a fool's errand.
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Probably not coke and he probably wouldn't be very different either way, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a tell-all book from Trump's private doctor a few years now disclosing a whole lot of different shit he had been on in the early weeks of his presidency.

He's long been rumored to be on phentermine, a diet pill that has side effects including insomnia, trouble thinking clearly, and a "false or unusual sense of well-being."
 

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The phone call between the leaders was intended to patch things up between the new president and his ally. The two have had a series of public spats over Trump's determination to have Mexico pay for the planned border wall, something Mexico steadfastly refuses to agree to.

"You have a bunch of bad hombres down there," Trump told Pena Nieto, according to the excerpt given to AP. "You aren't doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn't, so I just might send them down to take care of it."

A person with access to the official transcript of the phone call provided only that portion of the conversation to The Associated Press. The person gave it on condition of anonymity because the administration did not make the details of the call public.

The Mexican website Aristegui Noticias on Tuesday published a similar account of the phone call, based on the reporting of journalist Dolia Estevez. The report described Trump as humiliating Pena Nieto in a confrontational conversation.

Mexico's foreign relations department said the report was "based on absolute falsehoods."
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Mexico's leader started out making nice with Trump during his campaign and now has assumed the position of a prison bitch. Watch and learn PM May.
 
CrabbedOne said:

Mexico's leader started out making nice with Trump during his campaign and now has assumed the position of a prison bitch. Watch and learn PM May.
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Whoa! For more "diplomacy" -

No ‘G’day, mate’: On call with Australian prime minister, Trump badgers and brags

"Even in conversations marred by hostile exchanges, Trump manages to work in references to his election accomplishments. U.S. officials said that he used his calls with Turnbull and Peña Nieto to mention his election win or the size of the crowd at his inauguration."

Insane.
 

Here's and idea: swap President Trump with Iraq's PM Abadi.

Trump gets a torture friendly, terrorist infested, corrupt petro-state to despotically exploit which seems to be on his life goals.

America gets an experienced, tiny handed, honestly bald President who actually quite likes the place and isn't likely to start WWIII on Twitter.
iraqi-pm-haider-al-abadi-iran-isis-talks.jpg

He a whizz at fixing elevators as well.
 
Yossarian said:
Did anybody even have Australia in the "Which country will Trump clash with next" sweepstakes? My money's on Japan next, followed by Canada over the weekend, and you just know he's cooking up something special for the French.
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I'd go for a long odds punt: the RoI, Enda will be needing the old ear plugs.

But Kenny can take a whupping. Here's Sarkosy trying out the Vulcan Death Grip.
enda-keeny.jpg
 
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"Americans should not take the current international order for granted," the retired general said. "It did not will itself into existence. We created it. Likewise, it is not naturally self-sustaining. We have sustained it. If we stop doing so it will fray and eventually collapse. This is precisely what some of our adversaries seek to encourage.”

Petraeus told the committee that "conventional aggression" may get US adversaries like Russia "a bit of land on its periphery," but the real fight is more fundamental. "The real center of gravity is the political will of the major democratic powers to defend Euro-Atlantic institutions like NATO and the [European Union]," Petraeus said. "That is why Russia is working tenaciously to sow doubt in the legitimacy of these institutions and our entire democratic way of life."
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Not so much a sneak attack more a Size 10 boot to the plums.
 
J Ed said:
He's teetotal, I have to say I have never heard of coke users who don't drink. Not that they don't exist, but I think that trying to explain Trump through drugs is an attempt to rationalise his behaviour somehow is a fool's errand.
Click to expand...

Times like this, we need the Inebriati:
 
In The Guardian Trump administration 'officially putting Iran on notice', says Michael Flynn
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The announcement was not accompanied by any change in the US military stance in the region, nor any immediate additional deployments.

“We saw the statement as well,” said a spokesman for US central command, which runs operations in the Middle East. “This is still at the policy level, and we are waiting for something to come down the line. We have not been asked to change anything operationally in the region.”

The Pentagon was informed before the announcement and the defense secretary, James Mattis, prevailed upon Flynn to soften his language about Iran from an earlier version. At the time of the Flynn’s statement, Mattis was en route to Asia for an official visit to Japan and South Korea.

Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group in Washington, said: “It’s either an empty threat or a clear statement of intent to go to war with Iran. Both are reckless and dangerous ... In an attempt to look strong, the administration could stumble into a war that would make the Afghan and Iraqi conflicts look like a walk in the park.”
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My bold, so Gen Flynn's original statement was a wee bit more aggressively worded.

Gen Mattis is really no friend of Iran, he was fired by Obama for wanting a tougher line, so I assume it was flat out bonkers. Note CENTCOM goes "meh".
 
CrabbedOne said:
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'...And then the SEALs will come in PEW PEW PEW! They're the best, and Al Qaeda will be like "Oh no, it's the SEALs!" but they won't actually say anything because they'll be dead 'cos the SEALS will have sent in the laser sharks...'
'Mr President, we don't have any laser sharks'
'What? Our army is the worst! I want laser sharks, right now! The best laser sharks!'
 
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