What stupid shit has Trump done today?

[CRI]

I have not yet seen anywhere an explanation of what the fuck is going in that picture where they're all touching the glowing white orb: Anyone?

I read somewhere it was the same as cutting a big red ribbon with giant scissors, but without the smiling, or children singing, or any women . . .

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Informed Comment Trump on Islam: Neo-Orientalism and anti-Shi’ism

Prof Cole on Trump's speech. What I noticed was he'd dumped "Radical Islamic Terrorism" for "Islamist Extremism". The former was a fecking stupid formulation likely to piss off GWOT allies. The latter fits far better with the KSA criminalising political Islam and indeed all forms of dissent. Trump unlike Obama is good with that. This was the purest form of jingoistic pandering to a wealthy client. It could have been written by Prince Mo.

The Princes are Trump's kinda guys and they are obviously hugely relieved to have a transactional guy in the Whitehouse. Uncle Sam once more has an eager to be greased palm. Such luxury client service is in return for what's really a huge bribe of $110 Billion in arms deals. Almost twice as big as the last US mega deal with the KSA. No 10, which has done more than its fair share of toadying on behalf of British arms dealers to the KSA will be envious. It'll play pretty well with US punters as that's a lot of jobs and featherbedded retirements assured. The Muslim bashing may have pleased a section of his base but bringing home the bacon is very much what Trump was elected to do.

 

[killer b]

Those tweets just keep coming back to haunt him, huh.

 

[InfoBurner]

Those tweets just keep coming back to haunt him, huh.

Is that genuine ? What Orb was he on about in 2015 ? Had he just discovered 'Little fluffy clouds' ?

 

[Pickman's model]

Is that genuine ? What Orb was he on about in 2015 ? Had he just discovered 'Little fluffy clouds' ?

c4u

 

[killer b]

Is that genuine ? What Orb was he on about in 2015 ? Had he just discovered 'Little fluffy clouds' ?

100% genuine.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

 

[bimble]

The uncropped version of that picture is even weirder.

 

[DotCommunist]

somebody should shop it and put one of these plasma balls in:

 

[Idris2002]

 

[chandlerp]

"You are a unique personality that is capable of doing the impossible," Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in Saudi Arabia for a summit on fighting terrorism, told the U.S. leader on Sunday.

"I agree," Trump replied.

Escalating probes rattle Trump and his aides

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

I know, I know: low content posting, twitter yadayada, but this made me laugh

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

 

[bimble]

while we're here posting stuff from the internets;

 

[ViolentPanda]

View attachment 107318

Trump loses another hand-measuring contest, this time against the prince with the smallest hands in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

 

[TomUS]

Bizarre. Blaming Iran for terrorism while in Saudi.

 

[8den]

 

[CRI]

But it is a meme-maker's dream!

 

[CRI]

But it is a meme-maker's dream!

 

[coley]

Given that CRI is a fanatical backer of Clinton, is the message here that taking bribes off the Saudis is actually alright and that the misstep here was to criticise it in the first place?

Oh bugger off, you sound just like TTT, never mind what I'm doing, look at what Obama/Clinton did, or in this case, what HC might have done.

 

[J Ed]

Oh bugger off, you sound just like TTT, never mind what I'm doing, look at what Obama/Clinton did, or in this case, what HC might have done.

Might?

 

[CrabbedOne]

On SST Is President Trump now Mukhtar of America?

How Col Lang sees the Trump spectacle in Saudi: a well choreographed very Middle Eastern celebration of The House of Saud buying a foreign potentate. Trump says to the world on behalf of Uncle Sam "Fuck you pay me!" shocking slow witted Europeans but the Saudis understand the required transaction entirely.

There's a story the Princes tell. When Nixon was in power the Saudi King sent an envoy to his office. Pleasantries were exchanged and the envoy left. He did not take the bulging bag he brought. That remained in the Oval Office stuffed with a huge bribe. Not a word was said about it but Nixon then knows who is boss. Now this tale is probably a simplistic fantasy but it is a widely believed in the Magic Kingdom. It's how the world is seen to be managed by their wealthy leaders. It's not a bad guide to understanding the transactional nature of the KSA-US relationship since the 30s. Sweet oil deal used to be how US protection was bought now its vast arms deals with US military industrial complex.

With Trump there is no need for such discretion. The western ways of brown envelopes and back room deals can be discarded. The great tribal warlord accepts the honour and burden of payment for service publicly. The only question is will he be a reliable mamluk? With the capricious Trump you never know.

 

[existentialist]

Might?

Nice. Semantic wriggling to avoid the question. You really are a class act.

 

[J Ed]

Nice. Semantic wriggling to avoid the question. You really are a class act.

There was a question?

 

[CrabbedOne]

On TNI Trump's Riyadh Speech: Bowing to the Saudi Regime

...
Trump’s speech evidently was crafted to appeal to a very narrow audience: the Saudi regime, along with some similar ruling brethren in places such as the United Arab Emirates, while coloring the appeal with some distinctively Trumpian touches. The kind of compliments that had pride of place in the speech—up near the front, along with Trump’s usual and inevitable assertions about how back home he had “created almost a million new jobs” and “lifted the burdens on American industry”—focused on glitz: the “grandeur” of the conference hall, the Saudis’ “soaring achievements in architecture,” and the UAE’s having reached “incredible heights with glass and steel”. These are not the sorts of observations likely to have much resonance with the man on the street in Riyadh, let alone the streets of countless other majority Muslim cities. The narrowness of the appeal in the speech exacerbated the narrowness in the selection of Saudi Arabia as the place for a first presidential visit that was supposedly representative of an entire religion. Certainly there will be little positive resonance among the whole Shia branch of Islam.

Speaking of Shia, the speech had, of course, the obligatory excoriation of Iran. That passage reads like the response to a “cue the anti-Iran invective” direction given to the speechwriters; it is awkwardly divorced from the context of both the surrounding parts of the speech itself and what has been transpiring in the real world. After talking about violent extremism that is mostly the extremist Sunni variety spearheaded by ISIS, the anti-Iran passage asserts that Iran is “the government” that gives “terrorists” everything they need to do their evil deeds, assertions oblivious to how Iran is on the opposite side from ISIS and al-Qaeda throughout the region, including Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.
...

Pillar on Trumps Saudi speech.

 

[CRI]

Hardly surprised the Trump team's budget doesn't add up.

Will the Trump administration double-count its magic asterisk?

Press reports indicate that President Donald Trump’s budget, scheduled for release tomorrow, will assert that administration policies can deliver a balanced budget in 10 years by combining sharp cuts to anti-poverty and safety net programs with growth from unspecified or minimally detailed tax and regulatory reforms. According to these reports, the forthcoming budget assumes that the rate of economic growth will reach 3 percent by 2021. In contrast, the Congressional Budget Office projects a growth rate of 1.9 percent for the same year.

Assuming large growth effects from policies that have yet to be specified in detail certainly qualifies as fantasy budgeting or, in Washington terms, a magic asterisk. But what’s even more striking about the anticipated budget plan is the expected assertion that revenue-neutral tax reform will contribute to deficit reduction. Administration officials and congressionalRepublicans have been explicit that they plan to credit the revenue feedback from any growth delivered by tax reform against the cost of tax reform. Yet counting the revenue feedback from growth in assessing whether a tax reform proposal increases or decreases revenues means that there is no additional revenue to reduce the deficit below the level that would be realized under current law.

In short, the Trump administration seems prepared to double-count the gains from its magic asterisk.

 

[CRI]

US press left out in the cold again.

Tillerson held the press conference with the Saudi foreign minister, Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir, but it appeared that only foreign reporters were present. Journalists from the United States were left scrambling to figure out what happened.

The State Department later apologized, adding that it couldn't notify the press in time.

 

[DotCommunist]

so is it the russians or the saudis that own trump for this week? It so hard to keep up. Next time he has a slash I expect some blog posts about how he is now owned by Armitage Shanks

 

[bimble]

InfoWars have now been given White House press credentials.

 

[CRI]

InfoWars have now been given White House press credentials.

*surprised face*

'-_-'