What stupid shit has Trump done today?

[J Ed]

Don’t Fly Like a GA-06

Jon Ossoff’s campaign to represent Georgia’s sixth congressional district was run on the assumption that an anti-Trump message combined with one about fiscal responsibility could win, appealing to the better impulses of people outraged by Donald Trump but who nonetheless support reining in wasteful spending.

One of Ossoff’s more well-circulated ads (entitled “Table”) found him sitting alone at a kitchen table, aping a line from Margaret Thatcher to bemoan how “both parties in Congress waste a lot of your money.” In the folksy imagery and call to reduce the deficit, he invoked a trope that’s been circulated for years by pollster Frank Luntz and other right-wing goons to justify painful spending cuts: if hard-working American families have to make tough choices about their finances, then why doesn’t Washington?

The line — as several economists have pointed out — is nonsense. Households do not have the power to set interest rates and print money; the US government does. But from a political perspective, the logic is even more troublingly misguided. That “fiscal responsibility” is a popular, common-sense stance widespread among voters is a prevailing myth of neoliberal economics, and one now embraced across party lines.

It also has no discernible base of support with actual voters. Beating the GOP will mean taking that message to heart, and giving voters a bold vision to support rather than status quo austerity politics and a madman to revile.

Ossoff’s ideal constituent was a small business owner who probably went to college, believes in gay marriage, and is offended by Trump’s vulgarity. These sorts of people may be more numerous in districts like Georgia Six — 72 percent white, highly educated, and with a median income that’s more than $20,000 above the national average — but not in numbers nearly great enough to have made the difference come Election Day.

A recent study from Lee Drutman at the New America Foundation finds that the kind of socially liberal, fiscally conservative voters that the Democrats have spent years orbiting their campaigns around are virtually nonexistent. In a map of 2016 voters along an XY graph of economic and social concerns, respectively, no voters from either party fall on the far right of the economic axis, with Clinton backers clustered on the far left and Trump’s straddling the left and right of center.

“The primary conflict structuring the two parties involves questions of national identity, race, and morality,” he observes, “while the traditional conflict over economics, though still important, is less divisive now than it used to be.” Among the study’s other findings? That “in both parties,” Drutman writes, “the donor class is both more conservative on economic issues and more liberal on social issues, as compared to the rest of the party.” Relatedly, the one thing Clinton and Trump voters do tend to agree on is that politics is a rigged against them.

While it would be foolhardy to read too much into either one study or the actions of one small slice of the electorate — and no single belief should guide a principled left politics — the upshot of these data points is pretty clear: the Democratic Party will continue to wither into irrelevance if it continues to swing right in an appeal to some fictional, establishment-friendly center, and to paint Trump as an abhorrence to an America that was already great before he got elected.

 

[coley]

What stupid Shit has Trump done?

Appointed this shitstain to head up an agency within the Department of Energy.

View attachment 110039View attachment 110040

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Have a gander.
Louisiana Joins Compact Which Brought Out-of-State Cops to Dakota Access Protests

 

[coley]

Yeah because there's not been any increase in inequality outside the US/UK/Canada.

France, Germany, NZ, Australia, etc all paragons of social democracy none of that nasty neo-liberalism in those countries.

Your point being?

 

[redsquirrel]

I would have thought it was pretty obvious - that your "point" was nonsense.

PR is no guarantor of greater democracy and FPTP no barrier to it. That what matters is the form of the democracy (delegate, economic) not the electoral system used.

 

[coley]

I would have thought it was pretty obvious - that your "point" was nonsense.

PR is no guarantor of greater democracy and FPTP no barrier to it. That what matters is the form of the democracy (delegate, economic) not the electoral system used.

Bugger off, it's hard enough getting people off their arses to vote with the current system, at least basic PR would be easily understandable as opposed to your 'nonsense' suggestions.

 

[redsquirrel]

Where's the evidence that PR encourages greater participation than FPTP? Ignoring for the moment why that is a desirable thing.

But you keep posting rubbish and excusing your own (lack of) actions by blaming everybody else. It's all their fault isn't it.

EDIT:
Greece 2015 turnout 56.6%

And of course no groups have used/currently use delegates

 

[CRI]

Have a gander.
Louisiana Joins Compact Which Brought Out-of-State Cops to Dakota Access Protests

Sadly, not the least bit surprised

 

[CRI]

Under pressure, Western tech firms bow to Russian demands to share cyber secrets

(Reuters) - Western technology companies, including Cisco, IBM and SAP, are acceding to demands by Moscow for access to closely guarded product security secrets, at a time when Russia has been accused of a growing number of cyber attacks on the West, a Reuters investigation has found.

Russian authorities are asking Western tech companies to allow them to review source code for security products such as firewalls, anti-virus applications and software containing encryption before permitting the products to be imported and sold in the country. The requests, which have increased since 2014, are ostensibly done to ensure foreign spy agencies have not hidden any "backdoors" that would allow them to burrow into Russian systems.

But those inspections also provide the Russians an opportunity to find vulnerabilities in the products' source code - instructions that control the basic operations of computer equipment - current and former U.S. officials and security experts said.

While a number of U.S. firms say they are playing ball to preserve their entree to Russia's huge tech market, at least one U.S. firm, Symantec, told Reuters it has stopped cooperating with the source code reviews over security concerns. That halt has not been previously reported.

Symantec said one of the labs inspecting its products was not independent enough from the Russian government.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Politico ‘Trump Is What Happens When a Political Party Abandons Ideas’

...
In the 14 years since then, I have watched from the sidelines as Republican policy analysis and research have virtually disappeared altogether, replaced with sound bites and talking points. The Heritage Foundation morphed into Heritage Action for America, ceasing to do any real research and losing all its best policy experts as it transformed from an august center whose focus was the study and development of public policy into one devoted mainly to amplifying political campaign slogans. Talk radio and Fox News, where no idea too complicated for a mind with a sixth-grade education is ever heard, became the tail wagging the conservative dog. Conservative magazines like National Review, which once boasted world-class intellectuals such as James Burnham and Russell Kirk among its columnists, jumped on the bandwagon, dumbing itself down to appeal to the common man, who is deemed to be the font of all wisdom. (For example, the magazine abandoned the ecumenical approach to immigration of Reagan, who granted amnesty to undocumentedimmigrants in 1986, to a rigid anti-immigrant policy largely indistinguishable from the one Trump ran on.)

One real-world result of the lobotomizing of conservative intellectualism is that when forced to produce a replacement for Obamacare—something Republican leaders had sworn they had in their pocket for eight years—there was nothing. Not just no legislation—no workable concept that adhered to the many promises Republicans had made, like coverage for pre-existing conditions and the assurance that nobody would lose their coverage. You’d think that House Speaker Ryan could have found a staff slot for one person to be working on an actual Obamacare replacement all these years, just in case.

With hindsight, it’s no surprise that the glorification of anti-elitism and anti-intellectualism that has been rampant on the right at least since the election of Barack Obama would give rise to someone like Trump. Anyone who ever read Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here,” which imagined a fascist dictator taking power in 1930s America, recognizes that Trump is the real-life embodiment of Senator Buzz Windrip—a know-nothing populist who becomes president by promising something for everyone, with no clue or concern for how to actually accomplish it. Windrip was“vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his ‘ideas’ almost idiotic,” Lewis wrote. “Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only the wings of a windmill.”
...

My bold, of course pointy headed Republicans produced some pretty terrible ideas as well back in the day. Obamacare is basically one of them adopted in the frustrated hope of bipartisan approval and lacking it now doomed to be dismantled. However managing to craft a healthcare bill that's even more unpopular while obsessing very visibly on elite tax cuts does suggest dysfunction. It's not just Trump. He's the boil on the GOP's arse that's a symptom of something else. It's a product of too often lazily running after the baser instincts of their voters and endless silly cultural warfare. That clearly works electorally as they've swept all arms of government but it's a pretty strange destination to be aiming at: I have a dream that one day this nation will have slightly wealthier rich folks and a lower average lifespan.

 

[CRI]

The 2016 presidential contest was awash with charges that the fix was in: Republican Donald Trump repeatedly claimed that the election was rigged against him, while Democrats have accused the Russians of stacking the odds in Trump’s favor.

Less attention was paid to manipulation that occurred not during the presidential race, but before it — in the drawing of lines for hundreds of U.S. and state legislative seats. The result, according to an Associated Press analysis: Republicans had a real advantage.

The AP scrutinized the outcomes of all 435 U.S. House races and about 4,700 state House and Assembly seats up for election last year using a new statistical method of calculating partisan advantage. It’s designed to detect cases in which one party may have won, widened or retained its grip on power through political gerrymandering.

The analysis found four times as many states with Republican-skewed state House or Assembly districts than Democratic ones. Among the two dozen most populated states that determine the vast majority of Congress, there were nearly three times as many with Republican-tilted U.S. House districts.

Traditional battlegrounds such as Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida and Virginia were among those with significant Republican advantages in their U.S. or state House races. All had districts drawn by Republicans after the last Census in 2010.

The AP analysis also found that Republicans won as many as 22 additional U.S. House seats over what would have been expected based on the average vote share in congressional districts across the country. That helped provide the GOP with a comfortable majority over Democrats instead of a narrow one.

 

[coley]

Sadly, not the least bit surprised

Choke off enviromental protests, without public outrage, than we all know which protestors are next.

 

[coley]

On Politico ‘Trump Is What Happens When a Political Party Abandons Ideas’
My bold, of course pointy headed Republicans produced some pretty terrible ideas as well back in the day. Obamacare is basically one of them adopted in the frustrated hope of bipartisan approval and lacking it now doomed to be dismantled. However managing to craft a healthcare bill that's even more unpopular while obsessing very visibly on elite tax cuts does suggest dysfunction. It's not just Trump. He's the boil on the GOP's arse that's a symptom of something else. It's a product of too often lazily running after the baser instincts of their voters and endless silly cultural warfare. That clearly works electorally as they've swept all arms of government but it's a pretty strange destination to be aiming at: I have a dream that one day this nation will have slightly wealthier rich folks and a lower average lifespan.

The Dems are as guilty as the GOP in trying to appeal to a common denominator, but it's a common fault in Western democracies.

 

[coley]

The 2016 presidential contest was awash with charges that the fix was in: Republican Donald Trump repeatedly claimed that the election was rigged against him, while Democrats have accused the Russians of stacking the odds in Trump’s favor.

Less attention was paid to manipulation that occurred not during the presidential race, but before it — in the drawing of lines for hundreds of U.S. and state legislative seats. The result, according to an Associated Press analysis: Republicans had a real advantage.

The AP scrutinized the outcomes of all 435 U.S. House races and about 4,700 state House and Assembly seats up for election last year using a new statistical method of calculating partisan advantage. It’s designed to detect cases in which one party may have won, widened or retained its grip on power through political gerrymandering.

The analysis found four times as many states with Republican-skewed state House or Assembly districts than Democratic ones. Among the two dozen most populated states that determine the vast majority of Congress, there were nearly three times as many with Republican-tilted U.S. House districts.

Traditional battlegrounds such as Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida and Virginia were among those with significant Republican advantages in their U.S. or state House races. All had districts drawn by Republicans after the last Census in 2010.

The AP analysis also found that Republicans won as many as 22 additional U.S. House seats over what would have been expected based on the average vote share in congressional districts across the country. That helped provide the GOP with a comfortable majority over Democrats instead of a narrow one.

Not up to speed on the US system of 'gerrymandering' but why didn't the Dems indulge in a bit of it themselves when they had the chance, in the early days of the Obama presidency?

 

[CRI]

Not up to speed on the US system of 'gerrymandering' but why didn't the Dems indulge in a bit of it themselves when they had the chance, in the early days of the Obama presidency?

Not necessarily. This was in Obama's first term:

Now That’s What I Call Gerrymandering!
Americans didn't intend to elect a Republican majority to the House of Representatives. Thanks to GOP-engineered redistricting, they did.

Gerrymanders, Part 1: Busting the both-sides-do-it myth

The Great Gerrymander of 2012

Using statistical tools that are common in fields like my own, neuroscience, I have found strong evidence that this historic aberration arises from partisan disenfranchisement. Although gerrymandering is usually thought of as a bipartisan offense, the rather asymmetrical results may surprise you.

 

[tim]

The Dems are as guilty as the GOP in trying to appeal to a common denominator, but it's a common fault in Western democracies.

It's probably not so different in Eastern democracies.

 

[CRI]

Shocking numbers: Medicaid cuts threaten over a million Americans in nursing homes

Vice President Mike Pence even audaciously claimed in a tweet that the bill will “replace Obamacare w/ system based on personal responsibility.” As if those millions of Americans — including children, the poor, the elderly, and the disabled — who rely on Medicaid simply need to take “personal responsibility” for their care and all will be well.

As it stands, a person has to pay for their care until they have no more than about 5K I think, including property, before Medicaid will cover them. And they also have to be unable to do almost anything for themselves to qualify.

If someone has complex health and care issues, that doesn't take long. Even people who weren't bad off, owned houses, had pensions and savings, usually end up with Medicaid paying for their nursing home if they live long enough.

And that meagre safety net is about to vanish, probably.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On The Hill Juan Williams: Trump refills the swamp

...
A Monmouth University poll taken last month found that 32 percent of Americans said Trump is “actually making the swamp worse.” In fact, 35 percent said he has done nothing to change Washington’s swamp culture. Only 24 percent said he is making good on his promise to drain the swamp.

And now the Trump administration is stirring outrage among Republicans with a recent memo to federal agency employees instructing them not to answer questions from members of Congress unless the request comes from a committee chairman.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R- Iowa) fired off an angry letter to the Trump administration calling their claim “nonsense.”

"Oversight brings transparency, and transparency brings accountability,” Grassley wrote. “And, the opposite is true. Shutting down oversight requests doesn’t drain the swamp, Mr. President. It floods the swamp.”
...

I do wonder about that 24% seeing a less swampy DC under Trump surrounded by greedy billionaires, Goldman folk and the hangers on of hedge funders as he shoos profits towards his family firm. When you elect a compulsively bullshitting Queens Real Estate guy maybe you just expect a much richer waft of Swampy?

 

[spring-peeper]

Interesting. 83% of Canadians trusted Obama and only 22% trust Trump. Nice to see we are not alone with our dislike. The only two countries that trust Trump over Obama are Russia and Israel.

The survey’s steepest slides in the view of Trump came in European allies such as Sweden, Netherlands and Germany, and in South Korea. The decline was less pronounced in some majority-Muslim countries such as Turkey, Tunisia and Jordan, partly because approval for Obama was already low. For instance, only 14 per cent of Jordanians had trust in Obama at the end of his tenure, compared with 9 percent for Trump. By comparison, 93 per cent of Swedes had confidence in Obama and only 10 percent feel the same way about Trump.

Trump was the lowest rated of the world’s major leaders. The survey said a median of 42 per cent had confidence in Germany’s Angela Merkel, 28 per cent in China’s Xi Jinping, and 27 per cent in Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Most Canadians distrust Donald Trump, and they're far from alone: poll

 

[1%er]

Oh dear, CNN again caught out with there fake news as the Donald has been saying.

A senior producer at CNN has described the intense speculation that Russia aided the Trump presidential campaign as “bullshit.” Filmed on a hidden camera, CNN producer John Bonifield admits the organization’s anti-Russia reporting is purely for ratings. “It’s mostly bullsh*t right now. Like, we don’t have any big giant proof,” Bonifield tells a reporter in secretly-filmed footage. “So why is CNN constantly like, ‘Russia this, Russia that?’” the journalist asks, to which Bonifield responds, “Because it’s ratings.” “Our CIA is doing shit all the time, we’re out there trying to manipulate governments,” Bonifield says. “I think the President is probably right to say, like, look, you are witch-hunting me,” Bonifield admits.

CNN's Russia tactic has paid off, Bonifield admits: “Our ratings are incredible right now.” Bonifield explains how far CNN pushed the Russia line, describing a meeting in which reporters were told by the CEO to stop covering climate accords, urging instead “Let’s get back to Russia.” “It’s a business, people are like the media has an ethical phssssss…All the nice cutesy little ethics that used to get talked about in journalism school you’re just like, that’s adorable. That’s adorable. This is a business,” Bonifield says in the video.

Other admissions in the video CNN

 

[CrabbedOne]

Interesting. 83% of Canadians trusted Obama and only 22% trust Trump. Nice to see we are not alone with our dislike. The only two countries that trust Trump over Obama are Russia and Israel.



Most Canadians distrust Donald Trump, and they're far from alone: poll

Linky.

What is wrong with Nigerians? You got a credit Filipinos for having very broad affections. My own feelings on this pair pretty much align with Mexico.

 

[Joe Reilly]

Oh dear, CNN again caught out with there fake news as the Donald has been saying.

A senior producer at CNN has described the intense speculation that Russia aided the Trump presidential campaign as “bullshit.” Filmed on a hidden camera, CNN producer John Bonifield admits the organization’s anti-Russia reporting is purely for ratings. “It’s mostly bullsh*t right now. Like, we don’t have any big giant proof,” Bonifield tells a reporter in secretly-filmed footage. “So why is CNN constantly like, ‘Russia this, Russia that?’” the journalist asks, to which Bonifield responds, “Because it’s ratings.” “Our CIA is doing shit all the time, we’re out there trying to manipulate governments,” Bonifield says. “I think the President is probably right to say, like, look, you are witch-hunting me,” Bonifield admits.

CNN's Russia tactic has paid off, Bonifield admits: “Our ratings are incredible right now.” Bonifield explains how far CNN pushed the Russia line, describing a meeting in which reporters were told by the CEO to stop covering climate accords, urging instead “Let’s get back to Russia.” “It’s a business, people are like the media has an ethical phssssss…All the nice cutesy little ethics that used to get talked about in journalism school you’re just like, that’s adorable. That’s adorable. This is a business,” Bonifield says in the video.

Other admissions in the video CNN

Three CNN journalists have also been forced out, including a Pulitzer prize nominee, after running with a story on the Russia - Trump link that proved baseless. In the meantime a Washington Post - ABC survey indicated that while a majority found that 'Trump was out of a touch', and even bigger number 67% believed the Democratic were.

Trump isn't the Democrats problem. The Democrats are the Democrats problem.

 

[1%er]

Three CNN journalists have also been forced out, including a Pulitzer prize nominee, after running with a story on the Russia - Trump link that proved baseless. In the meantime a Washington Post - ABC survey indicated that while a majority found that 'Trump was out of a touch', and even bigger number 67% believed the Democratic were.

Trump isn't the Democrats problem. The Democrats are the Democrats problem.

CNN have loads of form on fake news, I can't stand CNN but am compelled to watch sometimes

 

[CRI]

Three CNN journalists have also been forced out, including a Pulitzer prize nominee, after running with a story on the Russia - Trump link that proved baseless. In the meantime a Washington Post - ABC survey indicated that while a majority found that 'Trump was out of a touch', and even bigger number 67% believed the Democratic were.

Trump isn't the Democrats problem. The Democrats are the Democrats problem.

Trump is everyone's problem.

 

[1%er]

Trump is everyone's problem.

So the people of the USA who voted for him are what?

 

[Joe Reilly]

Trump is everyone's problem.

'Everyone' - apart from the majorities who keep voting for the Trump brand.

 

[TomUS]

So the people of the USA who voted for him are what?

Ignorant and easily fooled.

 

[1%er]

Ignorant and easily fooled.

You can say that I couldn't possible comment

[Its funny that people can say this sort of thing about people from some countries on Urban but not from others, I guess not all prejudices are equal]

 

[CRI]

'Everyone' - apart from the majorities who keep voting for the Trump brand.

"Majorities who keep voting for the Trump brand?" I have no idea what that means.

If you mean people who voted for him and still support him, oh he's a problem for them alright. They just don't realise it yet.

Or, perhaps they do know. But, it's worth it if Trump erases every trace of Obama's achievements and the shame of having had a N***er in the White House. It's also worth some suffering if they know he'll make people they see as morally inferior to them (i.e. Muslims, black and brown people, really poor people, non-believers, liberals, socialists, etc.) suffer even more.

 

[snadge]

LOL. comedy lawyer ahoy.

Trump lawyer's firm steered millions in donations to family members, files show


Also.

It's also worth some suffering if they know he'll make people they see as morally inferior to them (i.e. Muslims, black and brown people, really poor people, non-believers, liberals, socialists, etc.) suffer even more.

This is garbage.

 

[Joe Reilly]

Ignorant and easily fooled.

Trump? Stupid. Electorate? Ignorant. Identity politics - and the Democrats? Flawless.