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What stupid shit has Trump done today?

The bullet proof screens are routine. Here's Obama in gun toting Berlin in 2013:
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Linky.
 
On The Hill Ethics director who clashed with Trump resigns
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Shaub told The Washington Post that no one in the Trump administration pressured him to leave his position early.

But, “it’s clear that there isn’t more I could accomplish,” he told the publication.

Shaub told CBS News on Thursday evening that he doesn't know whether Trump is profiting from his businesses, but that's not the point.

"I can’t know what their intention is. I know that the effect is that there’s an appearance that the businesses are profiting from his occupying the presidency,"he told CBS News correspondent Julianna Goldman during the first televised interview following his resignation.

"And appearance matters as much as reality, so even aside from whether or not that’s actually happening, we need to send a message to the world that the United States is going to have the gold standard for an ethics program in government, which is what we’ve always had," he continued.

"America should have the right to know what the motivations of its leaders are, and they need to know that financial interests—personal financial interests—aren’t among them," Shaub told CBS News.
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Well that appears to be pretty swampy.
 
Well yes. As you say, the rich will back whoever they think will keep them rich and make them richer.

As I've said before, white blue collar workers fled the Democratic party in droves in the 1960's, just as the party began to back the civil rights movement and rights for women. They would have voted GOP regardless of who was on the ticket, but were and are more enthusiastic for Trump because they like his policies and he's much more open about the white supremacist, patriarchal basis of for them. All the folks mewling about how said it is that they've voted against their own interests clearly has no idea what their actual interests are. They see keeping women and minorities "in their place" as pretty key to maintaining, regaining or improving their own status and traditional place.

If the Democrats don't pledge this, they ain't gonna switch. Insisting this cohort be on board if the party is to win in future (coming mainly from the self-styled left in and outwith the party) is bizarre and only pisses off the minorities and women who are the backbone of the Democratic party. But, the same folk don't seem that bothered about abortion rights, and often dismiss civil rights as "identity politics," so maybe they are prepared to "negotiate." :rolleyes:

There you go, the millions who voted for Obama but couldn't bring themselves to vote for Clinton are inherently so bigoted that nothing can ever be possibly done to win their vote. I wonder, does CRI know that Hillary Clinton is white?
 
There you go, the millions who voted for Obama but couldn't bring themselves to vote for Clinton are inherently so bigoted that nothing can ever be possibly done to win their vote. I wonder, does CRI know that Hillary Clinton is white?
The US working class are damaged goods who will cut off their nose to spite their face. Don't bother engaging with them as political actors; the way forward for progressive political change is to stick with the woke political vanguard among the Dems. Building a mass working class movement outside the Washington dichotomy is not just a waste of time, but actively harmful since it lets the bad guys win.
 
In The Washington Examiner Mark Warner warns Jim Mattis not to kick out noncitizen recruits
The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee warned Defense Secretary Jim Mattis that any attempt to cancel enlistment contracts with thousands of noncitizen military recruits will be met with "strong, swift action" on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said recruiting and military readiness could be harmed by a proposal circulating in the Pentagon to pull out of a deal with about 1,800 foreign-born recruits to fast-track their U.S. citizenship in exchange for needed language and cultural skills.

The proposal memo to Mattis cites security risks posed by the recruits under the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest program, or MAVNI, including links to foreign intelligence services and insider attacks, according to the Washington Post, which obtained a copy.

"If we fail to uphold the contracts we have made with MAVNI applicants, this will not only have a significantly deleterious effect on recruiting, it will also be met with a strong, swift congressional reaction," said Warner, who is vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
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This is really paranoid: deporting even exhaustively vetted foreigners with in demand skills who volunteered to serve in the US military.
 
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The US working class are damaged goods who will cut off their nose to spite their face. Don't bother engaging with them as political actors; the way forward for progressive political change is to stick with the woke political vanguard among the Dems. Building a mass working class movement outside the Washington dichotomy is not just a waste of time, but actively harmful since it lets the bad guys win.

wtf-reading.png
 
One for the 'the working-class only care about post-material culture war stuff' crowd

Clinton lost because war-ravaged communities in PA, WI, and MI saw her as pro-war, study says

Last fall I winced whenever Hillary Clinton or her surrogates promised regime change in Syria. Don’t these people get it? Americans don’t want to be waging more wars in the Middle East.

Now an important new study has come out showing that Clinton paid for this arrogance: professors argue that Clinton lost the battleground states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan in last year’s presidential election because they had some of the highest casualty rates during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and voters there saw Clinton as the pro-war candidate.

By contrast, her pro-war positions did not hurt her in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and California, the study says; becau

Last fall I winced whenever Hillary Clinton or her surrogates promised regime change in Syria. Don’t these people get it? Americans don’t want to be waging more wars in the Middle East. Now an important new study has come out showing that Clinton paid for this arrogance: professors argue that Clinton lost the battleground states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan in last year’s presidential election because they had some of the highest casualty rates during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and voters there saw Clinton as the pro-war candidate. By contrast, her pro-war positions did not hurt her in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and California, the study says; becau
 
I think the most bizarre thing about the whole 'the white working-class are deplorables and it would be wrong to try to win them over' thing is that Clinton's whole campaign was premised on the idea that she could win over upper-middle-class suburban voters who vote Republican far more often than these people who are apparently irredeemably racist.
 
I think the most bizarre thing about the whole 'the white working-class are deplorables and it would be wrong to try to win them over' thing is that Clinton's whole campaign was premised on the idea that she could win over upper-middle-class suburban voters who vote Republican far more often than these people who are apparently irredeemably racist.

Indeed, the Republicans are far more popular in Silicon Valley than is assumed but the likes of CRI never press that point, the target is always working class communities which tells you everything about the type of rotten politics that the likes of CRI subscribe to.
 
One for the 'the working-class only care about post-material culture war stuff' crowd

Clinton lost because war-ravaged communities in PA, WI, and MI saw her as pro-war, study says
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Abstract: America has been at war continuously for over 15 years, but few Americans seem to notice. This is because the vast majority of citizens have no direct connection to those soldiers fighting, dying, and returning wounded from combat. Increasingly, a divide is emerging between communities whose young people are dying to defend the country, and those communities whose young people are not. In this paper we empirically explore whether this divide—the casualty gap—contributed to Donald Trump’s surprise victory in November 2016. The data analysis presented in this working paper finds that indeed, in the 2016 election Trump was speaking to this forgotten part of America. Even controlling in a statistical model for many other alternative explanations, we find that there is a significant and meaningful relationship between a community’s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump. Our statistical model suggests that if three states key to Trump’s victory – Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin – had suffered even a modestly lower casualty rate, all three could have flipped from red to blue and sent Hillary Clinton to the White House. There are many implications of our findings, but none as important as what this means for Trump’s foreign policy. If Trump wants to win again in 2020, his electoral fate may well rest on the administration’s approach to the human costs of war. Trump should remain highly sensitive to American combat casualties, lest he become yet another politician who overlooks the invisible inequality of military sacrifice. More broadly, the findings suggest that politicians from both parties would do well to more directly recognize and address the needs of those communities whose young women and men are making the ultimate sacrifice for the count
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This is a weak paper analytically. The basic premise is fewer casualties fewer Trump voters. What ever happened to correlation does not equal causation?
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In addition to income and education, we also included three variables indicating each county’s racial composition: the percentage of residents that were white, black, or Latino. Trump struggled to connect with African American voters, and his hard-line immigration policies alienated him from many Latinos. As a result, we expect Trump to struggle making electoral inroads in counties with large non-white populations. Finally, we control for the percentage of each county’s population that lives in rural areas, as well as the percentage of each county’s population that are military veterans. The results are presented in column 2 of Table 1. Even after including all of these demographic control variables, the relationship between a county’s casualty rate and Trump’s electoral performance remains positive and statistically significant. Trump significantly outperformed Romney in counties that shouldered a disproportionate share of the war burden in Iraq and Afghanistan.39
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US military intake these days is mainly from the middle deciles and they are about 80% Republicans. The impact of these wars is felt by military families. This is a small proportion of the population. Republicans and Dems don't appear mix that much. So I assume in these mainly white counties with limited job opportunities conservative middle class boys sign up for repeated tours and get disproportionately injured. These lean towards towards a candidate very sympathetic with mostly enthusiastically Republican veterans and promising to bump greater military spending.

Yes US veterans tend to be really pissed off about inconclusive wars. In my experience they're mostly very patriotic and tired of not winning. Yes military families like defence pork and a richer VA. But there was a lot of ambiguity while Trump damned Bush and Clinton's wars Trump's consistent belligerence against Iran actually promised future wars. Trump was clever and insincere enough to have it both ways. Perhaps this stance helped snag him some antiwar Dems who tend to anti-Clinton or more likely had them stay home but not so many of them have kin in the military I think. I doubt many people really saw him as a second coming of another deceptively dovish war monger Barrack Obama. I don't think Septics are such poor judges of character.

It's a really big leap to assume Trump's open contempt for the wars previous US leaders have started and failed to win is the key variable. They haven't controlled for 100K Chaldeans in Michigan who reportedly mostly went Trump (he won by 10K). They haven't even surveyed a sample of these voters from military families to cross check their assumption. Studies that actually drill down into Trump voter motivations do tend to point to cultural issues being the most salient factor. These are very close run races. It's perhaps more plausible that swing voters liked his conservative stance on immigration or his promise of jobs both things liable to appeal to left behind voters. He made a lot of them itchy. I read elsewhere 37% doubted he'd make a decent President. Perhaps some didn't think he would ever win.

It does have a nice Trump quote:

"...However, unlike other candidates for the presidency, war and aggression will not be my first instinct. You cannot have a foreign policy without diplomacy. A superpower understands that caution and restraint are signs of strength.”

Yes... the humbler foreign policy. No more doing "Stupid Shit". This is the same guy that on entering office started to downsize State. He was then was quite content to escalate in Syria when a chemical attack upset his daughter. Those cruise missile strikes were near as popular as the Muslim ban. He's now toying with both a big war with Iran and North Korea. One's thing is for sure his implausible dovishness isn't what a now plainly hawkish Trump in love with hard power thinks won him the Presidency.
 
If you listened to Trump speeches, rather than listening to what people said about Trump speeches, they were very consistently strong on isolationism. You could be forgiven in some for thinking that he was basically running as an anti-war candidate.

As far as 'stupid wars' go, rather than 'smart wars', that's something he took from Obama.
 
Indeed, the Republicans are far more popular in Silicon Valley than is assumed but the likes of CRI never press that point, the target is always working class communities which tells you everything about the type of rotten politics that the likes of CRI subscribe to.
Not just CRI, see the ludicrous defence of Musk (a bloke who up until a couple of months ago was willing to be part of Trumps "experts" circle) by supposed social democrats.
 
If you listened to Trump speeches, rather than listening to what people said about Trump speeches, they were very consistently strong on isolationism. You could be forgiven in some for thinking that he was basically running as an anti-war candidate.

As far as 'stupid wars' go, rather than 'smart wars', that's something he took from Obama.
Well yes it was mostly the same old tired schtick. Trump was always that most dangerous and traditional American thing a belligerent isolationist. This is a very different thing from being an isolationist if you understand the American tradition. Trump was always crystal clear that he'd impose his will on the world to benefit the USA and still is.

You can be distracted by the tired speeches those are not Trump but Miller plus a stodgy bit of Bannon. These are useful idiots that Trump sometimes concurs with but The Donald is about deals, making a buck and MAGA. If you listen to Trump's intimate disjointed chats with his rallies you get more of the rabble baiting a sense of him. It's not complicated they fell for the billionaires golden hands and his Wall. Liberals will keep on going round and round in giddy circles explaining Trump winning rationally when he won hearts in different ways. Policy is secondary as Trump's policy was often vague and simply guaranteed by the Trump brand to be better than the other schmuck's. Gut instinct about Dem weaknesses, luck and a great deal of Queens balls is why Trump won. I think that surprised him as he plainly wasn't prepared to be President. It's why he'll fuck over his voters like he did investors and employees because he's spent a lifetime in a business where there's always another set of suckers. The way he's going a belligerent America First foreign policy with liberals cast as troops hating traitors may go down rather well with GOP voters in 2020. Worked splendidly for the last Bush in 04.
 
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I think the most bizarre thing about the whole 'the white working-class are deplorables and it would be wrong to try to win them over' thing is that Clinton's whole campaign was premised on the idea that she could win over upper-middle-class suburban voters who vote Republican far more often than these people who are apparently irredeemably racist.

Wait, you mean Hillary Clinton ran a shitty campaign that failed to appeal to working-class voters in swing states? Why hasn't this been mentioned before?
 
In The New Yorker AMERICA’S FUTURE IS TEXAS
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I asked Straus about the clash between business and cultural conservatives. He quoted William H. Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State, who described the forthcoming Civil War as “an irrepressible conflict.” The prejudices unleashed by the election of Donald Trump had poured kerosene on the already volatile world of Texas politics. Straus, referring to the bathroom bill, said, “We came very close this session to passing a sweepingly discriminatory policy. It would have sent a very negative message around the country.”
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Long rambling piece by Lawrence Wright on crazy Texan politics increasingly dominated by Freedom Caucus types obsessed with the menace of progressive "Californication" while Texas cities become increasingly liberal and a Biblical plague of feral hogs mithers their rural constituents. Points out Texas is being looked at as model by other GOP states with big money lobbyists pushing it ever further rightward for just that reason.
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In April, Judge Ramos issued her opinion: the Texas voter-I.D. law was intentionally designed to discriminate against minorities. Almost simultaneously, a panel of federal judges in San Antonio ruled that three of the state’s thirty-six U.S. congressional districts were illegally drawn in order to disempower minorities.

Evan Smith, of the Texas Tribune, has closely followed thirteen legislative sessions. He noted that, even as Dan Patrick and his Republican allies slashed government services, they allocated eight hundred million dollars for border security. “White people are scared of change, believing that what they have is being taken away from them by people they consider unworthy,” he told me. “But all they’re doing is poking a bear with a stick. In 2004, the Anglo population in Texas became a minority. The last majority-Anglo high-school class in Texas graduated in 2014. There will never be another. The reality is, it’s all over for the Anglos.”

Texas leads the nation in Latino population growth. Latinos account for more than half the 2.7 million new Texans since 2010. Every Democrat in Texas believes that, if Latinos voted at the same rate in Texas as they do in California, the state would already be blue. “The difference between Texas and California is the labor movement,” Garnet Coleman, a Houston member of the Texas House, told me. In the nineteen-sixties, Cesar Chavez began organizing the California farmworkers into a union; that kind of movement didn’t happen in Texas, a right-to-work state. “Labor unions create a culture of voting and political participation,” Coleman observed. In Texas politics, he says, “everything is about race—it’s veiled as public policy, but it encourages people to believe that their tax dollars are going to support lazy black and brown people.” Political views have become more entrenched because of redistricting, and yet the demographic majority in Texas is far more progressive than its representatives. Coleman predicts a showdown: “This is a battle about the future of the country, based on a new majority, and we have to have this out.”
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That's the main anxiety Trump hypes and it's a very real demographic dilemma in Texas.
 
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On Bloomberg Trump Emerges From Putin Meeting With Cease-Fire and Little Else

Bit of a chummy non-event from what's been reported. It's likely one of those "ceasefires" which always seem to end up with Damascus ruling more of the map. It's a fairly minor concession by Trump in what's a losing battle. Usual Kremlin misdirection on Assad being disposable. Trump extracted a confession that the Russian hacking of the US election never happened and Putin agreed (fingers crossed) not to do it again. Actually getting anything off Putin he does not want to give wasn't likely. Russians appear delighted. It's a low bar but Trump not getting comprehensively mugged by an obviously sharper operator is a sort of success.
 
I gave up after the ed-stone was unleashed on the world at the back of a supermarket car park in Hastings .

...but trumps taken it all the way to level 11 and beyond.....pure freakery
 
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