What stupid shit has Trump done today?

[J Ed]

My point was that it is elites that have encouraged anti-education attitudes in the working class, including via policy that you mention (though conservatives have been worse than liberals in the advancement of it).

Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, but it hasn't helped. You are right that social democracy did much to advance it, and some liberals paid a reasonable part in social democracy. In my anecdotal experience, plenty of working class aren't anti education, but plenty of working class and bourgeois people actually are - the Mail is as likely to sneer at "experts" as The Sun. Education for the benefit of capital is sometimes an exception, skills based rather than the classic 70s philosophy of liberal eductation. Many liberals are pro education and not arsed about the class of those pursuing it in the least.

Of course the far right will moan endlessly about the liberal / left being out of touch elitists, but it's primarily a distraction from their own ends that are ultimately far more elitist. It's fair enough for liberals to be critiqued from the left for that elitism which exists in their ranks, but coming from the right it's hollow doublespeak wank.

Please stop.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

Please stop.

Stop going on about bogus right wing class narratives and their phony snarking at liberals for things they are far more guilty of? Well, I've made my point but it seems as appropriate a thread as any.

 

[NoXion]

The Mail and the Sun are working class? FFS, no. If liberals are so pro-education when it comes to the working class, then they'd have done more than just uselessly wring their hands when tuition fees were imposed, which I can't help but notice is a common pattern among liberals. This thread's original post exemplifies that worthlessness with its passive "oh noes look at the bad things Trump is doing" and the continuing lack of interest in doing any politics that falls out of the orbit of the same Democrats that lost the election and gave Trump the victory. A victory which Trump is likely to repeat.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

The Mail and the Sun are working class? FFS, no. If liberals are so pro-education when it comes to the working class, then they'd have done more than just uselessly wring their hands when tuition fees were imposed, which I can't help but notice is a common pattern among liberals. This thread's original post exemplifies that worthlessness with its passive "oh noes look at the bad things Trump is doing" and the continuing lack of interest in doing any politics that falls out of the orbit of the same Democrats that lost the election and gave Trump the victory. A victory which Trump is likely to repeat.

I explicitly was saying the The Mail is Bourgeois when outlining that anti-intellectualism can be as much a feature encouraged in both classes by the elites who own the press.

I agree on tuition fees of course although (and I'm NOT defending this) they were brought in by Labour at £3,000 as part of the large increase of people generally going to uni. Labour also brought in EMA for 16 to 18 year olds, which was very good for working class young people. That was a Labour Party which was very liberal influenced, far too right wing for my liking, but again it shows frankly that liberals may be shit for the working class but not half as bad as conservatives and reactionaries who spend day and night telling the working class how much liberals are awful for them.

I agree The Democrats ballsed it by doing too right wing, and with the limits of "oh noes look at the bad things Trump is doing" (that said, a look at the thread title might indicate why a lot of that takes place here).

Trumps approval ratings are pretty bad at the moment, but I don't doubt he could turn that around, not least because he has a natural base among wealthy white people beyond those liberals that get all the limelight and blame for everything. Wall Street democrats, economic liberal "centerists", triangulators etc. all have a lot to answer for, they have been too soft on right wing politics and that's how they became out of touch - but it's right wing politics that are the source problem.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On FPM MCMASTER’S NSC COUP AGAINST TRUMP PURGES CRITICS OF ISLAM AND OBAMA

Parts of US right getting very upset with McMaster's firing the last of the Flynnstones.

All sorts of weird stuff about a global Islamist-Marxist conspiracy headed by Soros whose a puppet in the hands of a Jewish Cabal/Saudi Arabia.

Some folk over there apparently real eager for a big war with Iran. Or is is just a hollow hunger for more self gratifying MAGA sabre rattling? Odd really as McMaster's like Mattis is also reportedly an Iran hawk but a cautious one who won't beat the war drums in the way that excites the sort of clash of civilisations animus these guys like. The differences often seem to focus on rhetoric.

Same group of wingnuts often adore Putin ignoring the Kremlin's, flawed, Syria strategy is entirely reliant on the Iranians as allies. Also that the Iranians are the main winners after Russian intervention there that the IRGC brokered. This is the strange version of reality the Generals Trump has surrounded himself with have to live with under a belligerent IS obsessed, pro-Likud, anti-Iranian President who also is needy for good relations with Russia and who confusingly ran much like Obama with an ambiguous attitude to military interventions. Add on a distain for US diplomacy not shared by the Pentagon and what you have is a brewing foreign policy disaster. A bumbling President that sometimes appears set on creating the conditions for a large land war in a big bumpy part of Asia that might dwarf previous 21st century Pentagon commitments but has no mandate whatever for such actions.

At the start of this century they used to say a neocon was a liberal who been mugged by reality. Maybe this is what you get when once fairly popular neocon dreams of PNAC unipolar glory and a Mall America ME created mainly via precision bombing end in an emerging Persian Levantine empire: a post-Suez like great sulk.

 

[petee]

All sorts of weird stuff about a global Islamist-Marxist conspiracy headed by Soros whose a puppet in the hands of a Jewish Cabal/Saudi Arabia.

so, just another day here in the states!

Some folk over there apparently real eager for a big war with Iran.

from 2003: "Real men want to go to Tehran" | TomDispatch

 

[little_legs]

Not linking to this, it's a screen grab from the Fox News:

 

[little_legs]

 

[gosub]

Not linking to this, it's a screen grab from the Fox News:

bread and circuses.

 

[CRI]

Not linking to this, it's a screen grab from the Fox News:

This is deffo true about folks where I'm from. I think he could actually shoot someone on 5th Avenue and they wouldn't care. Even if his victim were a toddler or a nun, they'd even figure out a way to justify it.

If Fox News tells them the stock market is up, unemployment down and everything else is green in the garden, they're happy. They're even more happy that Trump's getting rid of all the "illegals," getting to concealed carry guns, keeping Muslims out, pushing gays back in the closet, putting an end to "welfare queens," making other countries respect the US again and putting Christian values at the heart of government. They're sure he'll soon get abortion banned soon, and stop violence on the streets of Chicago, which although they've never been there, they know is bad.

 

[Joe Reilly]

Here and elsewhere, I keep hearing comments along the lines of, "The Democrats lost in 2016 because they failed to speak to working class concerns," or "Trump appealed to economically marginalised working class people."

We know working class people of colour voted for the Democrats, overwhelmingly, particularly African Americans. We also know working class people of colour are economically marginalised - even more so than white working class people, but Trump didn't and still doesn't "appeal" to them.

So, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that when they say "working class" in these contexts, they aren't thinking about working class people of colour. And, since they're often the same people who dismiss civil rights activism as "identity politics" and "divisive" suggests they don't tend to think much about or in fact of working class people of colour.

The white working class is the biggest voting block in America (even allowing for the fact that millions of them have stopped voting).

Put them together with the black and Latino working class and the collective juice is there to electorally overturn the existing order, in what ever form it comes.

Sub-consciously perhaps you seem to regard such a vista as utterly appalling.

So no matter how the case is packaged you insist on returning everything to a racial prism.

Across a myriad of posts the counter position is presented as follows: 'wouldn't, couldn't, shouldn't', with a devotion any racial segregationist would be proud of.

But without the prospect of such collaboration, 'the working class people of colour' you profess to care so deeply about, are condemned to be little better than political pets: supplicant at the liberal's table.

How progressive is any of that?

So for all your bluff and bluster your opposition is a deeply conservative one. Putting in even simpler terms, your attack on Trump supporters is coming from the right.

 

[little_legs]

This is deffo true about folks where I'm from. I think he could actually shoot someone on 5th Avenue and they wouldn't care. Even if his victim were a toddler or a nun, they'd even figure out a way to justify it.

If Fox News tells them the stock market is up, unemployment down and everything else is green in the garden, they're happy. They're even more happy that Trump's getting rid of all the "illegals," getting to concealed carry guns, keeping Muslims out, pushing gays back in the closet, putting an end to "welfare queens," making other countries respect the US again and putting Christian values at the heart of government. They're sure he'll soon get abortion banned soon, and stop violence on the streets of Chicago, which although they've never been there, they know is bad.

Makes you think that had the DNC have the balls to mobilize around Sanders allowing him to reach out to the GOP base and spread his manifesto (which he had success with in West Virginia and Oklahoma), the folks wouldn't have to turn to a city raised millionaire or the the Murdoch media to reinforce their archaic beliefs.

 

[CRI]

Makes you think that had the DNC have the balls to mobilize around Sanders allowing him to reach out to the GOP base and spread his manifesto (which he had success with in West Virginia and Oklahoma), the folks wouldn't have to turn to a city raised millionaire or the the Murdoch media to reinforce their archaic beliefs.

Um, no, it's really not like that.

I come from a rural working class Illinois county that's slightly larger in size than greater London with a slowly shrinking population of about 16,000 now. There are thousands of places exactly like this across the US. People outside hardly notice they are there, but because people tend to stay put, most people living there don't have much experience outside their own communities, unless you count military service. The main sources of employment are agriculture / agribusiness, small scale manufacturing (declining) and retail (mostly minimum wage.)

84% of them voted Trump at the last election. But, this wasn't a blip. The county hasn't returned a Democrat since Johnson in 1964, who took 52% of the vote against Goldwater's 48%. The timing is significant here. He had still had some of the "sympathy vote" following JFK's assassination a year before. But, he'd also signed the Civil Rights Act in the summer of 1964, which not surprisingly, wasn't popular in the Southern states, nor in predominately white rural working class areas like where I grew up. In response, many white Democrats in these areas switched allegiance to the Republican party over the next decade, just as the Democrats were taking a stronger stance on civil rights, women's rights, gay rights and against the Vietnam War.

From the 1968 presidential election onward, the county has gone Republican. Even in 2008 when the US Senator from Illinois was running (and you usually get some "home state advantage,") Obama polled 32% to McCain's 67%. In 2012, Obama did even worse, getting 20% of the vote to Romney's 78%.

In summary, the county where I grew up, in common with thousands of similar predominately white, working class communities, has been solidly Republican for nigh on 50 years. They would have voted for whoever was the GOP nominee. However, in the April 2016 primary, more than half of Republican voters picked Trump (Cruz got 31% and Kasich 10%,) so there was already enthusiasm for Trump long before November. Time and again, you hear them say he "tells it like it is," and he "cares about what we care about." They're still behind him because they like what he's doing.

Anyone who thinks Sanders or any candidate from the left (or beyond) of the Democratic Party can successfully "reach out" to Trump's base, they either don't now much about the GOP party base, or they've overdosed on optimism pills.

 

[CRI]

The white working class is the biggest voting block in America (even allowing for the fact that millions of them have stopped voting).

Put them together with the black and Latino working class and the collective juice is there to electorally overturn the existing order, in what ever form it comes.

Sub-consciously perhaps you seem to regard such a vista as utterly appalling.

So no matter how the case is packaged you insist on returning everything to a racial prism.

Across a myriad of posts the counter position is presented as follows: 'wouldn't, couldn't, shouldn't', with a devotion any racial segregationist would be proud of.

But without the prospect of such collaboration, 'the working class people of colour' you profess to care so deeply about, are condemned to be little better than political pets: supplicant at the liberal's table.

How progressive is any of that?

So for all your bluff and bluster your opposition is a deeply conservative one. Putting in even simpler terms, your attack on Trump supporters is coming from the right.

You really have no clue.

 

[CRI]

Um, no, it's really not like that.

I come from a rural working class Illinois county that's slightly larger in size than greater London with a slowly shrinking population of about 16,000 now. There are thousands of places exactly like this across the US. People outside hardly notice they are there, but because people tend to stay put, most people living there don't have much experience outside their own communities, unless you count military service. The main sources of employment are agriculture / agribusiness, small scale manufacturing (declining) and retail (mostly minimum wage.)

84% of them voted Trump at the last election. But, this wasn't a blip. The county hasn't returned a Democrat since Johnson in 1964, who took 52% of the vote against Goldwater's 48%. The timing is significant here. He had still had some of the "sympathy vote" following JFK's assassination a year before. But, he'd also signed the Civil Rights Act in the summer of 1964, which not surprisingly, wasn't popular in the Southern states, nor in predominately white rural working class areas like where I grew up. In response, many white Democrats in these areas switched allegiance to the Republican party over the next decade, just as the Democrats were taking a stronger stance on civil rights, women's rights, gay rights and against the Vietnam War.

From the 1968 presidential election onward, the county has gone Republican. Even in 2008 when the US Senator from Illinois was running (and you usually get some "home state advantage,") Obama polled 32% to McCain's 67%. In 2012, Obama did even worse, getting 20% of the vote to Romney's 78%.

In summary, the county where I grew up, in common with thousands of similar predominately white, working class communities, has been solidly Republican for nigh on 50 years. They would have voted for whoever was the GOP nominee. However, in the April 2016 primary, more than half of Republican voters picked Trump (Cruz got 31% and Kasich 10%,) so there was already enthusiasm for Trump long before November. Time and again, you hear them say he "tells it like it is," and he "cares about what we care about." They're still behind him because they like what he's doing.

Anyone who thinks Sanders or any candidate from the left (or beyond) of the Democratic Party can successfully "reach out" to Trump's base, they either don't now much about the GOP party base, or they've overdosed on optimism pills.

And, of course "reaching out" to the people who adore Trump will mean at the very least making some concessions to them. Sanders has already said that GOP's stance on reproductive choice doesn't have to be absolute, and he's gone on record saying he doesn't think Trump supporters are racist (cold comfort to victims of their racism). So if these are the kinds of bargaining chips he or other candidates are considering to woo these shy Trump fans, I think that's worrying. It's also alienating the strongest base of support for the Democratic Party - the one's who consistently vote and campaign. That's women, and particularly women of colour.

Nope, the better bet is to fight hard against even more gerrymandering of state and US electoral districts, fight hard against voter suppression measures, build on the base of people who are already closer to the values and views of the Democrats and pull out all the stops to get every single one to vote in the 2018 mid terms. (That is if there will be any genuinely free and fair elections in the US in future. )

 

[J Ed]

Anyone who thinks Sanders or any candidate from the left (or beyond) of the Democratic Party can successfully "reach out" to Trump's base, they either don't now much about the GOP party base, or they've overdosed on optimism pills.

This poster simultaneously believes that whites in the working-class are so racist/sexist/whatever they will never vote Democrat but also that even trying to win their voters is basically a consolation to racism which is something that Sanders is guilty of. You would think that in this particular alternate reality the racist socialist, civil rights supporting Jew from Brooklyn might be able to win over these deporables.

 

[CRI]

Tangled web connects Russian oligarch money to GOP campaigns

Well, some interesting connections here.

 

[TomUS]

it's right wing politics that are the source problem.

Abso fucking lutely......right wingers/ignorant racist gullible hick voters...basket of deplorables plus the fat cats....next comes "tax reform"....slashing millions in taxes for the uber rich and 20 bucks a month for the rest to make them think he's working for "the people."...."a sucker born every minute."

 

[CrabbedOne]

Most voters in the US simply aren't swing voters. They abhor the other party and do vote mostly on party lines. This is the most basic fact of US politics. It's grown stronger over the Bush, Obama and finally very divisive Trump Presidencies. US liberal tend to harbour a delusion that most GOP voters can be reasoned with. Only someone who has prissily avoided frank contact with Republicans as US liberals tend to can think this. Unfortunately rightwing Republicans increasingly see liberals as a dangerous out group set on destroying America to an extent that that anti-liberal animus is even crowding out older Southern Strategies in their media. There isn't going to be a great American Kumbaya moment of the sort Obama naively promised.

Trump did mobilise a part of GOP base to win the primaries. Compared to his nearest rival Cruz's supporters they were slightly more lower middle class and if anything less bigoted though it's a low bar. Some might call their old fashioned sticky ethnic preferences deplorable but it's just how they are and they are tired of being nagged about it. The mistake is to just think them bad people rather than conservatives who cleave to their own. Most want the best for America and would often help a stranger in trouble out. Trump swung relatively small numbers of Dem voters in some states. He got trashed by Clinton in more liberal states like California even ceding Orange County and ended up losing the popular vote by a large margin. In general he did badly amongst the poor of the bottom two deciles.

Trump, who is really closer to an old fashioned rightwing Southern Dem, won by running an ambiguous deeply dishonest campaign with a great deal of flagrant pandering to prejudices, swathes of utterly unrealistic policy and perhaps critically by running against his own party establishment. The last few features are problematic to emulate.

Trump flagrantly promised the unachievable on healthcare and then essentially pleaded ignorance as to its complexity. That's a lie the Dems seem prone to ape. He also promised 4% growth and a pony of American Greatness. He lied about creating a renaissance in heavy industrial jobs like coal mining as many Dems also have for electoral advantage. At best he'll role back some Obama regulations that accelerated some sectors decline. As a result of attacking the GOP establishment he's pretty much been a lame duck from day one. Unlike a British PM a US President can get little done domestically without the support of the other arms of government. Congress is a horse that he can't lead and it'll only drink if it damn well wants to. The progressive elements of the agenda Trump insincerely ran with are mostly dead in the water. What survives is the dismantling of Obama's legacy, a fever for elite tax breaks, sweeping deregulation and his signature policy: anti-migration measures. That last one is popular even with Dems and he'll probably capitalise on it with the RAISE act clamping down on the legal migration that has been eroding GOP advantages in some states.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

“Hey Trump, I'm watching this really bad reality TV show with low ratings called Survivor White House,” tweeted Fox. “I can't change the channel. Sad!”

Mexico's former president launches scathing attack on Donald Trump and his holiday

 

[TomUS]

Mexico's former president launches scathing attack on Donald Trump and his holiday

Fox is a corrupt motha fucka like Trump but he nails the orange con man well.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Bloomberg Immigration Curbs May Be Wrong Way to Boost Weak U.S. Wage Gains

...
Average hourly earnings rose 2.5 percent in July from a year earlier for a fourth straight month, matching the rate of the past two years, according to Labor Department data issued Friday. While hiring continued at a solid pace and the unemployment rate matched a 16-year low, growth in worker pay has stalled at levels below recent expansions that typically produced gains of 3 percent or faster, even as companies frequently cite labor shortages.

Enter Trump, who this week endorsed a proposal to restrict legal immigration and give priority to those with higher skills, arguing that in the process, wages would rise across the board. While attracting the world’s best and brightest may be a worthy goal, many economists doubt that shrinking the pool of foreign workers will make employers boost compensation, or help the economy, attributing the weak pay gains to other factors.

“Weak wage growth has to do with the real change we’re seeing in corporate behavior and longer-term trends” such as automation and the rise of mega-firms that have more leeway to limit labor costs, said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James Financial in St. Petersburg, Florida. “Companies are not going to boost your salary until you have one foot out the door. That’s the way Corporate America works these days.”

Besides, “I don’t think immigration has that big of an impact on wages,” so the new plan to restrict it “doesn’t make much sense at all,” Brown said.
...

Of course this isn't really about jobs for Septics and certainly not growing the US economy but dog whistling to the GOP base.

The current US immigration system has a bias towards those with kinship ties. It was designed to favour Europeans by bipartisan consensus but now Latinos benefit. Skills and language tests will reduce the flow from down South though that's already in decline. The US probably does need a sensible debate about what sort of immigration policy would benefit the country. GOP voters tend to see this one as Dems trying to load the electoral scales against them.

This RAISE thing will be popular but is unlikely to get past Congress in this form. Like much of Europe if not so severe the reality in the US is the population is ageing and the country is rather in need of more working age folk. It needs semi-skilled agricultural and construction workers not just highly skilled people. At bottom compared to Europeans Americans are also poll as a good deal less hostile to aspirational migrants even if they are ethnically different.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Newsweek TRUMP'S SUPPORT AMONG WHITE VOTERS PLUMMETED AND HIS APPROVAL RATING SUNK

...
"It's hard to pick what is the most alarming number in the troubling trail of new lows for President Donald Trump," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University poll in a statement. "Profound embarrassment over his performance in office and deepening concern over his level-headedness have to raise the biggest red flags. The daily drip drip of missteps and firings and discord are generating a tidal wave of bad polling numbers."

Even among white, male voters—62 percent of whom voted for Trump in November, according to exit polls—were split on Trump. Forty-seven percent of white men approved of the job Trump is doing while 48 percent disapproved, according to Quinnipiac. White women—52 percent of whom voted for Trump—disapproved of the president's job performance by a large margin, 64 percent to 31 percent. The Quinnipiac poll interviewed 1,125 voters from July 27 through August 1. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

Nearly every survey this week was not kind to Trump. For instance, Rasmussen Reports—a firm that has been criticized as right-leaning and has long found better results for the former reality TV star compared to other pollsters—found the president's approval rating at one point dipped to an all-time low of just 38 percent. By the end of the week, the weighted average from data-focused website FiveThirtyEight had Trump's approval rating at just 37 percent, an all-time low.

Of course that a growing number disapprove of Trump does not mean GOP people would not vote against any imaginable Dem candidate in large numbers. The danger sign for Trump there is he's losing white women a lot of whom probably had some reservations about him.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Ramussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll

...
With the Dow closing at new highs this week and unemployment down, Americans are more confident than they have been in years that it’s possible for just about anyone to find a job - and even get rich - in America.

Despite these positive economic indicators, just 39% of voters give the president good or excellent marks for the way he is handling economic issues. Forty-four percent (44%) rate his economic performance as poor.

Most voters think Trump is his own worst political enemy.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury for the investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign. A survey last month found that 26% of voters rate the Trump-Russia issue as the most serious problem currently facing the nation.
...

The US economy under Trump is really much the same as under Obama i.e. not bad but slow with some states having longterm structural problems and others thriving. Job security isn't what it should be. Perception of economic performance in the US is highly partisan. GOP voters thought it a horror show under Obama and now often are pretty smug about. A US President can bugger up the economy but they rarely have dramatic immediate positive effects on it. Reagan's boom had it's roots in demographics for instance not legislative innovation. Congress has a far larger potential effect the economy and here they are basically doing fuck all. Decisions made by State governments are often far more important in American's lives.

Note the lack of interest in Russia-gate and that's based on polling from last month. American's may find Russian meddling annoying but it's not a bread on the table issue. Again concern seem to be very partisan with Republican's dismissive and Dems outraged.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On FiveThirtyEight The Senate Seems More Willing To Push Back Against Trump Than The House — Why?

...
“This is a pivotal moment within the Republican Party, where the commitment to checks and balances is overriding party politics with the White House,” said Katherine Kidder, a political scientist who works at the bi-partisan Center for a New American Security in Washington. “It’s about congressional-executive relations as much or more than partisan relationships.”
...

Interesting point, a weak Presidency presents a chance for the other arms of government to reign in an overmighty executive.

 

[Idris2002]

In fairness to the resistance, they have started hitting the Trumpist enemy pretty hard:

Spoiler

 

[mather]

In fairness to the resistance, they have started hitting the Trumpist enemy pretty hard:

Spoiler

The stupidity of liberals never ceases to amaze.

 

[CrabbedOne]

In The New Republic Keep the Trump Leaks Coming

...
His complete failure to grow into the job has allowed multiple power centers to emerge and vie for ascendency within the administration. It has impelled other institutional actors to essentially expropriate from Trump governing tasks that should be his exclusively. In some cases, as when he gave military leaders a free handin fighting terrorism, he has willingly parted with these obligations. In others, as when Congress wrested discretion over Russian sanctions away from him, he has been layered over reluctantly.

But the most alarming development is the one that ironically has official Washington the most relieved: the emergence of a trio of military officers (two retired, one actively serving) as de facto caretakers of the presidency.

It is perfectly consistent to say that the growing clout of generals John Kelly (the White House chief of staff), H.R. McMaster (the national security advisor), and Jim Mattis (the defense secretary) is preferable to an alternative in which Trump shambles through his presidency unencumbered, but also dangerous in its own right, and evidence of serious institutional failure. The hope is apparently to keep Trump’s administration within certain guardrails, so that if and when it fails, he doesn’t take the country and the world off the road with him.

To that end, this trio has met with some modest success.

Kelly has—in his brief tenure, and for now at least—managed to impose more controlover the flow of aides, information, and other forms of presidential influence in and out of the Oval Office better than his predecessor, Reince Priebus, ever could.

McMaster has, after months of setbacks, successfully removed two corrosive figuresfrom the National Security Council—both holdovers from the abbreviated Michael Flynn era.

Where the generals haven’t been empowered to run the show, they have asserted themselves nonetheless. “In the earliest weeks of Trump’s presidency,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday, Mattis and Kelly agreed “that one of them should remain in the United States at all times to keep tabs on the orders rapidly emerging from the White House.”

It would be sensationalizing things to call this a soft coup, but it is impossible to deny that real presidential powers have been diluted or usurped. Elected officials have decided that leaving the functioning of the government to unelected military officers is politically preferable to invoking constitutional remedies that would require them to vote.
...

It would be a strange sort of "soft coup" as Trump is clearly poorly confined by this military triumvirate that Trump himself appointed and might one day fire. His foreign policy team is often dashing to clear up the messes Trump has made of international relations. Another prestige appointment Tillerson is reported to be really unhappy.

Interesting idea that it's the reassurance that these three Generals provide that stays the hand of the other arms of government. Putting too much faith in US Generals is risky as they're rather one dimensional players. Trump's own political ineptitude make him much less of a danger to the American establishment than he first seemed. It hasn't stopped prominent Senate figures warning of consequences if Trump in a tizzy over Russia-gate investigations into his dodgy family affairs sacks the recused Sessions or Mueller. Congress still thought it necessary to lock down Trump's ability to lift the sanctions on Russia. What would happen if say Mattis was fired or resigned is worth considering.

 

[bimble]

<blockquote class="twitter-video" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Trump TV has launched. Welcome to Banana Republic America. <a href="Yashar Ali on Twitter">pic.twitter.com/cbygpnJHNH</a></p>&mdash; James Melville (@JamesMelville) <a href="">August 7, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[CrabbedOne]

In Forbes 60% Of House Democrats Vote For A Defense Budget Even Bigger Than Trump's

...
But big companies that make billions and billions of dollars a year shovel contributions at congressional representatives because it's a great investment. All that income only required $11 million in 2016 donations, with 38% going to Democrats and 62% to Republicans, according to OpenSecrets.org.

For the 2017 fiscal year that ends on September 30, the Obama budget called for $582.7 billion, which included a base budget of $523.9 billion and the "overseas contingency operations (OCO) budget" of $58.8 billion. The Trump administration wanted to add about $54 billion. As the Defense Department's own budget numbers showed, it requested $574.5 billion in base budget and $64.6 billion in OCO for a total of $639.1 billion.

Ah, the pikers. Today, the House passed a $696.5 billion defense bill that makes Trump's look positively reasonable in comparison.

There have been indications the House would insist on more spending than the White House did. The final vote by party is — or maybe it's should be — surprising. A huge number of Democrats voted for the measure.
...

Congress: making defence pork great again.