Donald Trump and the Deathly Fallout (Part 15)

[AuntK]

Can I just say that my deep antipathy and contempt for the mass of orange flesh that now occupies the White House now extends to include the three eldest spawn of said mass? 

[fraurosena]

6 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

not just on Trump but on the coterie of the craven who jumped on his bandwagon

I vote "Trump and his Coterie of the Craven" for the new thread title, @Destiny

[Bethella]

4 hours ago, AmericanRose said:

So... since it's no longer winter, is he going to stop visiting the "winter White House"?

I can't remember where I saw it, but someone speculated that once it gets too hot in Florida he's going to start spending his weekends at his golf course in New Jersey.

[Cartmann99]

Trump is being sued, again:

Quote

 

A white nationalist leader accused of assaulting a young African-American woman at a Donald Trump campaign rally filed a countersuit on Monday claiming the president directed him and other supporters to remove protesters.

Matthew Heimbach claims in his federal court filing that he “acted pursuant to the directives and requests of Donald J. Trump and Donald J. Trump for President” and that, if he’s found liable for damages, “any liability must be shifted to one or both of them.”

The legal fight stems from a March 2016 rally in Louisville, Kentucky, at which protesters were allegedly roughed up and ejected by Trump supporters after the then-candidate barked from the stage “get ’em out of here!”

The protesters filed civil assault and battery claims against Heimbach and two other Trump supporters and accused Trump of inciting his supporters.

 

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/donald-trump-rally-violence-237302

Place your bets. How long do we have until the host of one of those talk shows where the guests routinely brawl with one another is Trump's choice for the Supreme Court? Okay, how long until one of the brawling guests is Trump's pick?

 

 

 

 

[fraurosena]

How predictable, and disquieting.

Donald Trump criticised for congratulating Recep Tayyip Erdogan on winning Turkish referendum

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Ignoring concerns raised by international monitoring groups, President Donald Trump has called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to congratulate him on the country's contested referendum greatly increasing presidential powers.

He made the call despite protests from opposition parties and international monitoring groups, including Mr Trump's own State Department, about voting irregularities during the referendum. 

Critics argue the reforms in Turkey will hand extensive power to a man with an increasingly autocratic bent and leave few checks and balances in place. 

Under the new system, the president will be able to appoint ministers and senior government officials, issue decrees and declare states of emergency. 

We all know this is what the presidunce is aiming for himself.

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Trump is being sued, again:

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/donald-trump-rally-violence-237302

Place your bets. How long do we have until the host of one of those talk shows where the guests routinely brawl with one another is Trump's choice for the Supreme Court? Okay, how long until one of the brawling guests is Trump's pick?

 

 

 

 

Well... Jerry Springer was the mayor of Cincinnati in 1977. Looking at the Trump administration, this makes Springer supremely qualified, except he's a Democrat.

[fraurosena]

Trump’s Unreleased Taxes Threaten Yet Another Campaign Promise

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President Trump’s promise to enact a sweeping overhaul of the tax code is in serious jeopardy nearly 100 days into his tenure, and his refusal to release his own tax returns is emerging as a central hurdle to another faltering campaign promise.

As procrastinators rushed to file their tax returns by Tuesday, the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, emphasized again on Monday that Mr. Trump had no intention of making his public. Democrats have seized on that decision, uniting around a pledge not to cooperate on any rewriting of the tax code unless they know specifically how that revision would benefit the billionaire president and his family.

And a growing roster of more than a dozen Republican lawmakers now say Mr. Trump should release them. [...]

With Republicans sharply divided on a path forward and the administration unable to come up with a plan of its own, the Democratic resistance is only the newest impediment.

As a candidate, Mr. Trump declared that he understood America’s complex tax laws “better than anyone who has ever run for president” and that he alone could fix them. But it is becoming increasingly unlikely that there will be a simpler system, or even lower tax rates, this time next year. The Trump administration’s tax plan, promised in February, has yet to materialize; a House Republican plan has bogged down, taking as much fire from conservatives as liberals; and on Monday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told The Financial Times that the administration’s goal of getting a tax plan signed by August was “not realistic at this point.”

A tax overhaul could be the next expansive Trump campaign promise that falters before it even gathered much steam.

“If they have no plan, they can’t negotiate,” said Larry Kudlow, the economist who helped Mr. Trump devise his campaign tax plan. “In that case, tax reform is dead.”

As to the bolded: I wonder how long it will take him to tweet: "Nobody told me taxes wer so complicated. Who knew?"

Quote

The president’s own vision for a new tax system is muddled at best. In the past few months, he has called for taxing companies that move operations abroad, waffled on the border tax and, last week, called for a “reciprocal” tax that would match the import taxes other countries impose on the United States.

But it is Mr. Trump’s own taxes that have provided the crucial leverage for his opponents. More than 100,000 of his critics took to the streets over the weekend in marches around the country, demanding that the president release his returns. Tax legislation, they say, could be a plot by Mr. Trump to get even richer. [...]

In the halls of Congress, Democrats are employing procedural maneuvers to drive home their point on the tax returns and possibly compel Republican lawmakers to join their effort to force Mr. Trump to release them. And Democratic aides say more tricks are coming.

More than a dozen Republicans — from recognizable names like Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa and Representative Mark Sanford of South Carolina to backbenchers like Representatives David Young of Iowa, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Walter B. Jones of North Carolina, Ted Yoho of Florida, Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey and Justin Amash of Michigan — have agreed that Mr. Trump should release his returns.

That list grows almost daily. On Monday, former Representative Joe Walsh of Illinois, a conservative firebrand and Trump loyalist, said the president should release his tax returns. “I do think this issue will come back and bite him on the butt,” he said on MSNBC.

So, there are some Repubs who have found they have balls after all. Good. Took them long enough, but still.

 

[fraurosena]

And now we know why the presidunce was so quick to congratulate Erdogan:

 

What? Emoluments clause? Lalalalala... I can't hear you! 

[GreyhoundFan]

5 hours ago, Bethella said:

I can't remember where I saw it, but someone speculated that once it gets too hot in Florida he's going to start spending his weekends at his golf course in New Jersey.

I've seen that in multiple articles, including the one below. I guess he's a delicate flower, so he'll go stay at Drumpf Tower and golf in NJ. I'm sure the residents there will be thrilled by the road closures every weekend.

 

"Trump’s cake and golf presidency"

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President Trump’s spending of public money on his own ease and comfort is lavish and wasteful. His attitude toward taxpayers seems to be, roughly: Let them eat “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you've ever seen.”

That is how the president described the dessert he shared with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Florida estate, which has become his weekend White House. Trump chose that moment of indulgence to inform Xi that U.S. cruise missiles had been fired into Syria. War is hell, but I guess Trump also sees it as an opportunity to indulge his sweet tooth.

I don't begrudge Trump his empty calories. But his frequent trips to Florida, complete with the entourage that necessarily attends the modern presidency, have put him on pace to spend roughly as much on leisure travel in one year as Barack Obama spent in eight.

The president made a show of saying he would decline the $400,000 annual salary that comes with the job. But the most widely cited estimate of what one presidential trip to Mar-a-Lago costs — based on the known price of one Florida trip Obama took — is $3.6 million. And of the 13 weekends since Trump was sworn in, he has spent seven in Palm Beach.

A conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch, estimated that Obama cost taxpayers $97 million in leisure travel costs during his two terms. As a private citizen, Trump was sharply critical of Obama’s travel spending, calling him a “habitual vacationer.” But Obama now looks like a relative cheapskate, while it is Trump who seems unable to break the habit.

Of course, it is possible that Trump will spend less time at Mar-a-Lago during the summer, when the Florida heat and humidity soar. But he might decide instead to weekend at Trump Tower in New York or at one of his other residences — excursions that would also bear significant costs.

For much less, he could opt to spend time at Camp David, the rustic presidential retreat in Maryland. But whatever else Trump might be, he's not a rustic kind of guy.

His idea of the great outdoors isn’t the woods, it’s the golf course. Trump vowed last year that when he became president, he would be working so hard that “I’m not going to have time to go play golf.” That turns out to have been wrong. A more accurate prediction would have been, “I'm going to play golf all the time.”

Trump has found time to play golf 14 times since his inauguration. At this point in his presidency, Obama hadn’t yet taken up the game; when he did, one of his most vocal critics was one Donald Trump, who complained that a president should have more important things to do. Maybe now Trump has figured out how to Make America Great Again with a pitching wedge.

Am I being petty? Certainly no more than Trump, though I realize that’s not saying much.

Being president may be the toughest, most stressful job in the world. No one begrudges Trump a little down time. One could argue, in fact, that the world would be better off if this particular president spent every single day on the links and hired competent, experienced professionals to run the country.

But Trump’s love of leisure is yet another example of the gaping chasm between the kind of president he claimed he would be and the kind he actually is. Trump portrayed himself as a man of the people, not in any literal sense — he also portrayed himself as worth $10 billion, you will recall — but in the cultural sense. He was used to wearing a hard hat. He could safely navigate a construction site. He knew the value of an honest day’s work. He was Joe Sixpack, if Joe Sixpack didn’t drink and had a supermodel wife.

...

His foreign policy has been incoherent. His immigration policy has been mean-spirited and unserious. His fiscal policy seeks to punish the poor. His top aides spend much of their time stabbing one another in the back.

A president with that kind of record hasn’t earned the right to spend our money playing golf and eating cake.

Donald Antoinette...

[47of74]

5 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

And now we know why the presidunce was so quick to congratulate Erdogan:

 

What? Emoluments clause? Lalalalala... I can't hear you! 

Maybe Presidence Putinfluffer figures if he buddies up to Erdogan if he wanted to tear down the Hagia Sophia so he could put up more towers or convert Topkapı Palace into the Turkish version of Mar-a-Lago that Erdogan will let him and silence anyone who opposes what Putinfluffer wants to do.

Plus Putinfluffer is probably looking at all the reich wing things Erdogan is doing and envious that Erdogan gets to do all these things.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Why presidential candidates (like Trump) campaign as isolationists but (like Trump) govern as hawks"

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When President Trump bombed Syria last week, many observers were surprised. Trump campaigned on an isolationist “America First” foreign policy. In a series of now-famous tweets, Trump had specifically warned President Barack Obama against military intervention in Syria.

...

My theory of presidential behavior is based on two previous findings from political science. First, from Richard Neustadt and Stephen Skowronek to Terry Moe and William Howell, scholars have shown that presidents have incentives to exercise and expand the powers at their disposal. Since foreign policy is an area where presidents face few constraints, they are especially prone to intervene with military force abroad — regardless of their previous campaign rhetoric or party ideology.

Second, as Frances Lee has shown, parties see politics as a zero-sum game. I show that when they control the White House, they often justify their own president’s interventionist behavior — but when they are in opposition, they criticize foreign invention.

Thus, in a presidential campaign — all other things being equal — the challenger’s party is usually less interventionist than the incumbent’s party. But if the challenger wins, he or she will probably pursue a foreign policy as interventionist as that of the predecessor they criticized in the campaign. At that point, the two parties will change their positions on foreign policy accordingly.

This historical pattern goes back at least to 1900

To test this theory of presidential and partisan behavior, I examined U.S. presidents’ foreign policy actions and the two major parties’ ideologies from 1900 to 2016. Almost every president pursued an interventionist foreign policy regardless of previous ideological commitments, and in almost every instance the two parties changed their views about foreign intervention as predicted.

For example, at the turn of the 20th century, Republicans in control of the presidency were significantly more internationalist and hawkish than their Democratic counterparts. They nominated candidates like Teddy Roosevelt, who called for the U.S. to “carry a big stick” and exercise “an international police power.” Democrats, on the other hand, criticized Republican “militarism” and “imperialism,” and nominated candidates like the isolationist populist William Jennings Bryan.

...

Now Trump fits the pattern

The past two decades have followed this same pattern. Republicans were significantly more hawkish than Democrats during the Bush administration. But during the Obama administration, the two parties gradually switched again. For example, in the 2008 NES survey, 75 percent of Republicans and just 65 percent of Democrats gave the interventionist response. By 2012 and 2016, the GOP number fell into the 60s, while in 2016 the Democratic number had jumped into the 70s.

It’s no wonder, then, that in the 2016 primaries, the GOP nominated a less interventionist candidate like Trump. And it’s no surprise that Trump is beginning to govern as an interventionist. Now sit back and watch whether the two parties change their foreign policy views to fit.

There are some interesting visuals (charts, Tweets, etc) in the article.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The myth of the disillusioned Trump voter"

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Beware the political anecdote.

The New York Times reported Monday that a key congressional district in Pennsylvania isn't thrilled with its choice of voting for Donald Trump for president. The 8th District outside Philadelphia is a quintessential suburban swing district that has the unusual distinction of voting for both Trump and Mitt Romney by the narrowest of margins the past two elections. Hence the New York Times Treatment.

The headline of the piece is “Trump Voters in a Swing District Wonder When the ‘Winning’ Will Start.” A sampling:

Usually, this pathway outside Parx Casino is reserved for self-flagellation, a private lament at the last hundred lost. But lately, as with most any gathering place around here since late January — the checkout line, the liquor store, the park nearby where losing lottery numbers are pressed into the mulch — patrons have found occasion to project their angst outward, second-guessing a November wager.

“Just like any other damn president,” sighed Theresa Remington, 44, a home-care worker and the mother of two active-duty Marines, scraping at an unlit cigarette. She had voted for Donald J. Trump because she expected him to improve conditions for veterans and overhaul the health care system. Now?

“Political bluster,” Ms. Remington said, before making another run at the quarter slots. She wondered aloud how Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont might have fared in the job.

That's a pretty grim picture. And it's quite possible it's an accurate one of this particular district. But if it is, this district is not an accurate microcosm of Trump supporters more broadly. And it's not close.

The same day this story came out, the Pew Research Center released a poll showing very little buyer's remorse among Trump voters. The poll showed just 7 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say Trump has performed worse than they expected him to. Fully 38 percent — five times as many — say he has performed better.

...

There is a real sense among some that Trump has underperformed. But it's almost wholly on the Democratic side, where 32 percent say he's worse than advertised, and just 3 percent say he's better.

...

And finally, Trump's overall approval rating stands at 41 percent in Gallup's polling, which is right about where his favorable rating was upon his election as president (42 percent).

There are definitely more voters like Theresa Remington at the Parx Casino in Bensalem, Pa. In fact, there might be more of them at this casino and in Bensalem than in a lot of places across the country. And maybe she is the tip of the spear when it comes to Trump voters abandoning him.

But for now, she seems to be in very limited company.

Interesting point of view.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Despite rhetoric, Trump plan focuses more on staff cuts than good government"

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When Mick Mulvaney described the Trump administration’s plan to remake the federal government, the tough, right-wing small government advocate, sounded like a middle-of-the-road resident.

“It’s not about big government, it’s not about small government,” the Office of Management and Budget director said, “it’s about good government.”

Yet, the memorandum he sent to agency heads Wednesday along with President Trump’s earlier budget proposal and reorganization executive order form a management agenda driven by the notion of a broken government needing sharp personnel and programs cuts, rather than using mission and service to determine the size government should be.

Mulvaney’s 14-page “Comprehensive Plan for Reforming the Federal Government and Reducing the Federal Civilian Workforce” would not, however, lead to the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” as White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon described Trump’s agenda.

“This is more of a reassessment of the administrative state than a deconstruction,” said Janice Lachance, director of the Office of Personnel Management in the Clinton administration.

If this reassessment is not deconstruction, it is heavy reduction. Experts differ on the potential importance of the plan.

Donald F. Kettl, a University of Maryland public policy professor, said, “This is a very big deal. It is the first part of an administrative strategy to drive a much larger downsizing.”

Max Stier, president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, praised Trump for giving high-level attention to management issues early in his term, calling the OMB plan “very important” and “unusually good.”

Barry Rabe, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, said the document is “clearly driven by an agenda of reducing staffing,” while giving lip service to performance.

Robert D. Behn, a senior lecturer at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, scoffed at the “conventional bureaucratic thinking” in the memo. “Accomplishing something — anything — requires people,” he said. To improve performance, “the leadership team has to mobilize and motivate people — teams as well as individuals — to take the actions that are necessary to fix the performance deficits.”

Despite a 1.9 percent pay raise promised to federal workers next year, the plan will not mobilize and motivate staffers who are concerned about layoffs, especially after the document’s declaration about “too many federal employees stuck in a system that is not working for the American people.”

J. David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, fears that focusing on decreasing government workers will lead to increasing “costly and unaccountable contractors.” Added National Treasury Employees Union President Tony Reardon: “It’s a recipe for disaster.”

Efforts to cut the workforce overlook the steep fall in feds per capita. The nation’s population increased 67 percent during the past 50 years, while the workforce grew by only 10 percent, according to the Obama administration’s fiscal 2017 budget.

Trump’s plan to slice $54 billion from the domestic discretionary budget, while boosting spending for defense, homeland security and veterans, means many agencies would suffer sharp personnel reductions. For the 19 small agencies he wants to eliminate, services and staffing would drop to zero.

While the budget plan tells domestic agency officials how much they would have to cut if a skeptical Congress approves, section “D” of the reforming government and reducing workforce plan tells them how to do it. Another point deals with employee performance issues. That could affect civil service protections for federal employees

The memo does say data should be used to determine “how many people are required to perform tasks at the level required.” That would be an objective, good-government approach to management if it were not subordinate to “develop a long-term workforce reduction plan” instructions.

Mulvaney asked agency officials to consider using lower-grade employees to do some work assigned to higher-grade positions, then reducing the number of higher-grade workers. The rank and file welcomes his wise instruction “to accomplish the work with the fewest amount of management layers needed,” while federal managers and senior executives might take that as a warning.

Point three in the workforce management section outlines a “plan to maximize employee performance” and reads like it came from a good government playbook.

The problem is not what it says, but what it ignores: civil service protections. The context is repeated Republican proposals threatening workplace due process rights that protect the public as much as individual workers.

No one opposes removing workers for misconduct or poor performance that does not improve. How is the challenge. The process can be much too long. But that might be the price to pay if an expedited – and fair—procedure can’t be found. Due process for Department of Veterans Affairs senior executives has already been emasculated to the point that protections approach hollowness. Republicans have pushed similar proposals for other employees. Rep. Todd Rokita (R-Ind.) has said his legislation allowing federal workers to be fired “for no reason at all” would be a tool for “Trump to use in draining the swamp” – a contemptuous description of the federal workforce.

“While there are always improvements to pursue in government regarding the workforce and its programs, pushing arbitrary cuts and ridiculous political ploys with no end game is a recipe for failure,” said Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees. “This is not a meaningful way to govern, and it is insulting to the hard-working people of the United States.”

 

[47of74]

I saw this article on Financial Times about how the religious reich basically lost God and found Donald J. Putinfluffer.

https://www.ft.com/content/b41d0ee6-1e96-11e7-b7d3-163f5a7f229c

I hope the religious reich finds a good use for the 30 pieces of silver they were paid supporting Putinfluffer.

[GreyhoundFan]

"There’s no sign Donald Trump can win a campaign for anyone not named Donald Trump"

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From the very first day of the very first voting in the 2016 primary process, it was apparent that Donald Trump’s political success would depend far more on his ability to rile up supporters than on traditional political tools. You’ll remember that he was favored to win Iowa last February, with the Selzer & Co. poll released shortly before the caucusing showed him up by five percentage points. He ended up losing by three — far more a reflection of Sen. Ted Cruz’s superior ground operation to turn out voters than any glitch in the polling itself. In the context of Trump’s campaign abilities, it can’t be repeated often enough: Trump is the first president in the modern era to win with less than half of the vote in both his party’s primary and the general.

This is an important gap in Trump’s resume for the simple reason that he has insisted that he will oust elected officials who defy him. He told Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) that he was “gonna come after” him if Meadows continued to balk at Trump’s health-care replacement. Perhaps recognizing that Trump’s threat was hollow, Meadows’s opposition, paired with that of other conservatives, tanked Trump’s legislation.

Since that disaster for the administration, Trump has had two chances to flex his campaign muscles: a special House election in Kansas’s 4th Congressional District and one on Tuesday in Georgia’s Sixth. Republican Ron Estes won the race in Kansas last week, replacing Mike Pompeo, who Trump chose to run the CIA. In Georgia, Republicans are hoping simply to force a runoff race against Democrat Jon Ossoff, who’s consolidated support from his party in a way that none of the numerous Republicans he faces has been able to do. That runoff, though, will likely mean a contest between Ossoff and one of those Republicans — much more favorable turf for the party.

So what has Trump done to weigh in against Ossoff? Two of his favorite things: He’s tweeted, and he’s recorded his own voice.

Over the past few days, Trump has tweeted five times about Ossoff’s race. In the first, he criticized the race for becoming a media event. Then, he disparaged the “super Liberal Democrat” and declared that a runoff election “will be a win.” Ossoff, he said on Tuesday morning, would be “a disaster in Congress” who would “raise your taxes” — by somehow overpowering the Republican majority.

As of writing, those tweets have been retweeted about 51,000 times, combined. Twitter has proven to be an effective way for Trump to dominate media attention when he makes surprising pronouncements like (falsely) accusing his predecessor of wiretapping his home. But these more anodyne political tweets don’t gin up the same level of interest and, given that only 21 percent of the adult population in the United States uses Twitter — skewing heavily toward younger Americans who are also less likely to turn out to vote — the odds that these tweets are motivating much of a response seems low.

...

Trump also recorded a robo-call in the race — one of those prerecorded messages that gets pushed to your answering machine. In it, Trump encourages Republicans to turn out to vote, but without identifying a candidate. Instead, he exhorts voters to “stop the super liberal Democrats” and keep Ossoff from “flood[ing] our country with illegal immigrants.”

...

In a race where you’d expect the focus to be Ossoff running against Trump, instead, it’s Trump running against Ossoff.

Will it work? Robo-calls are cheap and easy, which is a key reason that they’re popular in political campaigns. But there’s little evidence that they’re terribly effective. In the book “Get Out the Vote,” researchers Donald Green and Alan Gerber detail the utility of a number of voter-turnout tools. Of robo-calls, they write, they “might help you to stretch your resources in ways that allow you to contact the maximum number of people, but don’t expect to move them very much, if at all.” Multiple studies cited by Green and Gerber showed statistically insignificant effects on turnout — even when celebrities or the leader of the party were the ones leaving the message.

What might Trump have done instead? The Georgia election is a weird one, with no anointed candidate for Trump to stand next to. What’s more, he only won the district by 1.5 points, according to Daily Kos — meaning that his popular appeal is limited. He certainly could have done an interview with a local television news station or approved a targeted piece of mail to conservative Republicans in the district. Press secretary Sean Spicer could have invited a local reporter to ask a question remotely during a press briefing. There were ways for Trump to get involved without setting foot in Georgia that he appears not to have done, relying instead on his tweets and his voice.

Not that he did anything more than that in Kansas either. Estes’s victory was a welcome one for Republicans, but it was far closer than might have been expected several months ago. Estes won the district by about 7 points — but Trump won by 27. That was a place where Trump could have helped bolster the Republican more directly, by showing up on the ground for Estes. He didn’t. The weekend before the election, instead of heading to Kansas and holding a get-out-the-vote rally for his party’s nominee, he was at Mar-a-Lago — and his nearby golf course. All Trump did to persuade voters in Estes’s district was to tweet — once — and record another robo-call.

...

Estes’s victory was hardly the sort of thing for which Trump can take credit, given how little he did and how much worse Estes performed than he did. So far, there’s little evidence that Trump knows how to sell anyone politically except for himself — a challenge that his predecessor also faced. Barack Obama repeatedly tried to leverage his own popularity on behalf of other candidates, with the net effect of losing the House in 2010 and suffering humiliating losses in 2014. Oh, and, of course, seeing his preferred successor lose in stunning fashion in November.

The difference between Obama and Trump in this regard seems simply to be that Obama was better at selling his candidacy than Trump was at selling Trump’s. In many places, perhaps including that district in Georgia, Trump doesn’t have popularity to leverage anyway. Meaning that if you’re a candidate wondering if you should rely on Trump to push you over the finish line — or if you’re wondering if he’ll stand in your way — you’d be forgiven at this point for assuming that the president and his wan political outreach would likely be a non-factor.

 

 

I liked this analysis of Agent Orange's hypocrisy.

 

[fraurosena]

31 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

As of writing, those tweets have been retweeted about 51,000 times, combined.

I do have a little side note about this particular statement.

Retweets do NOT signify endorsements of said tweets. On the contrary, very often his contentious tweets are retweeted with comments on how ridiculous they are. So yes, he might dominate the discussion on social when he's retweeted 51,000 times. But it doesn't mean it's favorable to him.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"How America Is Losing the Credibility War"

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In times of crisis, credibility is an American president’s most valuable currency. It’s one thing for a foreign partner to doubt a president’s judgment; it’s entirely more debilitating when that partner doubts the president’s word.

As President Trump confronts the twin challenges of North Korea and Syria, he must overcome a credibility gap of his own making. His insistence on remaining the most prominent consumer and purveyor of fake news and conspiracy theories is not only corrosive of our democracy — it’s dangerous to our national security. Every fact-averse tweet devalues his credibility at home and around the world. This matters more than ever when misinformation is a weapon of choice for our most dangerous adversaries.

Part of the problem is that Mr. Trump’s itchy Twitter finger can’t resist bluster. A series of sophomoric presidential missives — “North Korea is behaving very badly”; “North Korea is looking for trouble”; if China won’t help, “we will solve the problem without them! U.S.A.”; North Korea’s quest for a nuclear-tipped ICBM “won’t happen!” — has given Pyongyang a rare chance to take the high road. “Trump is always making provocations with his aggressive words,” its vice foreign minister declared.

Presidential bravado also risks North Korea taking him at his word, and miscalculating accordingly. Loose threats of pre-emptive military attacks could cause its leader, Kim Jong-un, to shoot first and worry about the consequences later — perhaps striking South Korea with conventional weapons to remind the world what he is capable of, if the United States seeks to eliminate his nuclear program. That’s a quick path to conflict with a volatile and nuclear-armed adversary.

Equally problematic is Mr. Trump’s challenged relationship with veracity, documented almost daily by independent fact-checking organizations. The greatest hits include his repeatedly debunked claim that former President Obama tapped his phones, that a nonexistent terrorist attack occurred in Sweden, that Germany owes NATO vast sums of money, that Mr. Obama released more than 100 detainees from Guantánamo who returned to the battlefield and that Democrats made up allegations about Russian efforts to influence our election. Mr. Trump’s canards risk undermining his ability to counter propaganda from our adversaries.

...

Mr. Putin is a master at this game, throwing out falsehoods to confuse casual consumers of the news while creating a phony equivalence between Western governments and media, and his own. An army of bots and trolls and RT, the Kremlin’s international propaganda network, carry his false flags around the world. In this way, every source of information is suspect, and there is no objective truth.

During the crisis caused by Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine in 2014, I worked with colleagues in the Obama administration to convince people in other countries that Russian troops were indeed in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbass, that Moscow was arming and directing the separatists, and that it was the separatists, using a missile launcher driven in from Russia, that shot down a Malaysian passenger airliner, killing all onboard.

We spent hours negotiating with the intelligence community about what information we could declassify, marshaling open-source evidence and working on fact-based presentations for our allies and the media.

Mr. Putin’s propaganda campaigns made our job tougher than expected. But we had one trump card that usually carried the day: President Obama’s credibility. Foreign leaders trusted his word, even when they disagreed with his policies.

President John F. Kennedy demonstrated the value of presidential credibility at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, when he sent emissaries to America’s allies in October 1962 to secure support for the quarantine of Cuba. He designated Dean Acheson, the former secretary of state, to deal with Washington’s prickliest partner — President Charles de Gaulle of France.

When Acheson offered to show de Gaulle spy plane imagery to back up the claim that the Soviet Union had deployed nuclear missiles 90 miles from American shores, de Gaulle threw up his hands and said he needed no such evidence. “The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me.”

If Mr. Trump continues to spread his own misinformation on matters large and small, he will cede that advantage and America will be seen like any other country — which is just what our adversaries want. This will complicate his administration’s ability to rally others against threats to our national security.

...

 

[47of74]

39 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"There’s no sign Donald Trump can win a campaign for anyone not named Donald Trump"

 

 

I liked this analysis of Agent Orange's hypocrisy.

 

I think there is one thing that Mr. Bump missed in his analysis, that being that a lot of Democrats ran away from the President Obama's record in 2010 and 2014 and actively discouraged the President from lending any support to their campaigns.  It wasn't that President Obama barged in and gave full throated support then cost these people their elections.  No they did that all on their own.

Also another thing is that the Democratic party leadership seemed to prefer Milquetoast types instead of hard, pipe hitting liberals.  I was disappointed when Ashley Judd didn't run for Congress because I think she would have had a real shot at defeating Mitch McFuckstick.  I remember she wasn't taking any bullshit from the GOP then and the GOP was whining hard about that.

Here in Iowa I think we kind of did the same thing last election when Patty Judge was selected to run against Senator Lawn Mower.  She was more of the establishment safe choice than Rob Hogg, and looking back I think Hogg would have performed better and had a real shot at getting Lawn Mower to retire.

 

[Destiny]

9 hours ago, fraurosena said:

I vote "Trump and his Coterie of the Craven" for the new thread title, @Destiny

The motion passes.

Onward, to part 16 here: