Stephen Miller: Vampire of the West Wing

[AmazonGrace]

http://fortune.com/2017/08/08/immigration-worker-shortage-rotting-crops/

California Crops Rot as Immigration Crackdown Creates Farmworker Shortage

Spoiler

 

California Crops Rot as Immigration Crackdown Creates Farmworker Shortage

Vegetable prices may be going up soon, as a shortage of migrant workers is resulting in lost crops in California.

Farmers say they're having trouble hiring enough people to work during harvest season, causing some crops to rot before they can be picked. Already, the situation has triggered losses of more than $13 million in two California counties alone, according to NBC News.

The ongoing battle about U.S. immigration policies is blamed for the shortage. The vast majority of California's farm workers are foreign born, with many coming from Mexico. However, the PEW Research Center reports more Mexicans are leaving the U.S. than coming here.

To make the jobs more attractive, farmers are offering salaries above minimum wage, along with paid time off and 401(k) plans, but even that's not proving enough.

It's unclear exactly how widespread the labor shortage is for farmers throughout the country, which would have a bigger impact on prices consumers pay. Ultimately, drought and flooding have a more significant impact on farms. Low oil prices could also offset any impact of the worker shortage.

But for farmers, who have seen net farm income fall 50% since 2013, any lost income could be potentially devastating.

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Quote

The remarks appeared scripted, with Trump glancing at a paper in front of him. They evoked President Harry Truman's announcement of the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, in which he warned of "a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth."

Truman may have been someone's inspiration but I think Trump just got stuck and read words in  his opioid speech and repeated the same thing over and over again. 

About North Korea: 

Quote

 

"North Korea had best not make any more threats to the United States," said a stern-looking Trump, seated with his arms crossed and with his wife beside him. "They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen."

"He has been very threatening beyond a normal state. And as I said they will be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before."

 

He had said the same thing about opioids in the same briefing: 

Quote

“We’re also very, very tough on the southern border, where much of this comes in. And we’re talking to China, where certain forms of manmade drug comes in, and it is bad. And we’re speaking to other countries and we're getting cooperation, but we’re being very, very strong on our southern border and, I would say, the likes of which this country certainly has never seen that kind of strength.”

President Trump on Aug. 1 said his administration and small-business owners are “unleashing a new era of American prosperity perhaps like we’ve never seen before.

And several other things in this mashup. 

http://edition.cnn.com/videos/us/2017/08/09/world-has-never-seen-trump-mashup-early-start.cnn 

 

[Audrey2]

4 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

http://fortune.com/2017/08/08/immigration-worker-shortage-rotting-crops/

California Crops Rot as Immigration Crackdown Creates Farmworker Shortage

  Reveal hidden contents

 

California Crops Rot as Immigration Crackdown Creates Farmworker Shortage

Vegetable prices may be going up soon, as a shortage of migrant workers is resulting in lost crops in California.

Farmers say they're having trouble hiring enough people to work during harvest season, causing some crops to rot before they can be picked. Already, the situation has triggered losses of more than $13 million in two California counties alone, according to NBC News.

The ongoing battle about U.S. immigration policies is blamed for the shortage. The vast majority of California's farm workers are foreign born, with many coming from Mexico. However, the PEW Research Center reports more Mexicans are leaving the U.S. than coming here.

To make the jobs more attractive, farmers are offering salaries above minimum wage, along with paid time off and 401(k) plans, but even that's not proving enough.

It's unclear exactly how widespread the labor shortage is for farmers throughout the country, which would have a bigger impact on prices consumers pay. Ultimately, drought and flooding have a more significant impact on farms. Low oil prices could also offset any impact of the worker shortage.

But for farmers, who have seen net farm income fall 50% since 2013, any lost income could be potentially devastating.

 

 

I feel more sorry for those of us who are the consumers at the grocery store than I feel for the farmers. I've driven the 5 through central California, which is very agricultural, and have had trouble finding anything besides Conservative radio or country music, which tends to be favored by more conservative people. (Not saying all Conservatives or only conservatives, just speaking in broad strokes). I know northern (outside of the cities) and Central California tend to be conservative, and some are vocally against illegal immigration (or immigration altogether). This is yet another example of people voting against their interests. 

[apple1]

7 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

I feel more sorry for those of us who are the consumers at the grocery store than I feel for the farmers. I've driven the 5 through central California, which is very agricultural, and have had trouble finding anything besides Conservative radio or country music, which tends to be favored by more conservative people. (Not saying all Conservatives or only conservatives, just speaking in broad strokes). I know northern (outside of the cities) and Central California tend to be conservative, and some are vocally against illegal immigration (or immigration altogether). This is yet another example of people voting against their interests. 

Hey :-)

I listen to country music. :-)

[GreyhoundFan]

Dear Rufus, I know what I want for my birthday (hint -- it's the latter option): "Will Stephen Miller join Gary Cohn in the doghouse — or get fired?"

Spoiler

Senior economic adviser Gary Cohn told the media that President Trump had to “do better” after his Charlottesville comments equating the neo-Nazis with counter-protesters (something Trump did again on Thursday, a day after meeting with the only African American Republican senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina.) Cohn contradicted his boss directly, stating, “Citizens standing up for equality and freedom can never be equated with white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the KKK.” He reportedly even drafted a resignation letter. For all that garment-rending, Cohn may have lost a nomination to the Federal Reserve and earned himself Trump’s petulant treatment for disloyal aides — “refusing to make eye contact.” (Yes, this really is like high school.)

Meanwhile, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly has been cleaning house, sweeping away the incompetent, undisciplined and disloyal aides, or at least some of them, anyway. He rightly wants everyone working for the “team,” not sabotaging the White House through leaks and bad-mouthing. So disloyal aides lose promotions (as well as eye contact with POTUS) and may even get canned, right?

Well, on Thursday, Politico reported Trump’s alt-right fans feel “betrayed” as he pushes ahead for a fix in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (which amounts to “amnesty” in their book):

Republicans frantically sought more information from the White House and bashed the framework as presented by Democrats. Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, expressed displeasure about the development to other White House and legislative aides and strategized about what to do next, according to people familiar with the calls.

“Expressed displeasure” could be a mild expression of disappointment, unprofessional but hardly a firing offense. On the other hand, if Miller is out there echoing the president’s critics on this — his formerly die-hard base — that is a problem for Miller, Kelly and Trump. Trump is already battling immigration restrictionists outside the administration. One would think that it would be essential for Miller, a hero to the unhappy alt-right, to be a principal figure out calming the waters; to have him stirring the pot would be intolerable.

Then there is the cryptic reference to strategizing “about what to do next.” Again, this may be perfectly innocent. Miller might, for example, be telling people on the Hill: “Hey, you may be disappointed, but the ship has sailed. Time to stop bellyaching.” If, however, he is suggesting ways to undermine his boss’s decision or slow-walk the DACA fix, then he shouldn’t be working for Trump. He wants to be on the Stephen K. Bannon-Ann Coulter-Laura Ingraham team? Perhaps he can find work at Breitbart News.

Trump has confused, bewildered and surprised just about every Republican inside the Beltway who actually believed Trump was all-in with their anti-immigrant platform. After all, he chose Jeff Sessions as attorney general, right? Well, they received a rude awakening on Thursday when they discovered Trump has no philosophy other than “Say whatever is necessary to get praise.” The Post’s Ashley Parker neatly summed up the Trump phenomenon:

Often, Trump’s underlings, friends, foes and allies never know quite where he stands — in part because of the president’s penchant for telling his immediate audience exactly what they want to hear in any given moment. People who meet with the president frequently leave buoyed, an optimism punctured by a nagging question mere hours later: What just happened?

In this case, Miller was understandably confused, but that’s no excuse to join the howling mob. Kelly should bring him in for questioning (Sessions likes lie detector tests, doesn’t he?) and figure out what Miller has been up to. If Miller gets away with freelancing and undermining Trump, the White House will be back to the days of Reince Priebus and Bannon. Kelly must have a zero-tolerance policy for disloyalty; otherwise his work over the past several weeks will be undone in a matter of days.

 

[onekidanddone]

On 8/9/2017 at 8:22 PM, AmazonGrace said:

Truman may have been someone's inspiration but I think Trump just got stuck and read words in  his opioid speech and repeated the same thing over and over again. 

He does this in just about every time he speaks. He is great because he is great because he has been told by people he is great, people are saying.

Trump in a empty hollow shell of a human.

20 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

“Expressed displeasure” could be a mild expression of disappointment, unprofessional but hardly a firing offense.

To Trump not giving him enough ice cream is a firing offense.

[GreyhoundFan]

The NYT published this lengthy piece on the vampire: "Stephen Miller, the Powerful Survivor on the President’s Right Flank"

Spoiler

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Stephen Miller had their attention. That was reason enough to keep going.

Standing behind the microphone before a hostile amphitheater crowd, Mr. Miller — then a 16-year-old candidate for a student government post, now a 32-year-old senior policy adviser to President Trump — steered quickly into an unlikely campaign plank: ensuring that the janitorial staff was really earning its money.

“Am I the only one,” he asked, “who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us?”

It appeared he was. Boos consumed the grounds of the left-leaning Santa Monica High School campus. Mr. Miller was forcibly escorted from the lectern, shouting inaudibly as he was tugged away.

But offstage, any anger seemed to fade instantly. Students were uncertain whether Mr. Miller had even meant the remarks sincerely. Those who encountered him afterward recalled a tranquillity, and a smile. If he had just lost the election — and he had, the math soon confirmed — he did not seem to feel like it.

“He just seemed really happy,” said Charles Gould, a classmate and friend at the time, “as if that’s how he planned it.”

In the years since, Mr. Miller has rocketed to the upper reaches of White House influence along a distinctly Trumpian arc — powered by a hyper-fluency in the politics of grievance, a gift for nationalist button-pushing after years on the Republican fringe and a long history of being underestimated by liberal forces who dismissed him as a sideshow since his youth.

Across his sun-kissed former home, the so-called People’s Republic of Santa Monica, they have come to regret this initial assessment. To the consternation of many former classmates and a bipartisan coalition of Washington lawmakers, Mr. Miller has become one of the nation’s most powerful shapers of domestic and even foreign policy.

“The 31-year-old?” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, muttered to reporters earlier this year, despairing over who might be making decisions in Mr. Trump’s White House.

Yet on perhaps the president’s signature issue — immigration policy — Mr. Miller has emerged in recent days as the driving force behind the administration’s insistence on a wish list of hard-right proposals as part of any deal with Democrats to protect young undocumented immigrants from deportation. White House demands include a crackdown on unaccompanied children at the border, the construction of a border wall with Mexico and legislation to sharply reduce legal immigration.

As the surviving watchman on the president’s right flank since the removal in August of Stephen K. Bannon as chief strategist, Mr. Miller also remains a key craftsman in speechwriting at the White House. Mr. Trump, who has long prized Mr. Miller’s fierce loyalty, has embraced his instincts to sharply restrict the number of refugees admitted to the United States next year and to impose new travel restrictions on several predominantly Muslim countries and others deemed to be national security risks.

From the administration’s opening stanzas — when Mr. Trump let fly his “American carnage” inaugural address — to his swaggering turn last month before the United Nations, it is Mr. Miller’s worldview, as often as anyone’s, that the president projects on the grandest scale.

“We have this running joke,” said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, “that if we were going to get key man’s insurance on anyone, Stephen would top the list.” She was referring to policies that companies take out on their most important employee.

 

Mr. Miller’s journey to this point, outlined over dozens of interviews with friends, classmates and current and former colleagues, is a triumph of unbending convictions and at least occasional contrivance. It is a story of beliefs that congealed early in a home that he helped nudge to the right of its blue-state ZIP code, and of an ideology that became an identity for a spindly agitator at a large and racially divided public high school.

These formative years supplied the template for the life Mr. Miller has carved out for himself in Washington, where he remains the hard-line jouster many of Mr. Trump’s most zealous supporters trust most in the White House — and many former peers fear.

“I can hear Stephen’s voice,” said a fellow Santa Monica student, Nick Silverman. “Even when Trump reads these statements, I know, ‘That’s Stephen.’”

Through Mr. Miller’s nearly nine months in the Trump White House, the question — how did he come from here? — has curdled across these eight square miles of progressive oceanside paradise, where a stroll near the beach can quickly produce images that border on a self-parody of limousine liberalism. Environmentalist stickers festoon a neighborhood pocked with gas guzzlers; a small dog, seated in a stroller, twitches in the sea breeze, rumbling past a homeless man sprawled across a sidewalk bench.

< creepy yearbook photo >

“It does have this tang of the seething id of Santa Monica,” another student, Jake Zambas, said of Mr. Miller’s nativist streak, noting that their high school, like the town, was largely self-segregating. “Everyone here is just a scared white person.”

In his time on this campus of roughly 3,000 students, Mr. Miller sculpted the brand of hard-charging conservatism that would deliver him to the president’s ear, tracing a pathway at once complicated and straightforward. Mr. Miller, the middle child in a financially comfortable Jewish family, plainly relished the attention and notoriety of being the city’s red-hued exception, according to classmates — some of whom recalled chuckling at, or at least shrugging off, the antics of their resident gadfly. The line between puckishness and principle blurred in due time.

Mr. Miller set off on a patriotic semi-striptease before the editor of the student newspaper, according to the editor, Ari Rosmarin, theatrically removing a button-down to reveal an American flag T-shirt in protest of an article he found inconsistent with the national interest. (The White House denied any symbolic unbuttoning, though officials confirmed Mr. Miller’s fondness for the T-shirt.)

He jumped, uninvited, into the final stretch of a girls’ track meet, apparently intent on proving his athletic supremacy over the opposite sex. (The White House, reaching for exculpatory context, noted that this was a girls’ team from another school, not his own.)

Most memorably, classmates say, Mr. Miller established a reputation for barreling eagerly toward racial tinderboxes, leaving some to wonder whether his words were meant to be menacing or hammy. Jason Islas, who had been friendly with Mr. Miller in middle school, has little doubt.

Shortly before the start of ninth grade, Mr. Islas said, he received a call from Mr. Miller informing him that the two could no longer be friends.

“He gives me this litany of reasons,” Mr. Islas said.

Most were petty, if mean, he recalled: an insult about his social awkwardness, a dig at his acne-specked face. But one stuck out.

“He mentioned my Latino heritage as one of the reasons,” Mr. Islas said. “I remember coming away from the conversation being like, ‘O.K., that’s that.’”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, called Mr. Islas’s account “a completely inaccurate characterization of their relationship, or lack thereof,” disputing his recollection and suggesting the two were more acquaintances than friends. (Mr. Miller declined to be interviewed for this article.)

Several students said Mr. Miller’s trail of racially tinged comments amounted to a pattern. He railed against bilingual announcements, asking in a local editorial why there were “usually very few, if any, Hispanic students in my honors classes, despite the large number of Hispanic students that attend our school.”

Latino students remembered him engaging them outside group meetings, asking why they required a separate forum to discuss issues of identity, and chafing at Spanish being spoken in the halls.

“He tended to make some of the Spanish language stuff very personal,” said Moises Castillo, a classmate who described the exchanges as hurtful to this day. “There was a ‘if you’re not speaking English, perhaps you should go somewhere else.’ ”

He was asked whether Mr. Miller may have been leaning into a sort of provocative shtick, or crafting a character deliberately. In the campaign speech, after all — a portion of which was captured on video and published by Univision in February — Mr. Miller often appears to be smirking.

“It’s a character?” Mr. Castillo said. “When you hear it more than once, when you hear it in private, when you hear it in public, that ‘character’ kind of fades away. That benefit of the doubt is gone.”

 

Mr. Miller’s defenders have argued that Mr. Miller’s high school persona — more merry prankster than fearsome bomb thrower, in their view — should not diminish the seriousness of his beliefs. Mr. Miller has attributed his conservative awakening, in part, to encountering right-leaning writings on gun policy and other issues, including a 1994 book, “Guns, Crime and Freedom” by Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association leader.

Mr. Miller has said he was also shaped by his school’s response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when he confronted what he believed to be excess political correctness and insufficient support for American military efforts. Among his causes: pressing administrators to require the daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. (He prevailed.)

Mr. Miller found mentors in David Horowitz, the onetime “New Left” Marxist who evolved into a conservative author, and a radio host, Larry Elder, who booked Mr. Miller as a recurring guest. He courted local controversy by inviting both to campus for speeches.

“He was already reading Ayn Rand. He was already reading the Federalist Papers,” Mr. Elder said, describing Mr. Miller as effectively a fully formed ideologue by the time he contacted the radio host’s show. “It’s not an act. He believes what he believes.”

News articles have often described Mr. Miller as the product of liberals whose politics changed through sheer force of their son’s arguments. Public documents do support this timeline: Mr. Miller’s parents, Michael and Miriam, changed their registration to Republican from Democrat after Mr. Miller left for college, according to Los Angeles County records.

But some who knew the family at the time have challenged the suggestion that he was raised in a classically hard-left Southern California home.

Miriam Miller’s brother, David Glosser, said the elder Mr. Miller, a real estate investor, had long skewed conservative on some issues, describing him as a “responsible, thoughtful sort of economic Republican” that Mr. Glosser contrasted with Mr. Trump.

Messages left for Mr. Miller’s parents were not returned.

At Santa Monica Synagogue, the Millers proved an awkward fit in the largely liberal Reform congregation, according to people who knew them then. The younger Mr. Miller — true to form — established himself as the perpetually debate-ready boy who most enjoyed taking on all comers in 10th-grade confirmation class. A group photo, with Mr. Miller grinning from the back row in a prayer shawl, still hangs in the hall.

“We did our best here,” said Mr. Miller’s rabbi, Jeff Marx, “to teach Jewish ethics and talk about our need to reach out to the strangers, to those less fortunate than we are.”

By then, the Miller family had suffered its own notable reversal of fortunes. Earthquake-related property damage had upended Michael Miller’s real estate business, forcing the family to eventually abandon its stately home in the city’s exclusive North of Montana neighborhood.

Some classmates have speculated that the move, which found the family in a new house a short distance from the grittier and far more ethnically diverse Pico neighborhood, helped shape Mr. Miller’s still-developing views of race and class as he wended through his teens.

But others have dismissed this theory, suggesting that the family’s plight should not be overstated. A visit on a recent weekday found a succession of Mercedes-Benzes and Lexuses gliding down the block, with a team of Latino workers tending to landscaping along the sidewalk.

“They still moved to a two-story house in Santa Monica,” said Taylor Brinckerhoff, a family friend of the Millers’ who often attended Passover dinners with them.

For fellow students, the most credible origin story for Mr. Miller remains the simplest.

Surely he believed what he was saying, or at least most of it. But he also seemed to grasp quickly that contrarianism could be its own reward in an ecosystem of the like-minded, a way to stand out among the egos and trust funds of a singular American school district.

“Confrontation was his sort of modus operandi,” said Mr. Rosmarin, the former Santa Monica high school newspaper editor, who now works for the American Civil Liberties Union. “I think it’s why he came to school in the morning.”

And there is little doubt that he subscribed early to a future tenet of Breitbart-era conservatism: If you are upsetting liberals, you are probably doing something right.

“That was you?” Andrew Breitbart, the founder of the far-right website that bears his name, asked Mr. Miller in 2011, according to three people present for the exchange, during a gathering at the Breitbart townhouse beside the Supreme Court.

When Mr. Miller’s history was mentioned, these people said, Mr. Breitbart instantly recalled the California teenager who had become something of a cult figure in right-wing news media for laying verbal waste to his high school.

The megaphones only got louder, a function of timing and gumption.

As a student at Duke University, when the school became a national political minefield in 2006 after a black woman accused three white lacrosse players of rape, Mr. Miller sensed an opportunity.

Where most students and professors sided quickly with the alleged victim, Mr. Miller became the players’ most vocal defender on cable television, appearing on Fox News to accuse the prosecutor of a witch hunt long before the case collapsed.

“We are at a terrible dearth of intelligent, common-sense, courageous voices on campus,” Mr. Miller, then a senior, told Bill O’Reilly on his Fox show, taking something of a victory lap.

After graduating, Mr. Miller moved to Washington to work as press secretary for Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. By 2009, he found his way to Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama (Mr. Horowitz, the author, had introduced them), and he was eventually elevated to Mr. Sessions’s communications director.

In their years together, Mr. Miller positioned himself — and helped position Mr. Sessions, now the attorney general — inside the Republican Party’s burgeoning Breitbart wing, seizing on immigration as a central issue while bipartisan immigration legislation slithered through Congress in 2013.

Mr. Miller also found common cause with Mr. Bannon, who hoped to fashion the Breitbart News site into a battlefield for the so-called alt-right, a far-right fringe movement that often embraces an ideology of white nationalism. In 2014, the two helped propel a nearly anonymous House candidate in Virginia, Dave Brat, to a primary election victory over Eric Cantor, the majority leader at the time, in part by hammering Mr. Cantor as overly tolerant of illegal immigration. The race in many ways presaged the campaign of Mr. Trump, whose prospects Mr. Miller soon eyed with excitement.

“Trump gets it,” Mr. Miller wrote to friends weeks later, forwarding a Breitbart interview with Mr. Trump, who concluded that Mr. Cantor’s defeat owed to “his softness on immigration.”

“I wish he’d run for president,” Mr. Miller added of Mr. Trump.

When he did, Mr. Miller joined him early, before a vote had been cast in the primaries — and before Mr. Sessions became Mr. Trump’s most significant elected supporter. At rallies, Mr. Miller often warmed up crowds in his dark suits, his receding hairline slicked back. “We’re going to build that wall, and we’re going to build it out of love!” Mr. Miller promised.

Mr. Miller quickly grew comfortable with Mr. Trump’s impromptu style during the campaign, on more than one occasion ripping up a completed speech in the back of the candidate’s black S.U.V. because Mr. Trump had a change of heart on the way to an event.

And people close to both men say that more than anyone, Mr. Miller has grasped how to fuse the cadences of Mr. Trump’s own plain-spoken language with something loftier, at times scribbling notes on a piece of paper pressed to the side of a car window as he jotted down the president’s thoughts.

Occasionally, Mr. Miller has retained a public-facing role. In August, when the administration announced its support for a proposal to slash legal immigration, the White House briefing room belonged to him.

By the time the news conference was over, Mr. Miller had sparred with The New York Times, accused a CNN reporter of “cosmopolitan bias” and suggested that the poem associated with the Statue of Liberty (“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses”) should not inform American immigration policy because it was not added to Liberty Island until 17 years after the statue’s unveiling.

As he spoke, Ms. Sanders, the press secretary, inched closer, sensing it was time to reclaim the microphone. But Mr. Miller seemed tickled by the combat.

“I think that went exactly as planned,” Mr. Miller said coyly, finally ceding the stage. “I think that was exactly what we were hoping to have happen.”

For the sake of our country, he needs to be the next one out.

[Cartmann99]

26 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

For the sake of our country, he needs to be the next one out.

 It's obvious that Miller would take great pleasure in punishing those he feels are beneath him.

[47of74]

Then the Resident Joseph Gobbels Clone of the White House got told off by Jake Tapper this morning on the grounds that said Gobbels Clone wasted enough of the viewers time.

Quote

But Tapper’s attempts to calm Miller failed, and he was eventually forced to end the interview.

“Okay, you’re not answering the questions,” Tapper said. “I get it. There’s one viewer that you care about right now and you’re being obsequious because you’re trying to please him. I’ve wasted enough of my viewers time.”

With that, Tapper cut off Miller and tossed to commercial.

 

[GrumpyGran]

2 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

Then the Resident Joseph Gobbels Clone of the White House got told off by Jake Tapper this morning on the grounds that said Gobbels Clone wasted enough of the viewers time.

 

This was awesome! I think Tapper's tired of the shit. I wish more of them would do that, Dickerson just let Pompeo spew out lie after lie this morning. I guess he drew one of the short straws and had to come back from C.D. to defend the Dunce's intelligence. It's embarrassing at this point.

[Destiny]

13 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

Then the Resident Joseph Gobbels Clone of the White House got told off by Jake Tapper this morning on the grounds that said Gobbels Clone wasted enough of the viewers time.

 

I just finished watching that mess. Jake was being condescending? Uhhhh.... NO. 

I was yelling at him to get off my screen about 3 min before Jake quit him. 

[47of74]

6 minutes ago, Destiny said:

I just finished watching that mess. Jake was being condescending? Uhhhh.... NO. 

I was yelling at him to get off my screen about 3 min before Jake quit him. 

My question for Jake was why the fuck did you have that dumb fuck troll on in the first place?

[apple1]

5 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

My question for Jake was why the fuck did you have that dumb fuck troll on in the first place?

Because it is the job of the press to provide unbiased coverage and that includes allowing multiple sides to present their viewpoints. Unfortunately, with the Trump administration, the likelihood of their spokesperson being reasonable and logical is probably nil. And Miller is possibly the worst of the bunch, worse even than Kellyanne.

And IMO this morning's performance should cause Miller to be blacklisted from being interviewed on any of the mainstream news shows.

[GrumpyGran]

22 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

My question for Jake was why the fuck did you have that dumb fuck troll on in the first place?

Exposure. As in "Look under the bed. There really is a monster there!"

As we've already seen, they are going to fight back hard against the Wolff book and it provides a golden opportunity to show how accurate the allegations are. These idiots can't actually come up with anything coherent or conclusive to prove that Dump isn't an idiot.

Pompeo's "proof' that Dump is intelligent this morning? He got a call from Dump last spring and Dump asked him about five questions. He told Dump he'd get the answers and get back to him. He called Dump back and answered the questions. Dump said "ok." Yep, that was it. Not a face-to-face, back and forth discussion, just questions and that was it.

[candygirl200413]

@apple1 Any time pre-orange fuckface I would totally agree about opposing viewpoints. But we are in such a different time that I personally feel like this administration shouldn't be broadcasted if it's just hateful and riddled in lies. 

**sorry NYtimes has gotten me pissed as of late with essentially being a mouthpiece for that administration and it's becoming a little too exhausting with how they rather have access to him then to ask needed follow-up questions.**

[GreyhoundFan]

Hey, slimy vampire, a hint: if you are being cheered on by Ann Coulter and Newt Gingivitis, you are not doing well.

[GrumpyGran]

26 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Hey, slimy vampire, a hint: if you are being cheered on by Ann Coulter and Newt Gingivitis, you are not doing well.

Is unself a word? Oh, and shut up, Fat Toad, you hate Jake Tapper. Coulter out drinking last night, lost track of time?

[47of74]

The Joseph Gobbels clone had to be escorted off CNN property after his interview was cut short.

Quote

Two sources told Business Insider that as the network went to a commercial break, Miller was asked to leave several times, but refused.

Finally, security officers were called who escorted Miller from the premises.

[apple1]

8 hours ago, 47of74 said:

The Joseph Gobbels clone had to be escorted off CNN property after his interview was cut short.

Wow. I knew he was an arrogant... (words fail me as to what).

[AmazonGrace]

Five bucks says Jake Tapper is in the running for a fake news award

 

[GreyhoundFan]

From the WaPo's Callum Borchers: "How to attack the media like Stephen Miller, in 3 easy steps"

Spoiler

A media appearance by White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller is a bit like a solar eclipse: rare but blindingly intense, if you look straight at it.

On President Trump's deep roster of media combatants, no one brings it quite like “the great Stephen Miller,” as Ann Coulter called him after his searing performance in a Sunday morning interview with CNN's Jake Tapper.

“I wonder if it would help if all Trump spokesmen were as smart as Stephen Miller,” Coulter tweeted in August, after Miller's first, and so far only, showing at a White House press briefing.

I don't have the power to imbue anyone else with the Duke-educated Miller's smarts, but I can offer this handy guide to attacking the media like he does. It's easy! Just follow these three simple steps.

Use really strong adjectives. Repeat them.

... < video >

Pay attention to Miller's word choice in this excerpt from his response to Tapper's first question, about remarks made by Breitbart News Chairman Stephen K. Bannon in “Fire and Fury,” a new book by journalist Michael Wolff:

. . . it's tragic and unfortunate that Steve would make these grotesque comments, so out of touch with reality and obviously so vindictive. And the whole White House staff is deeply disappointed in his comments, which were grotesque.

And with respect to the Trump Tower meeting that he's talking about, he wasn't even there when any of this went down. So, he's not really a remotely credible source on any of it. It reads like an angry, vindictive person spouting off to a highly discredible author. The book is best understood as a work of very poorly written fiction.

And I also will say that the author is a garbage author of a garbage book.

Bannon's comments aren't merely uninformed, according to Miller; they are “grotesque.” Miller doesn't apply some tired phrase such as “sour grapes” to Bannon, a former White House chief strategist; he uses “vindictive.”

He repeats both adjectives to make sure they sink in.

Miller's other descriptors in this passage include “tragic,” “discredible” and “garbage.” “Discredible” isn't even a word (Miller probably meant “discreditable”), but the goal — which he accomplished — is to deliver criticism in forceful language.

Be offended. Be very offended.

You might think that a Trump surrogate should strive to be the antithesis of a snowflake. You would be wrong.

Take offense. Take offense on behalf of others, as Miller did at that August briefing, when CNN's Jim Acosta asked about Trump's plan to emphasize English-language skills in immigration decisions and quipped, “Are we just going to bring in people from Great Britain and Australia?”

“That you think only people from Great Britain or Australia would speak English is so insulting to millions of hard-working immigrants who do speak English from all over the world,” Miller shot back.

Speaking with Tapper on Sunday, Miller defended “the kinds of people whose life concerns don't get a lot of attention on CNN.”

“Not a lot of hours of coverage on this TV talking about the working-class construction workers who have lost their jobs to foreign labor,” he said.

The idea is to rebut the notion that Trump's behavior is offensive by righteously suggesting that it is actually the press that is offensive.

Don't answer the question. Then act like the interviewer won't let you answer the question.

Tapper cited Trump's statement that “Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency” and asked Miller, “Is the president really arguing that Steve Bannon had nothing to do with him or his presidency?”

Miller began his response with a dodge. “I can only tell you my experience, which is that I joined the campaign in January of '16,” he said, prompting Tapper to ask about Bannon's role in Miller's hiring.

When Tapper tried to steer the conversation back to Bannon's significance in the Trump White House — “There is no presidency that is one person,” he said — Miller answered with a non-sequitur about the campaign.

“A phenomenon was happening that you didn't see,” Miller said.

Then came this exchange:

TAPPER: If you would let me — if you would let me ask — if you would let me ask this question.

MILLER: No, because you have . . .

TAPPER: The president . . .

MILLER: You get 24 hours of negative, anti-Trump, hysterical coverage on this network . . .

TAPPER: Okay.

MILLER: . . . that led in recent weeks to some spectacularly embarrassing false reporting from your network.

TAPPER: I think — I think the viewers right now can ascertain who is being hysterical.

MILLER: No, the viewers are entitled . . .

TAPPER: My — my . . .

MILLER: .  . . to have three months [sic] of the truth. Why don't you just give me three minutes to tell you the truth of the Donald Trump that I know and that all of our campaign knows?

See what Miller did there? Here's how to replicate it: Try to change the subject. When the interviewer interrupts, in an effort to get back on topic, angrily allege that you are being stopped from speaking “truth.”

Soon after, Tapper cut off the interview, saying, “I think I've wasted enough of my viewers' time. Thank you, Stephen.”

Miller certainly has the Repug lines of crap down pat.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The depressing lesson of Jake Tapper v. Stephen Miller"

Spoiler

Jake Tapper’s interview with Trump White House aide Stephen Miller started with the standard cable-news courtesies: “Stephen, thanks so much for joining us, and Happy New Year. Good to see you,” said Tapper.

Miller replied, “Good to be here.”

The comity soon withered under the weight of “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” the new book by Michael Wolff that raises questions about President Trump’s fitness for office. With ample quotes from former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, the book dominated 2018’s first news week and prompted Trump to issue a statement attempting to distance himself from Bannon.

The untenable contradiction of the White House — on the one hand, employing Bannon to advise the president; on the other hand, dissing him when he later makes negative statements — was on full display in Tapper’s questioning of Miller. “Grotesque comments,” groused Miller about Bannon’s quotes in Wolff’s book. “It reads like an angry, vindictive person spouting off to a highly discredible author,” Miller told Tapper. The White House aide also called Wolff a “garbage author of a garbage book.”

... < video >.

So far, so predictable. The more Tapper burrowed into discomfiting matters, however, the more Miller attempted to turn the conversation to CNN’s reporting mistakes of the past year. As this blog has written in great detail, CNN last year botched a story attempting to predict the much-anticipated congressional testimony of former FBI director James B. Comey; it wrote a retraction for an investigation into then-Trump associate Anthony Scaramucci, which led to the resignation of three CNN staffers; and it bumbled into an embarrassing correction over a story suggesting that Donald Trump Jr. had received an email providing special access to WikiLeaks material.

So: When Tapper asked whether the White House was really arguing that Bannon had nothing to do with Trump’s presidency, the two snipped and sniped, culminating in this broadside from Miller: “You have 24 hours of negative, anti-Trump hysterical coverage on this network that led in recent weeks to some spectacularly embarrassing false reporting from your network. Viewers are entitled to have three [minutes] of the truth.”

Cue much more unpleasantness. Tapper eventually circled around to the recent Trump tweets protesting that he’s a “very stable genius” and the like. Were those helping things?

“Not only do I think they help it,” responded Miller, “but I think in the toxic environment that you’ve created here in CNN and cable news, which is a real crisis of legitimacy for your network — and we saw it, of course, with the extremely fake news you reported about the Don Jr. and WikiLeaks story. That was a huge embarrassment for your network. Just like the huge embarrassment you had when you got the Comey testimony wrong, which you’ve never given a proper accounting.”

After some cross talk, Miller said, “I’m getting to the issue of your fitness.”

The host was tiring of Miller’s repeating of his praise for Trump. “There’s one viewer that you care about right now and you’re being obsequious, you’re being a factotum in order to please him,” said Tapper. So he cut off the interview and moved to a different topic. Miller reportedly hadn’t finished his piece and declined to abandon the set, forcing the network to escort him out.

Nasty clashes occur every so often on the cable-news networks. It’s part of the business plan. There was something more in this instance, however, than a host and an interviewee tangling over talking points. Miller was going straight at CNN over credibility issues, torching the network for its misfiring exclusives in 2017. There’ll be no effort here to dissent from Miller’s conclusion that the mistakes amounted to “some spectacularly embarrassing false reporting.”

In each of the three cases, though, CNN corrected the record. For the Comey-testimony thing, it issued a prominent correction; for the Scaramucci misfire, it issued a retraction; and for the Donald Trump Jr. story, it issued a prominent correction and adjusted the article’s text to clarify that the story was no longer a story. Those corrections don’t wipe away all the damage done by the original flawed accounts.

But they do demonstrate good faith regarding the truth, something that Trump and his minions haven’t shown in over a year in the White House. Imagine if Tapper had pivoted from CNN’s falsehoods to those of the president: He would have had a field day with nearly 2,000 false or misleading claims, according to The Post’s Fact Checker. Those falsehoods cover just about everything in Trump’s orbit, from jobs to the environment to foreign policy to his own record. Talk about spectacularly embarrassing false reporting.

The White House Department of Corrections must be a little short-staffed these days, because it’s a bit behind in setting the record straight. The Post’s Glenn Kessler, of the fact-checking operation, writes, “No, not really,” when asked if the White House had corrected its falsehoods. “They did adjust their counting of jobs created under Trump after we pointed out they were counting a month (January) that was based on data collected before Trump took the oath of office. But they never told us they were doing that,” notes Kessler, who also noted that White House counselor Kellyanne Conway had withdrawn her claim about the so-called “Bowling Green massacre,” thereby avoiding Pinocchios.

All of which gives the White House a nearly nonexistent rate of owning up to mistakes. No surprise in light of the boss’s attitude: “I think apologizing’s a great thing, but you have to be wrong. I will absolutely apologize, sometime in the hopefully distant future, if I’m ever wrong,” said Trump in 2015.

The White House and CNN, accordingly, are on entirely separate ethical planes. One believes that admission of error equates to an unspeakable weakness. The other views it as a way of restoring trust with its audience. It’s hard to reconcile those differences, especially in front of television cameras.

I think there are two most depressing things: 1. Miller is still contributing to the excess carbon dioxide on our planet and 2. We are paying him.

[JMarie]

On 1/7/2018 at 6:53 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

Hey, slimy vampire, a hint: if you are being cheered on by Ann Coulter and Newt Gingivitis, you are not doing well.

Hey, we now know that Ann Coulter can't figure out how to record something on her DVR.  That, or she can't tell time.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Destiny]

 

This was a thing of beauty. Thank you for sharing.