U.S. Politics: Despite Negative Press Covfefe, We Will Always Have Paris

[Mudguard]

1 minute ago, commiedore said:

lol... except for the bolded totally agree

I don't think that there will be much discussion on the contents of the leaked document.  There isn't anything in there that is really new or controversial.  Regarding the leaked document itself, what's there to talk about?  

I could see there being some coverage on the leaker's plight and trial.  Unfortunately for her, it seems virtually certain that she's going to jail for this.  It's just one document, so I hope she get's off light, but I doubt Sessions and the Trump administration is going to be merciful, and I don't think she can count on Trump for a pardon at the end of his term.

[The Anti-Targ]

3 hours ago, Zorral said:

As you all may have noticed as his solution to creating infrastructure jobs, t***pitler plans to remove air traffic control from the Federal Aviation Agency, and privatize it.  This is going to work by replacing human air traffic controllers with technology.

Some do not think this is a good idea including these people in small Minnesota towns --

http://www.startribune.com/small-airports-many-minnesota-towns-fear-turning-air-traffic-control-into-a-business/415510274/

How this is going to generate jobs escapes me.

Additionally, having grown up with a father who was a pilot, and a brother who is an aeronautics engineer, I feel extremely uncomfortable with having only technology directing the enormously dense air traffic of, o say where I live now -- particularly when factoring in the every increasing number of drones adding to the density. I still believe in talented human beings' capacity to pull out of emergencies by experience coupled with seat of the pants reactions.  I've seen it in action, just as I've too often seen failure of tech in action leading to disaster.

Tech is excellent at dealing with the routine and the predictable. I don't think it is better, yet, at dealing with complex emergency situations.

[LongRider]

2 hours ago, MerenthaClone said:

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@MerenthaClone clean out your cache and cookies, it worked for me.

[LongRider]

5 hours ago, Hereward said:

I thought it was obvious from the context of Fragile Bird's post, and the capitalisation, that I was referring to the British Conservative Party.

Well, cuda said so as I thought since the post was in the US Politics thread it was now about the US, plus if your location indicates somewhere outside the US I didn't  know that.     I do agree with this tho' :

 

9 hours ago, Hereward said:

that educationally subnormal, ethically vacuous, neo-Nazi scumbag.

 

[LongRider]

5 hours ago, Mexal said:

Yea, people buy this shit. It won't get them new voters though but solidify the "us against the elites" narrative for their base.

On NPR over the weekend they were talking to some rural voters in Texas who happened to have a coal mine as their local industry, and one woman said along this line (paraphrasing)  "They need to let him alone so he can get his work done."  

So I guess it's the media's and others (damn you SNL and Alex Baldwin!) fault the Golf Cheater in Chief can't take away healthcare from millions and give billionaire's the deep tax he they so richly deserve. 

[all swedes are racist]

3 hours ago, Mudguard said:

I don't think that there will be much discussion on the contents of the leaked document.  There isn't anything in there that is really new or controversial.  Regarding the leaked document itself, what's there to talk about?  

I could see there being some coverage on the leaker's plight and trial.  Unfortunately for her, it seems virtually certain that she's going to jail for this.  It's just one document, so I hope she get's off light, but I doubt Sessions and the Trump administration is going to be merciful, and I don't think she can count on Trump for a pardon at the end of his term.

yeah, i get that, and thats what i was agreeing with. this does seem to be generating a lot of secondary discussion; whether or not the intercept is to blame for poor practice in protecting a source, the character of winner herself, libs crowing "see, russia did do it!" despite the utter lack of any concrete assertion in the document, etc...

[OldGimletEye]

52 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

@OldGimletEye I was talking about the Brits, not Americans.

Got it.

52 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I was nearly apoplectic when I saw Jeffrey Lord speak. All I could think of was the PM walking hand in hand with Trump. I don't think I suggested that attitude of the British government is the same, but not everyone may have made the same immediate visual connection I did. Trump and May, hand in hand. How do you support a Trump supporter?

Jeffrey Lord, in case you don't know him, is a Trump surrogate who always finds every single thing Trump says or does perfectly reasonable and correct. The other week, after some ridiculous thing Trump tweeted or said, Anderson Cooper got so frustrated he actually told him that Trump could poop on his desk in the Oval office and Lord would defend him. I don't think I've ever seen Cooper that annoyed in years.

British don’t let your conservatives turn into Trumpsters
Don’t let ‘em watch fake news and drive you fuckin’ nuts
Turn 'em into doctors and lawyers and such
British don’t let your conservatives turn into Trumpsters
‘Cause with Trumpsters, the lights are on,  but nobody’s home
Even though there is no crap that they don’t think of...........

[LongRider]

Donald Trump challenges Sadiq Khan to IQ test

Speaking on Good Morning Britain, Donald Trump has challenged the new London mayor to an IQ test after Sadiq Khan said he was ignorant.

Mr Khan reacted to Mr Trump's latest comments, saying his views on Islam were ignorant.

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-36299929/donald-trump-challenges-sadiq-khan-to-iq-test

Cannot stop....................puking.

[mormont]

Not understanding the meaning of the word 'ignorant' is another quality self-own by Donald Trump.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

13 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

Donald Trump challenges Sadiq Khan to IQ test

Speaking on Good Morning Britain, Donald Trump has challenged the new London mayor to an IQ test after Sadiq Khan said he was ignorant.

Mr Khan reacted to Mr Trump's latest comments, saying his views on Islam were ignorant.

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-36299929/donald-trump-challenges-sadiq-khan-to-iq-test

Cannot stop....................puking.

The man wants to live his life measuring penis sizes, doesn't he?

[Impmk2]

Challenge to an IQ test? What the fuck? 

I shouldn't be shocked anymore, but is the President a 5 year old child?

[The Mance]

Khan should counter with a thumb wrestling challenge. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, Impmk2 said:

Challenge to an IQ test? What the fuck? 

I shouldn't be shocked anymore, but is the President a 5 year old child?

No... checkers at dawn.  Chess is too elitist.

[LongRider]

37 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The man wants to live his life measuring penis sizes, doesn't he?

From tiny hands to an IQ test, why yes, yes he does.  

[OldGimletEye]

Cleaning up Libertarian Messes on Aisle 11:

U. of Chicago’s John Cochrane strikes again!

Cochrane has a history of making cringe worthy assertions.. A short list of Cochrane’s bull. Using simple accounting he asserted that a dollar spent by the government is one taken away from the private sector (uh, face palm. No make that a double face palm, one isn’t enough). And then he was one of them thar “Inflation is just around the corner” guys. After the inflation didn’t materialize he switched to neo-fisherianism, the idea that raising the interest rate, will raise inflation based on his notion of  the “backward stable solution”  or whatever, ie “the libertarian horseshit solution”. When Woodford basically pointed out that Cochrane’s solution doesn’t hold up well, if we relax the assumption of rational expectations, Cochrane said something like, “the battle is half won if they are using non-rational expectations” or some horseshit like that. Because only Cochrane would think that Rational Expectations is actually realistic, as opposed to being a rather convenient mathematical choice to model expectations.

Anyway, I digress. The horseshit continues:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-01/americans-sure-seem-to-like-universal-health-care

Quote

Not all Americans agree, of course. In a recent blog post, Hoover Institute senior fellow John Cochrane likens single-payer health care to single-payer food:

"Is every American entitled to eat?" [really means] "Don't you think the Federal government should establish an entitlement that every American can have the Federal government pay for his or her food, from funds raised by taxation?"...Even to that one the answer has to be no. There is no such law, right, or entitlement. That is a simple matter of fact.

And now the cleanup:

Quote

In 1963, the great economist Ken Arrow published a paper explaining a number of reasons why health care is unusual. Arrow asserted that if economists care about human welfare, instead of just about overall economic efficiency, they should favor some form of government provision of health insurance. Without the government, he writes, we could easily end up with a system that uses resources efficiently but causes horrible human suffering...............

 

An explainer on the OLA:

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/06/05/a-primer-on-dodd-franks-orderly-liquidation-authority/

Quote

Though Dodd-Frank’s Orderly Liquidation Authority (OLA) was among the most widely supported and bipartisan portions of the bill, passing the Senate by a vote of 93-5, it has subsequently become more controversial. The House Financial Services Committee has approved legislation repealing this portion of Dodd-Frank, and the full House is expected to do the same in early June. How does OLA work? Why is it controversial? What impact, if any, does it have on the federal budget?

 

Quote

Several former financial regulators of both parties, including former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Paul Volcker, former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair, as well as numerous restructuring experts and legal scholars, such as Jim Millstein, David Skeel, and Rodgin Cohen have all recently written in support of retaining OLA. Several conservatives have embraced the CHOICE Act and continue to make the case to repeal OLA. The debate will continue and despite the broad initial support for the establishment of OLA, its future is uncertain.

Jeb Hensarling's Financial Bomb, oops I meant "Choice", Act. What an effing joke.

 

And finally, today in:

"Man when conservatives fuck you over, they really fuck you over":

https://www.boeckler.de/pdf/p_imk_wp_179_2017.pdf

Quote

We analyze whether there are negative (positive) long-term effects of austerity measures
(stimulus measures) on potential output growth. Based on the approach of Blanchard and
Leigh (2013) and Fatás and Summers (2016) and using a novel dataset of narratively identified
fiscal policy shocks, we estimate the impact of these shocks on potential output. We
robustly find strong and persistent long-run multiplier effects for most European Countries in
the early years after the financial crisis and subsequent Euro Area crisis. We conclude that
early stimulus was beneficial even in the long-run, while the subsequent turn to austerity
was badly timed and thus not only deepened the crisis but caused evitable hysteresis effects

 

[OldGimletEye]

Also, important:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/06/states-with-more-black-people-have-less-generous-welfare-benefits-study-says/

Quote

How much cash welfare assistance families in poverty receive largely depends on where they live, with welfare eroding in every state except Oregon over the last 20 years, according to a new study by the Urban Institute. 

The study, released on Tuesday, unveils wide racial and geographic disparities in how states distribute cash welfare, known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

Two decades after President Bill Clinton carried out the welfare reforms that created TANF, states with a larger share of African Americans tend to have less generous welfare benefits and more restrictive policies, the study found.

 

[LongRider]

Awww, look who else has tiny hands;

Quote

“Rather than the mayor of London attacking maybe he should do something about it,” Donald Trump Jr. said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “Maybe he should do something to fix the problem rather than just sit there and pretend there isn't one. I think that's an important message.”

And guess what?  He's as out of touch with reality as his papa is.

Quote

“Every time he puts something out there he gets criticized by the media all day every day by everyone else and guess what? Two weeks later he's proven to be right,” the president’s son said.

 

[Mexal]

According to Brookings, that $110 million arms deal with Saudi Arabia doesn't actually exist right now. As usual, Trump promotes something, media runs with it and it turns out to be bullshit.

Quote

I’ve spoken to contacts in the defense business and on the Hill, and all of them say the same thing: There is no $110 billion deal. Instead, there are a bunch of letters of interest or intent, but not contracts. Many are offers that the defense industry thinks the Saudis will be interested in someday. So far nothing has been notified to the Senate for review. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the arms sales wing of the Pentagon, calls them “intended sales.” None of the deals identified so far are new, all began in the Obama administration.

An example is a proposal for sale of four frigates (called multi-mission surface combatant vessels) to the Royal Saudi navy. This proposal was first reported by the State Department in 2015. No contract has followed. The type of frigate is a derivative of a vessel that the U.S. Navy uses but the derivative doesn’t actually exist yet. Another piece is the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense system (THAAD) which was recently deployed in South Korea. The Saudis have expressed interest in the system for several years but no contracts have been finalized. Obama approved the sale in principle at a summit at Camp David in 2015. Also on the wish list are 150 Black Hawk helicopters. Again, this is old news repackaged. What the Saudis and the administration did is put together a notional package of the Saudi wish list of possible deals and portray that as a deal. Even then the numbers don’t add up. It’s fake news.

 

[LongRider]

5 minutes ago, Mexal said:

According to Brookings, that $110 million arms deal with Saudi Arabia doesn't actually exist right now. As usual, Trump promotes something, media runs with it and it turns out to be bullshit.

 

Wait, so Prezzie IQ Orange Thingy curtsied and rubbed an orb for nuttin' but optics?  Does the orange man with the high IQ* know he's been pranked?    

 

*he sez, however, the IRS has a audit on the high IQ so his actual score can't be released at this time

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, Nasty LongRider said:

Awww, look who else has tiny hands;

And guess what?  He's as out of touch with reality as his papa is.

 

Yeah, Trump is proven to be right. LOL.