US Politics: He's Trump, he's Trump, he's Trump, he's in my head

[TerraPrime]

And that's what fake news do - they jam your frequencies, making it hard to determine the truth. You don't have to believe in the fake news for it to be effective. 

[ThinkerX]

Other boarders here really should have caught this one:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/official-involved-in-bush-era-purge-of-gay-employees-now-in-trump-administration/ar-BBzFdML?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=msnclassic

 

It was one of the uglier scandals of the Bush administration: Top officials at an agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers launched a campaign against their own employees based on

suspected sexual orientation, according to an inspector general report.

Staffers were abruptly reassigned from Washington, D.C., to a new office 500 miles away in Detroit in what the head of the office reportedly described as an effort to “ship [them] out.” Staffers who refused were fired.

Crude anti-gay emails were found in the agency chief’s account.

Now one of the major players in the scandal has a new assignment: He works in the Trump administration.

In December, James Renne was appointed to the Trump “landing team” at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as part of the transition effort between the election and the inauguration. He was then hired Jan. 30 in a senior role at the Department of Agriculture, though his exact job duties are not clear.

 

[DMC]

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

People also tend to forget that the removal of the missiles from Turkey was actually a key strategic victory for the USSR as well. The USSR certainly didn't back down and walk away with nothing, no matter how it looked in 1962.

Not really.  The Jupiter missiles were outdated and going to be removed soon thereafter anyway.  The main effects of the crisis were in souring the relations between Castro and the Kremlin and, by the same token, Turkey and the US.  Considering a more subtle approach on Khrushchev's part may have led to him having a true satellite not only in the Western Hemisphere but 90 miles away, most (Americans) would take that trade both today and in '62.

[ThinkerX]

5 hours ago, TerraPrime said:

And that's what fake news do - they jam your frequencies, making it hard to determine the truth. You don't have to believe in the fake news for it to be effective. 

Yet there are limits.  Once again, my Facebook has been filling up with right wing conspiracy tripe articles.  However, when I read through the comments, I see something that was absent from such pieces a year ago: criticism and condemnation.  The comments hostile to the articles points often outnumber the supportive ones. 

[Altherion]

On 4/9/2017 at 0:11 PM, Werthead said:

This was a purely political move of no measurable military value.

In the best case scenario, the Trump administration understands that militarily weakening Assad means giving an advantage to entities worse than Assad and deliberately chose a means of attack that sends a message without doing serious harm. The message is "Please don't do that or I'll have no choice but to respond" and it comes with a slap on the wrist. Unfortunately, it seems that the overt position goes further than that and proclaims that Assad has to go without much of an idea of what he will be replaced with. Of course, it might be that this is a deliberate exaggeration. We'll see.

[TheKitttenGuard]

17 minutes ago, Altherion said:

In the best case scenario, the Trump administration understands that militarily weakening Assad means giving an advantage to entities worse than Assad and deliberately chose a means of attack that sends a message without doing serious harm. The message is "Please don't do that or I'll have no choice but to respond" and it comes with a slap on the wrist. Unfortunately, it seems that the overt position goes further than that and proclaims that Assad has to go without much of an idea of what he will be replaced with. Of course, it might be that this is a deliberate exaggeration. We'll see.

So who in the Administration understand in the best case for it does not appear to be Trump himself.

There is a definitive war push from the Syrian Hawks at this time.  I do not think they will get the military they want but some groups that were stated to be Al-Qaeda fronts will now be "properly vetted".

It is of great irony that Trump plunge us directly in what he was warning us about with Obama and Hillary.  It would be amazing what some poster will be stating if either were speaking of dead babies as Trump did.  That goes for much of Talk Radio and Fox News.

Donald Trump is a serious self unaware American Exceptionalist.

[Fez]

With the first Congressional special election today, its worth looking at this summary of how Democrats have done in special elections overall since Trump was elected. While not every election has been a success, it is notable that Democrats have pretty consistently outperformed their 2016 general election margins.

Especially since, in two of the three special elections where Republicans outperformed 2016, there were strong mitigating circumstances (in Pennsylvania, the Democrat was a write-in only and not on the ballot; and in Louisiana the Democrat dropped out of the race but was sill on the ballot).

Of course, state legislative elections can always be weird, so each one should be looked at with a large grain of salt. But as I've said before, its looking like a trend so far; and hopefully this continues as the sample gets bigger. 

I don't think the Democrat wins in Kansas today, and I don't believe that Republican internal poll from last week showing the Republican only up 1 point. I think the race is closer than the 30-point blowout this district usually gives, but my thought is that poll was partially cooked to try to galvanize Republicans to not take the race for granted. I'd love to be wrong though. However, I also think Trump isn't the only reason this race is close; there's also the staggering unpopularity of Brownback bringing down all Republicans in the state (if there still was a functional state Democratic party they'd have a good shot at winning the governor's race in 2018; but there's not).

Sidenote: The entire Republican argument for voting Republican in this race seems to be that the Democrat will be a vote for Nancy Pelosi. On the one hand, its pretty sad that the Pelosi bogeyman is pretty much all they've got. On the other hand, its probably going to work; she's a very scary bogeyman to a lot of Republicans and independents. Which is why, since she doesn't really add value to the Democratic caucus anymore either, I wish she'd have stepped down as leader years ago. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

13 hours ago, TerraPrime said:

And that's what fake news do - they jam your frequencies, making it hard to determine the truth. You don't have to believe in the fake news for it to be effective. 

I was listening to an expert on political propaganda break down the point of fake news. She basically described it like this: "Up means down, left means right, black means white and life means death. And once this is real a confused populace in a moment of crisis will believe anything the state tells them." 

[OldGimletEye]

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/04/obamacare-doing-well-trump-and-ryan-can-change-if-they-want

Today in: Not everyone plays team Republican.

Quote

So with this temporarily out of the way, how does the overall Obamacare market look? According to Standard & Poors, profit levels for insurers are still too low, but they're improving and the market seems to be in pretty good shape:

 

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-republicans-tax-reform-failure-by-nouriel-roubini-2017-04

Republican Party: Meet Reality.

Quote

NEW YORK – US President Donald Trump’s first major legislative goal – to “repeal and replace” the 2010 Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) – has already imploded, owing to Trump and congressional Republicans’ naiveté about the complexities of health-care reform. Their attempt to replace an imperfect but popular law with a pseudo-reform that would deprive more than 24 million Americans of basic health care was bound to fail – or sink Republican members of Congress in the 2018 mid-term elections if it had passed.

Now, Trump and congressional Republicans are pursuing tax reform – starting with corporate taxes and then moving on to personal income taxes – as if this will be any easier. It won’t be, not least because the Republicans’ initial proposals would add trillions of dollars to budget deficits, and funnel over 99% of the benefits to the top 1% of the income distribution.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-10/keynesian-economics-is-hot-again

Quote

To the growing list of famous mainstream macroeconomists who have publicly criticized their discipline, add another: In a recent essay, Lawrence Christiano of Northwestern University argues that the Great Recession was an “earthquake” that dramatically changed how researchers think about the U.S. economy.

Christiano is known as a scholar who straddles macroeconomics’ great divide. His models adopt the basic form and some of the bedrock assumptions of the New Classicals, the economists who insisted in the 1980s that monetary and fiscal policy can’t fight recessions. But he also incorporates some elements of Keynesianism, the idea that aggregate demand shortages exist and can be corrected by the government stimulus. Perhaps as a result of their centrist take on that long-running debate, theories inspired by Christiano’s have won pride of place in central banks around the world.

Perhaps centrist should think as themselves as being liberals, as you know, it would seem, according to conservatives there are "true conservatives" and then everyone else.

Quote

If economists gravitated toward anti-Keynesian theories, it was at least in part because evidence wasn’t strong enough to push them in the right direction.

The fact that Lucas et al., the founders of the RBC models, assumed instantaneous market clearing by price has, in my view, has always made their project suspect. I think that is just wrong methodologically and a case of “an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in bedlam.”

[OldGimletEye]

15 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Let's just clarify a few things here. There is a difference between criticizing Trump for whatever he does, and disagreeing with a specific course of action he takes. In the case of the anti-Trump camp, they would criticize him if he did nothing in Syria, saying that he is in Putin's pocket, and they would criticize him if he launched a strike in Syria, as you guys are now indeed doing.

Maybe there some out there that are just going to play team Democrat no matter what Trump does.

But, I think there is a rift in the Democratic Party over foreign policy. You have the Samantha Powers/Hillary wing that seems to favor interventionism and the the wing that is skeptical of interventionism. Me personally, I am not fond of the Samantha Powers wing. I am extremely skeptical about interventionism into foreign countries and will remain so, no matter what Trump does. Also, my sense is that overall most of the Democratic Party, if not all of it, remains in the skepticism of intervention camp.

[Fragile Bird]

Whether or not you think the Syrians dropped the sarin gas, the Russians did follow up with a drone, to see where the victims were being taken. The Syrians then bombed the hospital.

The bombings of hospitals is one of the most disgusting things the Assad regime does. They systematically took out every hospital in Aleppo. As hospitals were moved as each was bombed out, they watched and followed and bombed again.

That alone should justify bombing every damn airfield in Syria.

[OldGimletEye]

12 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Whether or not you think the Syrians dropped the sarin gas, the Russians did follow up with a drone, to see where the victims were being taken. The Syrians then bombed the hospital.

The bombings of hospitals is one of the most disgusting things the Assad regime does. They systematically took out every hospital in Aleppo. As hospitals were moved as each was bombed out, they watched and followed and bombed again.

That alone should justify bombing every damn airfield in Syria.

Okay a few things here:
1. If you are going to engage in this type of prolonged bombing campaign, I want realistic assessments of civilian causalities, which seems to me is never forth coming.
2. If the bombing campaign doesn't work, then what happens? I want to be told what happens next? Do we send in ground forces. How many and where.
3. And how does this undermine international law, making the US looking hypocritical. What's the legal justification?

The fact is the we, the American public, haven't been getting this kind of information. The Samantha Powers of the world, I'd submit, just tend to hand waive it. And we ought to demand more.

[aceluby]

2 hours ago, Fez said:

Sidenote: The entire Republican argument for voting Republican in this race seems to be that the Democrat will be a vote for Nancy Pelosi. On the one hand, its pretty sad that the Pelosi bogeyman is pretty much all they've got. On the other hand, its probably going to work; she's a very scary bogeyman to a lot of Republicans and independents. Which is why, since she doesn't really add value to the Democratic caucus anymore either, I wish she'd have stepped down as leader years ago. 

I agree.  She should have stepped down after 2010 as leader.  She hurts the Democratic party as the face of the House.

[Commodore]

special House election in KS04 tonight

we will have the fastest results at DecisionDeskHQ.com 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

42 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Okay a few things here:
1. If you are going to engage in this type of prolonged bombing campaign, I want realistic assessments of civilian causalities, which seems to me is never forth coming.
2. If the bombing campaign doesn't work, then what happens? I want to be told what happens next? Do we send in ground forces. How many and where.
3. And how does this undermine international law, making the US looking hypocritical. What's the legal justification?

The fact is the we, the American public, haven't been getting this kind of information. The Samantha Powers of the world, I'd submit, just tend to hand waive it. And we ought to demand more.

And really, those are only three of a thousand questions we need to ask ourselves about the situation in Syria and the Middle East more broadly.

The truth is we long ago accepted that there isn't any political will or capital to do what it would take to overthrow Assad, take out ISIS and reform the Middle East, so all we'll be doing in the near term is window dressing strikes like we saw last week. 

[OldGimletEye]

10 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

And really, those are only three of a thousand questions we need to ask ourselves about the situation in Syria and the Middle East more broadly.

The truth is we long ago accepted that there isn't any political will or capital to do what it would take to overthrow Assad, take out ISIS and reform the Middle East, so all we'll be doing in the near term is window dressing strikes like we saw last week. 

One of things I've carried with me, ever since the day, as a young officer candidate, standing before my first sergeant at attention, getting my ass rightly reamed, for screwing up on a field exercise, because lack of foresight and insufficient planning is when he said, "Piss poor planning gets piss poor results."

Military operations always have a way of descending into chaos, particularly when planning is poor and and not enough questions are asked and not enough contingencies are contemplated.

I swear, I have gotten better thoughtfulness and better planning from my young squad leaders, who didn't even have a college degree, than some of these politician idiots who went to Ivy League schools.

I think there have been enough American military involvements that have become real Charlie Foxtrots, that we, as the American public, should say, "enough". We'd like more details and more planning before you do anything.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

Okay a few things here:
1. If you are going to engage in this type of prolonged bombing campaign, I want realistic assessments of civilian causalities, which seems to me is never forth coming.
2. If the bombing campaign doesn't work, then what happens? I want to be told what happens next? Do we send in ground forces. How many and where.
3. And how does this undermine international law, making the US looking hypocritical. What's the legal justification?

The fact is the we, the American public, haven't been getting this kind of information. The Samantha Powers of the world, I'd submit, just tend to hand waive it. And we ought to demand more.

I don't think its ever viable to be sharing information on military strategy with the general public, thats not how wars are won. 

I notice that Putin is looking to get the UN involved in verifying the evidence that Assad was responsible for the chemical attacks. I wonder how far he will take this, whether its a distraction tactic or if there is anything genuinely false flaggy about it.
 

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

I don't think its ever viable to be sharing information on military strategy with the general public, thats not how wars are won. 

I notice that Putin is looking to get the UN involved in verifying the evidence that Assad was responsible for the chemical attacks. I wonder how far he will take this, whether its a distraction tactic or if there is anything genuinely false flaggy about it.
 

And I think if you want and demand public support for a military operation, you need to come clean a little, and not sell things as being pie-in-the-sky.

We've had too many interventions end up being clusters. At this juncture, I think we are entitled to have more information and more details.

In short: Don't ask me to approve your military operation, until you've demonstrated you've sufficiently thought through the details. Because often I'm doubtful you have.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

3 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

And I think if you want and demand public support for a military operation, you need to come clean a little, and not sell things as being pie-in-the-sky.

We've had too many interventions end up being clusters. At this juncture, I think we are entitled to have more information and more details.

In short: Don't ask me to approve your military operation, until you've demonstrated you've sufficiently thought through the details. Because often I'm doubtful you have.

Agree, especially as most information we are fed on these matters is rarely based on reality, and is borderline propaganda. 

Which is why I really think the public needs to be simply left out of matters such as this. We will simply never have access to the correct level of information necessary to make an informed decision on that matter. I mean look at Brexit! 

[Kalbear]

35 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

One of things I've carried with me, ever since the day, as a young officer candidate, standing before my first sergeant at attention, getting my ass rightly reamed, for screwing up on a field exercise, because lack of foresight and insufficient planning is when he said, "Piss poor planning gets piss poor results."

Military operations always have a way of descending into chaos, particularly when planning is poor and and not enough questions are asked and not enough contingencies are contemplated.

 

Honestly, the actual military planning and execution has largely been exemplary as far as the US goes. Given the scope and amount of weapons that the US uses on a regular basis, the challenges in using them in non-traditional ways and the enemies they are being used on, the US has had incredibly good military planning.

What they don't have in any meaningful way is good post-conflict planning, and the US has still not figured out a particularly good way of establishing a country after going into it with good overall results. I don't think that's on the military planning. And heck, we had a ton of planning on the Iraq war and it didn't do us all that much good. 

That said, what I fear about Trump is that he won't even bother with the basic planning.