Now That Trump's President... (not any more!)

[bendish]

 

 

He might be thinking that, but he's mostly just stumbling around the idea of being president and saying whatever comes into his dementia addled mind. I don't even think he'll be president for long enough to enact any kind of serious gun control. The noose is tightening faster and faster. 

 

I get that for sure. But if he's successful in this, even moderately, it's a huge win in my books. Hate the fucker. But gun control is high up on my "USA is really fucked up" list. Not saying it'd sway me to support the dementia ridden cheetoh.

 

 

What kind of gun control do you recommend?

 

Get rid of the dumbass second amendment and demilitarise the entire U.S both at home and abroad. 

[bendish]

 

also Trump literally rambled on about the most anti-2nd amendment proposal ever - this will take a 10.0 floor routine for those Trump supporter mental gymnasts

 

the_donald's reaction

 

edit: and the uncensored version for higher-quality keks (highlighted comments)

 

Haha man them slippery bastards is all lubed up and sliding around their donald standards

[goDel]

Lovely how this interview with former Trump operative Nunberg unfolds. The goods are in the second half of the interview where Nunberg basically says he assumes Don jr. Informed Trump about the meeting in Trump tower (but thinks there's nothing wrong with that in a legal sense). A happy coincidence is there's an actual lawyer present who can explain the relevant laws and why, if true, that shit was illegal. Nothing new, other than that besides Bannon you have another Former Trump operative saying it's highly likely Trump knew about the meeting.

 

[hello spiral]

[goDel]

Answer: no, we're only halfway into the season

 

:)

 

Also, Lots more people left, are leaving or are about to. *looks at sessions, tillerson and kelly*

[chenGOD]

lol

They are losing their minds in that thread lol

[Hugh Mughnus]

 

 

 

He might be thinking that, but he's mostly just stumbling around the idea of being president and saying whatever comes into his dementia addled mind. I don't even think he'll be president for long enough to enact any kind of serious gun control. The noose is tightening faster and faster. 

 

I get that for sure. But if he's successful in this, even moderately, it's a huge win in my books. Hate the fucker. But gun control is high up on my "USA is really fucked up" list. Not saying it'd sway me to support the dementia ridden cheetoh.

 

 

What kind of gun control do you recommend?

 

Get rid of the dumbass second amendment and demilitarise the entire U.S both at home and abroad. 

 

 

pmuch

[sweepstakes]

Lots more people left, are leaving or are about to. *looks at sessions...*

Jeff plz

[psn]

[psn]

[ignatius]

 

 

probably not unusual thing.. since so many people write books about their time in the whitehouse. but i'm trump whitehouse is obviously a different story ay? 

[joshuatxuk]

 

Lots more people left, are leaving or are about to. *looks at sessions...*

Jeff plz

 

 

General McMasters is probably leaving too.

[goDel]

 

 

Lots more people left, are leaving or are about to. *looks at sessions...*

Jeff plz

 

 

General McMasters is probably leaving too.

 

 

Gary Cohn as well, allegedly. He doesn't agree with the tariffs for aluminum. (Trump going rogue?)

[joshuatxuk]

 

 

 

Lots more people left, are leaving or are about to. *looks at sessions...*

Jeff plz

 

 

General McMasters is probably leaving too.

 

 

Gary Cohn as well, allegedly. He doesn't agree with the tariffs for aluminum. (Trump going rogue?)

 

 

Kinda, as in he's stopped listening to the grown-ups. It's like everyone is reaching this moment:

 

[ignatius]

 

 

 

 

Lots more people left, are leaving or are about to. *looks at sessions...*

Jeff plz

 

 

General McMasters is probably leaving too.

 

 

Gary Cohn as well, allegedly. He doesn't agree with the tariffs for aluminum. (Trump going rogue?)

 

 

Kinda, as in he's stopped listening to the grown-ups. It's like everyone is reaching this moment:

 

 

 

 

which just opens the door for him surround himself w/real idiots.. not that he wasn't already.. but the few voices of reason or at least the voices sort of connected to reality are vanishing.. and we'll have trump surrounded by people who just say yes all the time and then the real chaos will start... 

 

it's already chaos.. he blurts things out w/o even talking to anyone.. makes up policy the way other people fart.. and most people will at least stifle a fart in public. 

 

edit: or ya know.. he'll have more whitehouse meetings w/special interests who come in and manipulate him w/their "good ideas" on how to make policy. 

Edited March 2, 2018 by ignatius

[joshuatxuk]

^ Yeah I remember before he was elected I heard quite a few neocons and more moderate Republican figures, all of the "establishment" GOP tent as Trumpster would call them, who were talking about this cautious optimism that Trump would end up hiring experts and experienced members to his admin, making it a white house that was only extreme on the surface. They assumed his business background would be an advantage in the sense that he'd kind of let others run the show.

 

That's clearly not the case - other agency heads are resigning too - ambassadors, department heads, etc. IIRC there have never been this many vacancies. Those who hold basic integrity, regardless of their political alignment or personality, simply cannot work for Trump. Mattis has mentioned this openly in interviews being a huge issue, along with tribalism in rhetoric in this country. The White House is a despotic entity confined by hardworking civil servants and our constitutional government, both of which are severely strained right now.

Edited March 2, 2018 by joshuatx

[joshuatxuk]

This tariff debacle will be interesting to see unfold. I keep hoping for a moment Trump goes too far in his own delusional goals. This isn't probably a watershed moment but I think it's adding to the momentum of having more GOP members finally start questioning his stances.

[ignatius]

the tariff thing is a trainwreck.. slowly unfolding.. it'll be a shit show for a lot of companies who just cannot get enough of the metal they need for their industry.. fucking beer cans and soup cans and shit.. 

 

GOP regulars don't know what to do.. some of them are getting a little vocal but en masse their kind of confused on how to maneuver politically w/this scenario because trump still has a base and all that base wants to do is get mad at stuff and vote people in or out come november... 

 

hopefully they can abandon that base sooner rather than later and start to steer things back to the mainstream a bit.. for better or worse.. idk.. it's a mess.. 

 

regarding vacancies.. yeah.. there's no ambassador in south korea!!!  the US ambassador to mexico quit.. she's a 30 year civil servant.. career diplomat and state dept employee who's saying "fuck it"

 

putin is getting exactly what he wants.. weaker US.  no 'soft power' in the world.. diminishing US presence everywhere.. makes a hole for china and russia to move in. 

[zero]

Definitely seems like Putin/Russia strategized what this whole thing would be like with Trump at the helm. Poor Donnie can't see past the next Fox news commercial break, while Vlad and the boys sit back and watch their global dominance grow...

 

And regarding this whole tariff shit show, it seems like everyone keeps falling for Donnie's nonsense. He blurts out something he's put less than 5 seconds of thought into, and all of a suddenly markets get effected and countries get pissed off? He will walk this back, no doubt, once someone explains things to him in 3rd grader terms. Why does anyone keep taking this reality star-trump enterprises-pseudo president seriously?

[whosebrian]

trump is as trump does

[ambermonk]

Definitely seems like Putin/Russia strategized what this whole thing would be like with Trump at the helm. Poor Donnie can't see past the next Fox news commercial break, while Vlad and the boys sit back and watch their global dominance grow...

 

And regarding this whole tariff shit show, it seems like everyone keeps falling for Donnie's nonsense. He blurts out something he's put less than 5 seconds of thought into, and all of a suddenly markets get effected and countries get pissed off? He will walk this back, no doubt, once someone explains things to him in 3rd grader terms. Why does anyone keep taking this reality star-trump enterprises-pseudo president seriously?

Because he feeds the bottled-up rage of the millennial Pepe-worshiping alt-right edge bros, as well as the scorning attitude from the retired Fox News primary audience old farts towards anyone who's not a white Christian.

[hello spiral]

[goDel]

Lol

 

#Penceface

[ignatius]

interesting.. kinda scary.. read.. .

 

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-death-cult-of-trumpism/

 

In a way, then, according to America’s color-coded guide to political virtue and vice, Barack Obama might be considered the country’s only white president, in the sense that he served almost as a Platonic ideal of ancient moral philosophy. In office, he was preternaturally self-governed and self-regulated—Vulcan-like, as some said, and in control of his emotions, especially his anger. This self-regulation is a burden of race, which must have weighed heavily on Obama, being not just the first African-American president in US history but also one who took the office during a moment of extraordinary economic and military crisis.

Trump, by contrast, is all id and pure appetite, unspooling raw, insatiable, childish hunger every night on Twitter. He’s the most unregulated, unself-governed president this country has ever had, an example of what happens to the psyche of rich white people after four decades of economic deregulation. But white folks—at least powerful ones—get to decide the exception to the rule. (“Some of the virtues of a freeman would be the vices of slaves,” as one 1837 defense of slavery explained.) And that’s what makes Trump the whitest of white presidents: He can openly tweet-mock moral conventions that hold that only those who demonstrate self-sovereignty are worthy of political sovereignty and still be the sovereign.

In a nation like the United States, founded on a mythical belief in a kind of species immunity—less an American exceptionalism than exemptionism, an insistence that the nation was exempt from nature, society, history, even death—the realization that it can’t go on forever is traumatic.

 

Edited March 5, 2018 by ignatius

[may be rude]

bold added

 

forgive the liberal media bias

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/04/world/europe/state-department-russia-global-engagement-center.html

 

 

WASHINGTON — As Russia’s virtual war against the United States continues unabated with the midterm elections approaching, the State Department has yet to spend any of the $120 million it has been allocated since late 2016 to counter foreign efforts to meddle in elections or sow distrust in democracy.

 

As a result, not one of the 23 analysts working in the department’s Global Engagement Center — which has been tasked with countering Moscow’s disinformation campaign — speaks Russian, and a department hiring freeze has hindered efforts to recruit the computer experts needed to track the Russian efforts.

 

The delay is just one symptom of the largely passive response to the Russian interference by President Trump, who has made little if any public effort to rally the nation to confront Moscow and defend democratic institutions. More broadly, the funding lag reflects a deep lack of confidence by Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson in his department’s ability to execute its historically wide-ranging mission and spend its money wisely.

 

Mr. Tillerson has voiced skepticism that the United States is even capable of doing anything to counter the Russian threat.

 

“If it’s their intention to interfere, they’re going to find ways to do that,” Mr. Tillerson said in an interview last month with Fox News. “And we can take steps we can take, but this is something that once they decide they are going to do it, it’s very difficult to pre-empt it.”

 

The United States spends billions of dollars on secret cybercapabilities, but these weapons have proved largely ineffective against Russian efforts on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere that simply amplify or distort divisive but genuine voices in the United States and elsewhere.

 

The role for the Global Engagement Center would be to assess Russian efforts and then set about amplifying a different set of voices to counter them, perhaps creating a network of anti-propaganda projects dispersed around the world, experts said.

 

“There are now thousands of former Russian journalists who have been exiled or fired who are doing counter-Russian stuff in exile who we could help,” said Richard Stengel, who as the under secretary for public diplomacy in the Obama administration had oversight of the Global Engagement Center.

 

Concerted campaigns to highlight the roles of Russian troll farms or Russian mercenaries in Ukraine and Syria could have a profound effect, Mr. Stengel said.

 

At the end of the Obama administration, Congress directed the Pentagon to send $60 million to the State Department so it could coordinate governmentwide efforts, including those by the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security, to counter anti-democratic propaganda by Russia and China. This messaging effort is separate from other potential government actions like cyberattacks.

 

Mr. Tillerson spent seven months trying to decide whether to spend any of the money. The State Department finally sent a request to the Defense Department on Sept. 18 to transfer the funds, but with just days left in the fiscal year, Pentagon officials decided that the State Department had lost its shot at the money.

 

With another $60 million available for the next fiscal year, the two departments dickered for another five months over how much the State Department could have.

 

After The New York Times, following a report on the issue by Politico in August, began asking about the delayed money, the State Department announced on Monday that the Pentagon had agreed to transfer $40 million for the effort, just a third of what was originally intended.

 

State Department officials say they expect to receive the money in April. Steve Goldstein, the under secretary for public diplomacy, said he would contribute $1 million from his own budget to “kick-start the initiative quickly.”

 

“This funding is critical to ensuring that we continue an aggressive response to malign influence and disinformation,” Mr. Goldstein said.

 

On Wednesday, Mark E. Mitchell, a top official in the Defense Department, said much wrangling remained before any of the promised $40 million is transferred to the State Department.

 

“We’re still a ways off,” Mr. Mitchell said.

 

The delays have infuriated some members of Congress, which approved the funding transfer with bipartisan support.

 

“It is well past time that the State Department’s Global Engagement Center gets the resources Congress intended for it to effectively fight Kremlin-sponsored disinformation and other foreign propaganda operations,” Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Wednesday.

 

Adele Ruppe, the center’s chief of staff, defended the administration’s broader efforts to counter Russian propaganda, pointing out that the State Department had provided $1.3 billion in assistance in 2017 to strengthen European resilience to Russian meddling. But that money was largely obligated during the Obama administration, and the Trump administration has proposed slashing that assistance by more than half for the coming year, to $527 million, and to $491 million for the next year.

 

While it waits for the funding transfer from the Pentagon, the center, which has a staff of around 60 people, including 23 contract analysts, will continue working on its original mission: countering jihadist and extremist propaganda.

 

Most of the center’s leaders are working in temporary assignments, a product of Mr. Tillerson’s halt in promotions. The analysts work in a warren of cubicles in the basement of a tired building that once housed the Office of Strategic Services, the World War II predecessor to the C.I.A.

 

The analysts are divided into five teams that largely work in four languages: Arabic, Urdu, French and Somali. The analysts said in interviews that they had notched some significant victories, including a video montage proving that the Islamic State had itself destroyed Al Nuri Grand Mosque in Mosul, Iraq, and a widely seen cartoon in French depicting the miserable life of an Islamic State fighter.

 

Still, these efforts are a small fraction of what Congress envisioned. A 2015 internal assessment found that the Islamic State had been far more nimble on social media than the United States had been. In May, Congress more than doubled the center’s budget, providing an additional $19 million over its earlier budget of $14 million. But by Jan. 1, the department had spent just $3.6 million of the additional $19 million, Mr. Goldstein said.

 

James K. Glassman, the under secretary for public diplomacy during the George W. Bush administration, said the center’s uncertain funding and temporary leadership reflected the administration’s lack of interest in countering either jihadist or Russian propaganda.

 

“They’ve got the vehicle to do this work in the center,” Mr. Glassman said. “What they don’t have is a secretary of state or a president who’s interested in doing this work.”

 

Mr. Tillerson is focusing his energies instead on drastically shrinking the department, leaving a significant part of its budget unused and hundreds of important decisions unmade.

 

Last year, the State Department spent just 79 percent of the money that Congress had authorized for the conduct of foreign affairs, the lowest such level in at least 15 years and well down from the 93 percent spent in the final year of the Obama administration, according to an analysis of data from the Office of Management and Budget.

 

Because of the hiring and promotion freezes that have left large sums unspent, as well as Mr. Tillerson’s refusal to delegate spending decisions, the department had a backlog of more than 1,400 official requests for Mr. Tillerson’s signoff at the end of last year, according to a former senior diplomat who left the department then.