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[Folly]

9th circuit appeals court unianimously ruled that the hold on the visa and refugee ban stays.

So, Trump's move. Might go to the Supreme Court.

edit: yep

Court rules against Trump. Trump's response, he'll sue them in court!

[sluissa]

9th circuit appeals court unianimously ruled that the hold on the visa and refugee ban stays.

So, Trump's move. Might go to the Supreme Court.

edit: yep

Court rules against Trump. Trump's response, he'll sue them in court!

Just to be fair, that is how the judicial system works. There are layers within the system that allow him to attempt that.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Yes, but it is a little silly to say "see you in court" when you've already seen them in court (indirectly).

...See you in higher courts?

[smjjames]

It's just Trumps way of saying 'BRING IT ON! ONWARD THROUGH THE LEGAL SYSTEM!' I guess. Though he has yet to decide on the exact next step.

[smjjames]

Trump talked to Chinese President Xi and all of a sudden agreed to honor the 'One China' polcy.

edit: Bit better source from Associated Press

So, I guess the whole thing with attacking the One China policy before inauguration was him doing the political equivalent of breaking branches and thrashing around vegtation to look tough?

I just wonder what the Chinese President promised or agreed in return, because transactional diplomacy.

edit2: Wonder how long before that conversation gets leaked, heh. Would be real embarrassing for both parties. Though in all seriousness, those leaks have gotten a bit out of hand.

[misko27]

Meanwhile, I hear Late Night has apparently been having a Rennaissance of sorts due to Trump, particularly SNL (obviously) but also Colbert (for obvious reasons; if you've never seen Colbert at the Whitehouse Correspondent's dinner in 2006, or if you have and it's been a while, watch and learn how to mock the President to their face.) Might have to check in with Colbert again; I know that he and Stewart had a rougher time after Bush left (I mean after all, he was their mojo), so Colbert might be back in his groove.

EDIT: I forgot one thing from that video. The only person who had a sense of humor in the entire Bush Administration was Antonin Scalia, of all people. Not only did he laugh at the section directed at himself, but he apparently came up to Colbert after the show and praised him (the only person willing to even make eye-contact with Colbert).

[Folly]

Kellyanne Conway, in her own terms, advertised for Ivanka's fashion line on Fox this morning. Which is of course illegal. When the White House rep was questioned about the matter later, he would only say that Conway has been 'counseled' on the matter.
Conway just now responded to an inquiry about her counseling, and she said "I spent a lot of time with the president this morning, he supports me 100%. It was a very heartening moment. All I can say to the women of America, at some point in your life you ought to have a boss who treats you the way he treated me today."

So basically, Conway pimped out the president's daughter's crap, and as a reward he let her give him a BJ in the oval office. Way to be a role model Kellyanne.

[Sheb]

The US *IS* responsible for a very, VERY great deal of the terror going on in the Middle East.

Through a series of very destructive, short-sighted, and downright stupid actions, including but not limited to:
1)Installing and supporting puppet dictatorships
2)Being the enforcers for extremist regimes
3)Backing "favorable" regime changes
4)Continuing an ongoing campaign of terror via very poorly implemented air strikes on civilian population centers
5)Actively training "resistance" groups (like they didnt learn about the fucking taliban from their roots in the 70s... When the CIA trained them!)
6)Turning a blind eye to Israel's bullshit, which ranges from relatively benign illegal settlement of the West Bank, to downright war crimes of using white phosphorus shells

etc

Acknowledging that the USA does not have clean hands is very fundamental in PROPERLY addressing this problem.

So, let me get this straight: if the US support resistance, the US is causing terrorism, if the US is backing a regime, it's promoting terror, if it's backing regime change, it's causing terrorism... I think you're just mistaking correlation and causation. The US is going to be involved in everything, because the US is the superpower. That doesn't mean that everything that happens is its fault (or, to put it otherwise, that everything would be fine without the US).

Sure, some actions clearly made things worse (Iraq invasion is the best exemple), but for the rest, it's often much harder to see what the US should/could have done.

[PTTG??]

I'm so glad that Sean Spicer is so bad at subterfuge.

[wierd]

The US *IS* responsible for a very, VERY great deal of the terror going on in the Middle East.

Through a series of very destructive, short-sighted, and downright stupid actions, including but not limited to:
1)Installing and supporting puppet dictatorships
2)Being the enforcers for extremist regimes
3)Backing "favorable" regime changes
4)Continuing an ongoing campaign of terror via very poorly implemented air strikes on civilian population centers
5)Actively training "resistance" groups (like they didnt learn about the fucking taliban from their roots in the 70s... When the CIA trained them!)
6)Turning a blind eye to Israel's bullshit, which ranges from relatively benign illegal settlement of the West Bank, to downright war crimes of using white phosphorus shells

etc

Acknowledging that the USA does not have clean hands is very fundamental in PROPERLY addressing this problem.

So, let me get this straight: if the US support resistance, the US is causing terrorism, if the US is backing a regime, it's promoting terror, if it's backing regime change, it's causing terrorism... I think you're just mistaking correlation and causation. The US is going to be involved in everything, because the US is the superpower. That doesn't mean that everything that happens is its fault (or, to put it otherwise, that everything would be fine without the US).

Sure, some actions clearly made things worse (Iraq invasion is the best exemple), but for the rest, it's often much harder to see what the US should/could have done.

False dichotomies are false.

Correct choice: Leave them the fuck alone.

[Sheb]

You really think that the ME would be all fine and dandy if the US had left them alone? Like, do you think the Saudi and Iranians would suddenly be all friends and stuff?

[Reelya]

So, let me get this straight: if the US support resistance, the US is causing terrorism, if the US is backing a regime, it's promoting terror, if it's backing regime change, it's causing terrorism... I think you're just mistaking correlation and causation. The US is going to be involved in everything, because the US is the superpower. That doesn't mean that everything that happens is its fault (or, to put it otherwise, that everything would be fine without the US).

There are a number of poor choices in terms of who to support and who to topple.

The Sandinistas in Nicaragua are the prime example. A collection of various social forces topple a far-right fascist dictatorship, replace it with a Republic which started the nation's first free and fair elections 6 years later (which system the US has even praised now and then when someone pro-US gets elected).

Meanwhile, the USA had been the main supporter of said fascists for about 50 years previously, then 100% funded and trained and armed the remnants of the fascist leader's enforcement squads as "freedom fighters" who proceeded to run terror campaigns targeted at civilians. Meanwhile the CIA provided them actual training manuals describing civilian leadership assassinations, torture and "rule of terror" tactics to undermine the civilian leadership. The CIA was even indicted for planting ship mines in the harbour in an illegal effort to "blockade" the nation, which sunk a number of merchant vessels from European nations. So you have the US administration order literal terrorist actions designed to scare other nations away from trading with the country America didn't like.

Nicaragua took USA to the International Court Of Justice over all of this, and won the case. But the USA refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the court, making them 100% a rogue terrorist state, except one too big for anyone to stop.

[Sheb]

Oh, I'm not disputing the fact that some US decisions definitely supported terror either directly (Nicaragua) or indirectly by providing breeding ground (invading Iraq in the first place, and pulling off completely in '11). I'm just disputing the intellectual laziness of blaming it all on the US  and assuming that US actions in the region are bad, no matter what they are.

[Reelya]

Well the current middle east crisis is pretty much directly attributable to the Iraq War.

Basically, there would have been no Arab Spring without Iraq 2003. And without Arab Spring, there would have been no civil war in Libya and Syria. Many of the key personnel of ISIS also met because the USA arrested a lot of potential rebels and put them in one big prison with basically no supervision. They basically got radicalized there. That's one of the big problems of an "Us and Them" approach.

Iraq 2003 was based on forged evidence. Hans Blix the UN inspector literally said that on a documentary. He said he gave a report Bush had waved on TV to some UN security experts and they said to him the document is a forgery. Not wrong intel, the document itself was a fake.

So, yeah Iraq War was a total disaster, but they pushed for it and fabricated evidence to help them push for it. It's like driving on the footpath as a "shortcut". Sure, you didn't mean to run over that old lady, but it's still your fault because you deliberately drove on the footpath. In this case, they fabricated documents to create a cassus belli to invade another country. The world went to shit in a big way, all clearly going back to those decisions. ISIS wasn't their intention, but it is their fault.

[Jopax]

Ok, put it this way. What was the last US action in the ME region that wasn't destabilizing? The region can hardly be called stable or prosperous or developed, but can you blame them when someone as big and us untouchable as the US keeps kicking them in the balls whenever they get the chance or do something that doesn't jive with the US plan for the area.