Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Starver]

His public relations advisor must be having a stroke every time he tweets now.

I'm convinced that, with Kellyanne, Trump has been the one having the strokes. At least when the wife is elsewhere...

[smjjames]

Trump is tweeting again.

Democrats are smiling in D.C. that the Freedom Caucus, with the help of Club For Growth and Heritage, have saved Planned Parenthood & Ocare!

I'm sure that will make those groups - the core of the current Republican House majority and right wing policy shops - more inclined to work with him on tax reform.

To be fair, the House Freedom Caucaus seem to be pretty much full of jerks who don't want compromise. No surprise that Trump is turning on them.

@Weird: I can get wanting the other members to pull more of their weight and increase military funding, Obama complained about that too, but straight up extortion isn't something that allies do to each other.

His public relations advisor must be having a stroke every time he tweets now.

I'm convinced that, with Kellyanne, Trump has been the one having the strokes. At least when the wife is elsewhere...

Is that an euphenism? lol.....

[wierd]

SMJJames:

I *DID* say it was a foolishly stupid way to draw attention to the matter, did I not?

[smjjames]

Yes, I was just commenting about it as well.

It seems like when Trump said we're done with this, he meant 'you Republicans are done'. Trump seems to be starting a pivot towards the Dems for any future work on healthcare. Smart move on his part.

[Starver]

Also, any Brits know how good The Times is? Like is it NYT/WaPo credible or is it Daily Mail credible?

Pretty much used to be the standard bearer for Establishment Credibility. Radicals might not like its politics (it supported Blair, at some point, despite/because of its particular focus on conservatism). Don't know nearly so much directly about the US papers, except by reputation, but I'd definitely put it well away from the Daily Mail.

Slightly out of date summary of the British press...

But it's a sub-subidiary of NewsCorp (Murdoch), and adopted sibling to The Sun, so potentially it could be sent Foxish in its direction, if enough strings are pulled.

I'm convinced that, with Kellyanne, Trump has been the one having the strokes. At least when the wife is elsewhere...

Is that an euphenism? lol.....

Let's call it a single entendre... 

[smjjames]

Also, any Brits know how good The Times is? Like is it NYT/WaPo credible or is it Daily Mail credible?

Pretty much used to be the standard bearer for Establishment Credibility. Radicals might not like its politics (it supported Blair, at some point, despite/because of its particular focus on conservatism). Don't know nearly so much directly about the US papers, except by reputation, but I'd definitely put it well away from the Daily Mail.

Slightly out of date summary of the British press...

But it's a sub-subidiary of NewsCorp (Murdoch), and adopted sibling to The Sun, so potentially it could be sent Foxish in its direction, if enough strings are pulled.

Youtube captions are unfortunately nonfunctional but okay.

[Starver]

Transcript here (Search for "Don't tell me about the press"...)

[palsch]

Also, any Brits know how good The Times is? Like is it NYT/WaPo credible or is it Daily Mail credible?

Generally a good reputation. One of the big quality papers in the UK, and arguably the most respected in general. Centre to right-of-centre and owned by Murdoch but with legally guaranteed independence for their editorial teams, with a good reputation for investigative journalism. Despite being generally supportive of the Conservatives they haven't hesitated to publish extremely damaging stories for Tory governments. They've been caught up in their own scandals (and some of the general Murdoch ones) but remain up there when it comes to trusted papers.

Note that this was in the Sunday Times, owned by the same group but independent again. It's a pretty incredible paper to see in person (mostly back when I was growing up) given it is huge and comes with multiple magazines and inserts. It tries to serve as the only paper you need each week. This image shows what comes with a single edition. It was a paper that could be shared among the entire household, even with a whole section for kids cartoons (the Funday Times) Their iPad app apparently updates 500MB of content a week.



Regarding NATO, worth remembering that only one nation has even invoked the mutual defence provisions of NATO due to being attacked. It was the US after 9/11.

The US also benefits from NATO in very direct ways;

Washington’s European allies have also taken on military and stabilization missions that protect American interests but that the U.S. military does not want to perform.  From 2002 to 2014, the European Union or individual EU members deployed military and civilian assets for numerous peacekeeping, policing, monitoring, and capacity building missions.  These operations took place in Europe, Africa and Asia—from the Balkans, Georgia, Sudan, and the Sahel to the Gaza strip, Indonesia, and the waters of the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.  The Europeans dedicate more forces than the United States to Balkan peacekeeping—a job American forces would prefer not perform.  If Europe (and especially the French, for example) were not operating in Africa (e.g. Mali), a greater burden would fall on the United States and common Western security could be undermined.

Fourth, the United States gets real fiscal advantages out of the NATO security architecture.  It saves the United States taxpayer money to base roughly 85,000 military personnel in Europe which might otherwise have to be deployed in the United States. They help to defray a large part of the tab for stationing U.S. forces in Europe – a bill the American taxpayer would otherwise have to pay. In Germany, where many of the largest U.S. bases in Europe are located, the government provides tax waivers and rent-free use of facilities to American forces. Germany also builds roads and other infrastructure to support American installations. And the Germans, along with other allies, make a substantial contribution to the NATO Infrastructure Program, the alliance’s commonly funded military construction that has built critical facilities (e.g. airfields, shelters, common communications, and air defense installations) throughout its territory.

I'd strongly recommend reading the whole thing.

[smjjames]

Also, any Brits know how good The Times is? Like is it NYT/WaPo credible or is it Daily Mail credible?

Generally a good reputation. One of the big quality papers in the UK, and arguably the most respected in general. Centre to right-of-centre and owned by Murdoch but with legally guaranteed independence for their editorial teams, with a good reputation for investigative journalism. Despite being generally supportive of the Conservatives they haven't hesitated to publish extremely damaging stories for Tory governments. They've been caught up in their own scandals (and some of the general Murdoch ones) but remain up there when it comes to trusted papers.

Note that this was in the Sunday Times, owned by the same group but independent again. It's a pretty incredible paper to see in person (mostly back when I was growing up) given it is huge and comes with multiple magazines and inserts. It tries to serve as the only paper you need each week. This image shows what comes with a single edition. It was a paper that could be shared among the entire household, even with a whole section for kids cartoons (the Funday Times) Their iPad app apparently updates 500MB of content a week.

I see, thanks.

Regarding NATO, worth remembering that only one nation has even invoked the mutual defence provisions of NATO due to being attacked. It was the US after 9/11.

The US also benefits from NATO in very direct ways;

Washington’s European allies have also taken on military and stabilization missions that protect American interests but that the U.S. military does not want to perform.  From 2002 to 2014, the European Union or individual EU members deployed military and civilian assets for numerous peacekeeping, policing, monitoring, and capacity building missions.  These operations took place in Europe, Africa and Asia—from the Balkans, Georgia, Sudan, and the Sahel to the Gaza strip, Indonesia, and the waters of the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.  The Europeans dedicate more forces than the United States to Balkan peacekeeping—a job American forces would prefer not perform.  If Europe (and especially the French, for example) were not operating in Africa (e.g. Mali), a greater burden would fall on the United States and common Western security could be undermined.

Fourth, the United States gets real fiscal advantages out of the NATO security architecture.  It saves the United States taxpayer money to base roughly 85,000 military personnel in Europe which might otherwise have to be deployed in the United States. They help to defray a large part of the tab for stationing U.S. forces in Europe – a bill the American taxpayer would otherwise have to pay. In Germany, where many of the largest U.S. bases in Europe are located, the government provides tax waivers and rent-free use of facilities to American forces. Germany also builds roads and other infrastructure to support American installations. And the Germans, along with other allies, make a substantial contribution to the NATO Infrastructure Program, the alliance’s commonly funded military construction that has built critical facilities (e.g. airfields, shelters, common communications, and air defense installations) throughout its territory.

I'd strongly recommend reading the whole thing.

I've seen some people say that it was Canada that invoked Article 5 on behalf of the US, but yes, it's only ever been invoked once.

[palsch]

Flnn is rumoured to have flipped on Trump.

This is all second hand, from 'sources' of a single analyst, but huge if true. Quoting Seth Abramson's tweets;

(1) First, as an attorney I want to make clear that, if this @CNN analyst's sources are correct, the #Russiagate scandal is blown wide open.

(2) The FBI flips witnesses, turning them into cooperating individuals, _only_ when they can help secure conviction of a bigger "target."

(3) Michael Flynn was the National Security Adviser for the President of the United States. The only _bigger_ target is Donald J. Trump.

This suggests it was just a hypothetical, but attracted a no-comment rather than a denial from Flynn's camp. At this point there are near daily revelations coming out about Flynn's illegal behaviour and he is being thrown under every bus certain segments of the press can find. Him flipping isn't all that hard to imagine.


Still digesting this long piece, but one thing jumped out at me;

Trump’s budget blueprint is regarded by deficit hawks as fundamentally unserious, because it does not touch entitlements. Instead, it ravages perennial (and already pint-size) conservative piñatas like foreign aid, public broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts, in addition to downsizing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department — cuts that focus on the 27 percent of the federal budget that is not mandatory spending or devoted to defense. And for all the Republicans’ chesty rhetoric on cuts like these over the years, as a top House Republican staff member told me, “even the cabinet secretaries at the E.P.A. and Interior are saying these cuts aren’t going to happen. They’re going to protect their grant programs, their payments to states, their Superfunds. So how do you cut 31 percent of the E.P.A. out of the 5 percent that isn’t protected? And a bill that cuts all money for the N.E.A. will not pass. For Republicans in the West” — states whose vast rural areas benefit disproportionately from N.E.A. grants — “that’s a re-election killer. The campaign commercials write themselves.”

Labrador says he would defend Trump’s cuts but doubts that many of his colleagues would. “What he’s going to learn is that members of Congress are unwilling to take the tough votes,” he told me. “When he learns that, what’s going to be the next step?” In Labrador’s view, Trump’s only sane recourse will be to accept the need for entitlement reform. “At some point, the reality of the budget is going to have to hit him,” he said. “You can have this economic nationalism — Bannon is very smart, he clearly helped him with his messaging, it was so successful — but at some point, that theory is going to hit reality.”

When I spoke with Trump, I ventured that, based on available evidence, it seemed as though conservatives probably shouldn’t hold their breath for the next four years expecting entitlement reform. Trump’s reply was immediate. “I think you’re right,” he said. In fact, Trump seemed much less animated by the subject of budget cuts than the subject of spending increases. “We’re also going to prime the pump,” he said. “You know what I mean by ‘prime the pump’? In order to get this” — the economy — “going, and going big league, and having the jobs coming in and the taxes that will be cut very substantially and the regulations that’ll be going, we’re going to have to prime the pump to some extent. In other words: Spend money to make a lot more money in the future. And that’ll happen.” A clearer elucidation of Keynesian liberalism could not have been delivered by Obama.

[Frumple]

Amusingly enough, I actually saw the tail end of that last bit a few minutes ago, walking by a TV. Was on the news, heh.

Though yeah, had mentioned flynn a bit a ways earlier. No links at the time, though, so the extra stuff's appreciated.

[palsch]

Another thread on the Flynn bit, walks back a bit while providing context and circumstantial evidence.

[smjjames]

I wonder how the FBI is going to vouch for Flynn's credibility if he does flip and turn on Trump...

[Hanslanda]

This is the beginning of the end.

Remember when I said this? Yeah. It's not going to take four years I think. My prediction is that significant, dare I say damning, evidence that Trump used Russia to get elected will surface from Flynn. Trump will probably get impeached and possibly tried for any number of old timey word crimes. Sedition, collusion, whatever fits the bill best. Just my inexpert opinion.

[Antioch]

This is the beginning of the end.

Remember when I said this? Yeah. It's not going to take four years I think. My prediction is that significant, dare I say damning, evidence that Trump used Russia to get elected will surface from Flynn. Trump will probably get impeached and possibly tried for any number of old timey word crimes. Sedition, collusion, whatever fits the bill best. Just my inexpert opinion.

Trump getting impeached means the Mike Pence becomes president....

I think Pence is actually a worse human being than Trump.