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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Yeah...there are a lot of things that aren't supposed to be in play in the White House but are. I'm still unsure if Trump set it up to be a royal court (or maybe Nazi Germany ehehhememes)-style factional conflict intentionally, but he definitely did it.

[wierd]

See, the thing is, Trump does not understand that loyalty to the NATION comes before loyalty to a president.

Comey was loyal to the nation first, Trump second-- and that made Trump a sad panda. Comey was a professional, who conducted himself dispassionately, like a professional should. Trump wanted somebody that would look the other way while he stole hens from the henhouse, then lie for him. (Eg, "loyalty")

That is where this divide is. It is not that there are rival factions in the government-- there is a rogue actor in the government, that feels vulnerable because he actually has to play by the rules, and has never really had to before.

[Max™]

Now for Spicer to publish a tell-all account of shenanigans. Such an account would be, dare I say it.....spicy?

You're fired.

[sluissa]

If Obama's excuse regarding Snowden holds any water, you can't be pardoned until you're convicted either. That was his primary excuse for why he didn't pardon Snowden as did (sort of) with Manning. Manning had her day in court and was convicted, Snowden still hasn't been to trial.

Makes sense, even if it might have simply been an excuse to not show any leniency to Snowden. But seems like Trump would have to be found guilty of something in a court before pardons could be passed out. He can't just immunize himself just in case they throw something at him that managed to stick.

It is of course, NONSENSE.  There is precedent that blows it out of the water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_of_Richard_Nixon

This was before Tricky Dick could even enter a courtroom concerning his infamous scandal. The Obaminator was lying. It is NOT a requirement.

Different situation though. Sitting president, expected to finish out a term, pardoning someone else. There was nothing to pardon at that point, but Ford, as president for the foreseeable future, continued to have the power of pardon. Obama was at the end of his term. Unable to enforce a pardon if Snowden was to come up against a trial in the future after the end of his presidency. Trump, if removed from office before other convictions went through, would no longer have the power of pardon.

It could be viewed as Ford basically just making a statement. "Don't even bother going after Nixon because I'll pardon him anyway." Carter or a later, non-republican, administration could have pursued it. But that also would have had the affect of eroding their own power. If they'd pursued it and won, the presidential pardon would have precedent set that it's unable to be used before hand or that it can be overturned by a later president.

Basically, it's something that's never been tested before. Ford could be right, Obama could be right, but it's never come up in a situation where it's had to be tested. Nobody called Ford on his (possible) bluff.

[smjjames]

Sean 'Spicey' Spicer resigned. This is breaking news, and the article is so short I'll just copy the whole text here.

WASHINGTON — Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, resigned on Friday morning, telling President Trump he vehemently disagreed with the appointment of the New York financier Anthony Scaramucci as communications director.

Mr. Trump offered Mr. Scaramucci the job at 10 a.m. The president requested that Mr. Spicer stay on, but Mr. Spicer told Mr. Trump that he believed the appointment was a major mistake, according to a person with direct knowledge of the exchange.

Politico has a little on who Anthony Scaramucci is, although most of the article was written before the resignation.

Spicer was supposed to be a Priebus loyalist, I believe. Most interesting.

Given that he used to be the communications director under Priebus, it's not surprising. Also, all this talk of loyalties is dumb, like we are talking about feuding factions of some royal court. Loyalty isn't supposed to be a thing in play in the white house, at least not the way that it's been thrown about.

You read what Comey wrote before his hearing, right? About Trump asking for loyalty?

Yes, I'm fully aware of that, and I mentally included that in my statement.

Yeah...there are a lot of things that aren't supposed to be in play in the White House but are. I'm still unsure if Trump set it up to be a royal court (or maybe Nazi Germany ehehhememes)-style factional conflict intentionally, but he definitely did it.

See, the thing is, Trump does not understand that loyalty to the NATION comes before loyalty to a president.

Comey was loyal to the nation first, Trump second-- and that made Trump a sad panda. Comey was a professional, who conducted himself dispassionately, like a professional should. Trump wanted somebody that would look the other way while he stole hens from the henhouse, then lie for him. (Eg, "loyalty")

That is where this divide is. It is not that there are rival factions in the government-- there is a rogue actor in the government, that feels vulnerable because he actually has to play by the rules, and has never really had to before.

Yeah. I know there aren't actually rival factions in the government, it's just a combination of the way Trump has set it up, the whole massive palace intrigue, and the loyalties and cliques that give it that royal court style factional conflict in the White House.

Every White House admin has it's friction between staff, but those are usually revealed months or years later, not near-realtime.

[Descan]

Okay, just making sure. The way you wrote it, it looked like you were complaining about outside actors talking about loyalty politics internal to the white house, as if they were imposing that view from outside, rather than them acknowledging that that is what internal WH politics has degenerated into.

[smjjames]

Okay, just making sure. The way you wrote it, it looked like you were complaining about outside actors talking about loyalty politics internal to the white house, as if they were imposing that view from outside, rather than them acknowledging that that is what internal WH politics has degenerated into.

I guess I can see how it could look that way. No prob though.

In some other tangentially not-trump stuff, for the new motto/slogan/message that the Dems are rolling out on Monday, they seem to have settled on "a Better Deal" and an economic message for their new messaging. In full, it's actually “A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future”. Kind of has a bit of a ring of the New Deal thing to it. It did get mocked for being unoriginal, but Make America Great Again isn't Trump's invention either.

The Daily Beast article

WaPo article

So, what do you guys think? Remains to be seen whether it catches on.

[MrRoboto75]

A Better Deal: This Time it Isn't a Clinton

[wierd]

Here, I havent slept properly in 3 days, and I can give a better slogan than that regurgitated filthy generic rehash of "the new deal":

"Honest answers to honest questions; Honest solutions to honest problems."

The tricky part, is that they would have to actually, you now-- DO THOSE THINGS, instead of talking out their asses like they usually do.
[Basically, right now my give-a-shit-o-meter is broken, and set at -1. I will just out and say it-- There is a REASON why Trump is in the whitehouse, and it is not fucking Russia. There is a reason half of the US population decided to go full retard instead of vote democrat. Fix that shit. Fix it now, and run a proper government.]

[smjjames]

That's what the Democrats are trying to do, although in a muddled scatterbrained way that is a metaphor for their problems. In the WaPo article, it says that they're attempting to get to the catchy and simple slogans that the Republicans are so good at doing. Still, a new slogan is useless if they don't change their behavior.

Most likely the best way to find out what works for them going forward is to see the results of the 2018 midterms.

[wierd]

No, they dont understand what integrity is anymore.  Why they need to stick to their message, even when it hurts-- rather than flipflop like a Jim Henson's Muppet.

[smjjames]

Well, the Republicans do tend to be the party of Order (in the sense of being opposite to Chaos, not in a law and order sense) and the Democrats do tend to be the party of Chaos.

[MrRoboto75]

"Order" is a word I'd use to describe Trump

[smjjames]

Trump? Pfft, more like Dis-Order. Though I was also thinking of the words along DnDesque lines since the Republicans are showing the same moderate-centrist vs far left (right, in the Republicans case) split that the Dems are having and aren't that much more 'ordered' than the Dems.

[sluissa]

I'm not sold with the new slogan and it's once again promising things they have no control over.

Excepting the viciously fought minimum wage laws which have much better chance changing locally than something national passing beyond small increases that don't even match inflation, politicians have basically NO direct influence over wages. They have basically NO influence over job numbers. (Despite that being a major section of grading on the rubric these days.) And I'm glad they think they can predict the future, but I don't have any faith in that.

Democrats are just taking "things people are worried about" and saying "We'll do them better." Which is complete bullshit marketing.

You're also entering an era where it's irresponsible to promise these things. "Better jobs." Are simply not there anymore. EVERYTHING is getting automated from the assembly line worker, to the truck driver, to the middle management office worker. The "Better jobs." Are few and far between and generally centered around automating even more of the workplace or ensuring that automation keeps running smoothly by keeping everything oiled and fixing things other people break. (People who will be replaced with machines soon enough because they keep breaking things.)

So what are we left with now? Basically just the jobs that are outward facing. People in general still prefer to interact with other people. We've basically become the secretaries for the machines. Taking messages and passing on the agendas that people want the machines to do. Interpreters, trying to convert "what a human wants." Into "what a machine can understand and do." And basically just filling in the spaces where humans and machines just can't yet interact all that well. (As nice as roombas are, all it takes is for me to leave a pair of pants laying on the floor and it, at best misses half the room, and at worst gets tangled up and breaks.) Robots just aren't all that great at dealing with the chaos that humans disperse, just yet.

Granted, it's not 100% yet... I'd still say it may not even be majority yet in most sectors. But in some sectors it's approaching total takeover by machines and most there's significant growth that can't be ignored. People keep saying that "The jobs will just move elsewhere. People will find something else to do." But it's not that simple. And it's certainly not guaranteed.

This isn't something 20-30 years down the road anymore. Not something you see in a crazy black and white thing from the 50s or 60s of a "kitchen that does all the work for you" the sort of thing that's fun to watch but never expect to see in your lifetime. This isn't "off in the future." This is happening now. It's been slow and steady and sneaking up on us across human history. But we're near the finish line now and it's broken out into a sprint. Kids in school now will probably run straight into it as they graduate.

But that's far too much that probably deserves to be in another thread.

My point is that Democrats are promising things which are pandering and irresponsible. This is no better than Trump promising a wall because the right is afraid of Mexicans. This is just democrats promising something that they can't follow through on and won't likely help even if they did manage to do something with full support of government.

I get it... pandering is how you win elections. People do have to vote and don't often like hearing that what they want isn't best for them. But it's also downright scummy to promise these things like they're actually going to help. Like they're actually significantly better than what we already have. That patching the holes in the lifeboat is at all going to help when they've forgotten to untie it from the Titanic.

But once again. Typical politics. 'tis why I don't support either party.