dbphoenix
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Chaos presidency? Nope. It’s all going according to plan.
The word on everyone’s lips in Washington now — in newsrooms and advocacy groups, in congressional offices and embassies — is “firehose.” As in the high-pressure stream of White House orders. The daily deluge of Donald Trump’s tweets blaming “so-called” judges for future terror attacks and assailing Nordstrom for dropping his daughter’s clothing line for poor sales. The tsunami of statements inflating the murder rate and hyping the terrorist threat, while aides mind-bendingly blame the media for not covering massacres in Bowling Green and Atlanta that never happened. With each new volley, drinking from the Trump firehose feels ever more like being drowned by a water cannon.
Perhaps that’s precisely the intent: Disrupt, distract, dissipate, and drown out independent voices and inconvenient realities while fulfilling his agenda with an eager Republican Congress. Critics and the press chase their tails in a tizzy, while Trump’s executive orders get signed and cabinet picks get confirmed, one by one.
Jeb Bush was prescient when he said Trump was “a chaos candidate and he’d be a chaos president.” That chaos seems both intentional and strategic, and it serves three purposes: functionally, disrupt the system; politically, signal the base that he’s delivering; tactically, overwhelm opponents and discredit arbiters of the facts like the media and experts (whom Trump considers “the opposition”), making their jobs impossible. Are you sick and tired of winning yet?
In three weeks, it’s hard to keep track. There was the reversal of environmental and financial regulations, including those protecting retirement accounts from conflicts of interest by brokers; the president’s threats to the judiciary that even his Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch yesterday called “disheartening”; the unprecedented National Security Council rejiggering to give a seat to Stephen Bannon, Trump’s political strategist with ties to white supremacists, displacing top intelligence and military officials.
Senator John McCain, a Vietnam veteran and former POW, had the audacity to question the success of Trump’s first counter-terror operation. The Yemen raid didn’t kill the leader targeted and cost the lives of a Navy SEAL and civilians, including children, and an extra $75 million for a destroyed MV-22 Osprey aircraft. White House press secretary Sean Spicer accused McCain of insulting the fallen American. The president, who avoided fighting in Vietnam thanks to deferments, attacked McCain for “losing so long he doesn’t know how to win.”
Critics paint Bannon as the power behind Trump’s throne, and much has been made of his love of “The Art of War,” the ancient Chinese treatise. “All warfare is based on deception,” Sun Tzu wrote. “Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.” So is this all bait to confuse and crush perceived enemies?
Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Princeton University, says Trump’s strategy is to overwhelm with a barrage of fact and fiction, a lesson learned from 24-hour cable media, where there’s constant information and no end to the news cycle. The result is that plenty of consequential White House actions barely scratch the surface of the news. The onslaught of information that’s true, untrue, and unknown makes it hard to tune out minor outrages and focus on more important ones.
Worryingly, a new Emerson College poll found more registered voters trust Trump than the media, despite relentless fact-checking by the press that often proves the president wrong. Forty-nine percent surveyed believe the administration is truthful, just a hair over 48 percent who do not. And 53 percent see the media as unreliable, versus 39 percent who say news outlets are honest. The results split on partisan lines.
When the FBI and counterterrorism officials don’t dare correct Trump’s incessant, inaccurate claims of record murders and foreign terrorist attacks, it’s hard for ordinary Americans to distinguish what’s true. Trump’s team is “comfortable putting out all sorts of stories and untrue things, anything to confuse,” Zelizer said, and the effect is numbing: “It normalizes behavior that shouldn’t be normal.”
Trump isn’t trying to win over those opposed him; he’s feeding “emotional and policy red meat” to those who brought them to power, Zelizer said. It’s an emotional rather than facts-based approach to governing. When the emotions he’s tapped into are distrust and fury with the status quo, some blame belongs to those who created the status quo; the line between fact and fiction doesn’t matter anymore to those who’ve rejected it.
--Boston Globe
The word on everyone’s lips in Washington now — in newsrooms and advocacy groups, in congressional offices and embassies — is “firehose.” As in the high-pressure stream of White House orders. The daily deluge of Donald Trump’s tweets blaming “so-called” judges for future terror attacks and assailing Nordstrom for dropping his daughter’s clothing line for poor sales. The tsunami of statements inflating the murder rate and hyping the terrorist threat, while aides mind-bendingly blame the media for not covering massacres in Bowling Green and Atlanta that never happened. With each new volley, drinking from the Trump firehose feels ever more like being drowned by a water cannon.
Perhaps that’s precisely the intent: Disrupt, distract, dissipate, and drown out independent voices and inconvenient realities while fulfilling his agenda with an eager Republican Congress. Critics and the press chase their tails in a tizzy, while Trump’s executive orders get signed and cabinet picks get confirmed, one by one.
Jeb Bush was prescient when he said Trump was “a chaos candidate and he’d be a chaos president.” That chaos seems both intentional and strategic, and it serves three purposes: functionally, disrupt the system; politically, signal the base that he’s delivering; tactically, overwhelm opponents and discredit arbiters of the facts like the media and experts (whom Trump considers “the opposition”), making their jobs impossible. Are you sick and tired of winning yet?
In three weeks, it’s hard to keep track. There was the reversal of environmental and financial regulations, including those protecting retirement accounts from conflicts of interest by brokers; the president’s threats to the judiciary that even his Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch yesterday called “disheartening”; the unprecedented National Security Council rejiggering to give a seat to Stephen Bannon, Trump’s political strategist with ties to white supremacists, displacing top intelligence and military officials.
Senator John McCain, a Vietnam veteran and former POW, had the audacity to question the success of Trump’s first counter-terror operation. The Yemen raid didn’t kill the leader targeted and cost the lives of a Navy SEAL and civilians, including children, and an extra $75 million for a destroyed MV-22 Osprey aircraft. White House press secretary Sean Spicer accused McCain of insulting the fallen American. The president, who avoided fighting in Vietnam thanks to deferments, attacked McCain for “losing so long he doesn’t know how to win.”
Critics paint Bannon as the power behind Trump’s throne, and much has been made of his love of “The Art of War,” the ancient Chinese treatise. “All warfare is based on deception,” Sun Tzu wrote. “Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.” So is this all bait to confuse and crush perceived enemies?
Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Princeton University, says Trump’s strategy is to overwhelm with a barrage of fact and fiction, a lesson learned from 24-hour cable media, where there’s constant information and no end to the news cycle. The result is that plenty of consequential White House actions barely scratch the surface of the news. The onslaught of information that’s true, untrue, and unknown makes it hard to tune out minor outrages and focus on more important ones.
Worryingly, a new Emerson College poll found more registered voters trust Trump than the media, despite relentless fact-checking by the press that often proves the president wrong. Forty-nine percent surveyed believe the administration is truthful, just a hair over 48 percent who do not. And 53 percent see the media as unreliable, versus 39 percent who say news outlets are honest. The results split on partisan lines.
When the FBI and counterterrorism officials don’t dare correct Trump’s incessant, inaccurate claims of record murders and foreign terrorist attacks, it’s hard for ordinary Americans to distinguish what’s true. Trump’s team is “comfortable putting out all sorts of stories and untrue things, anything to confuse,” Zelizer said, and the effect is numbing: “It normalizes behavior that shouldn’t be normal.”
Trump isn’t trying to win over those opposed him; he’s feeding “emotional and policy red meat” to those who brought them to power, Zelizer said. It’s an emotional rather than facts-based approach to governing. When the emotions he’s tapped into are distrust and fury with the status quo, some blame belongs to those who created the status quo; the line between fact and fiction doesn’t matter anymore to those who’ve rejected it.
--Boston Globe
Atilla
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Increasingly, I don't believe anything Trump is doing is in fact deliberate or planned. On the contrary there is no plan.
Drain the swamp.
Get best people in with no experience to run education.
Build a wall and get Mexicans to pay for it.
Homeland Security, who are they? Part of the swamp, don't bother with them, I'm president what I say goes. Wot? Judges and the Courts are against me? Really! Don't they know I'll sue them, next time there is a terrorism or murder in the US by a muslim. How much are they worth? Are they as big as me? Do you think they can take me on?
Trust me I know what I'm doing coz I'm Trump. I don't need a plan. It's all up here. It's others who'll need a plan to deal with me.
I'll show'm.
Signalcalc
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Part of the problem is that for decades we've been conditioned to believe that the western world will be led by relatively sane leaders and the rest of the world has a fair few despots, nut jobs and megalomaniacs that we need our sane leaders to protect against.
The western world seems to have joined globalisation when it comes to poor leadership - the era of global nutjob leaders is well and truly upon us.
I was giving him the benefit of the doubt, but recent press conferences are eroding that benefit.
The western world seems to have joined globalisation when it comes to poor leadership - the era of global nutjob leaders is well and truly upon us.
I was giving him the benefit of the doubt, but recent press conferences are eroding that benefit.
dbphoenix
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Fact-checking Trump's claim that he has no business ties to Russia
Trump doesn’t own real estate in Russia, but he’s done plenty of business with Russians.
Trump doesn’t own real estate in Russia, but he’s done plenty of business with Russians.
Pat494
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Losing the American colonies broke him. He was sane before then.
Atilla
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Scott Pruitt: Controversial Trump environment nominee sworn in
I think its clear that Trump really isn't clearing the swamp at all to me. Putting people in positions who reflect the corporate interest as opposed to the public interest is just a recipee to increase the gulf that lies between profits and people.
Dirty rivers, waters, climate change and destruction will hit those who are less able to sustain these calamaties.
Oil and gas industry stooge? Analysis by Matt McGrath, BBC environment correspondent
Mr Pruitt is perhaps the most controversial appointment in the history of the EPA - the Oklahoma attorney general has spent years fighting the role and reach of the organisation he now heads.
Hundreds of former EPA staff members wrote an open letter against his appointment, some calling him an "unqualified extremist".
Environmental campaigners see him as an oil and gas industry stooge who is "lukewarm" on the threat posed by climate change - they fear that hard-won environmental regulations will be overturned.
Once again Trump said he was going to put skilled talented most amazing people in power. It is clear that he is simply putting business people who think like he does and has no interest on public concerns.
Good luck to all American people. You going to need as much of it as you can possibly find.
I think its clear that Trump really isn't clearing the swamp at all to me. Putting people in positions who reflect the corporate interest as opposed to the public interest is just a recipee to increase the gulf that lies between profits and people.
Dirty rivers, waters, climate change and destruction will hit those who are less able to sustain these calamaties.
Oil and gas industry stooge? Analysis by Matt McGrath, BBC environment correspondent
Mr Pruitt is perhaps the most controversial appointment in the history of the EPA - the Oklahoma attorney general has spent years fighting the role and reach of the organisation he now heads.
Hundreds of former EPA staff members wrote an open letter against his appointment, some calling him an "unqualified extremist".
Environmental campaigners see him as an oil and gas industry stooge who is "lukewarm" on the threat posed by climate change - they fear that hard-won environmental regulations will be overturned.
Once again Trump said he was going to put skilled talented most amazing people in power. It is clear that he is simply putting business people who think like he does and has no interest on public concerns.
Good luck to all American people. You going to need as much of it as you can possibly find.
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Pat494
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Pruitt is just another money grubbing capitalist willing to trash the planet's resources until we are forced to try and survive in a lunar landscape.
Says it all about Mr. Dump and his cronies.
Atilla
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What gets me is this guy has no respect for any institution other than what his been supposedly indoctrinated to do! Make money and has his every way right or wrong, sue them if any disagreements arise.
Environmental Protection Agency is there to protect the environment ensure corporations do not pollute, thus protect health and safety of the American public.
Placing someone who's been fighting it so they can make more profits and pay less to clean up their own mess is just so remarkably short sighted for everyone. It is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING, numpties - the poor and improvished voting for him who's most likely to be affected. I can see big corporations and super rich voting for him, but those lower down on the ladder are surely blind.
Will it create more jobs? Not imo.
Will cost savings be passed on? Highly unlikely, will be distributed to bosses and shareholders.
Will it benefit the greater good? I'd like this one to be explained to me.
It is much like putting criminals in charge of the judiciary. We are going to drain the swamp and place the most amazing talented people in charge to make US of A great again. LMAO.
I reckon with this nomination, likely he'll turn the place into a swamp... Just my two cents worth!
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Pat494
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Mr Dump got it right to drain the swamp but what do we find lurking there but the swamp monster himself.
Another case of Trumpism double talk - he is the swamp monster.
Trump's claim of ballot rigging - yea him and his goons again.
His days of fooling everyone are over
Another case of Trumpism double talk - he is the swamp monster.
Trump's claim of ballot rigging - yea him and his goons again.
His days of fooling everyone are over
I thought that he should be given a chance, too. He's the loose cannon in the Western block and he needs tying down. Now, is not soon enough.
dbphoenix
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As part of intelligence operations being conducted against the United States for the last seven months, at least one Western European ally intercepted a series of communications before the inauguration between advisers associated with President Donald Trump and Russian government officials, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.
The sources said the interceptions include at least one contact between former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and a Russian official based in the United States. It could not be confirmed whether this involved the telephone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that has led to Flynn’s resignation, or additional communications. The sources said the intercepted communications are not just limited to telephone calls: The foreign agency is also gathering electronic and human source information on Trump’s overseas business partners, at least some of whom the intelligence services now consider to be agents of their respective governments. These operations are being conducted out of concerns that Russia is seeking to manipulate its relationships with Trump administration officials as part of a long-term plan to destabilize the NATO alliance.
Moreover, a Baltic nation is gathering intelligence on officials in the Trump White House and executives with the president’s company, the Trump Organization, out of concern that an American policy shift toward Russia could endanger its sovereignty, according to a third person with direct ties to that nation’s government.
These sources spoke on condition that they not be identified because they were not formally authorized to disclose the information. While Newsweek was told which allied nations intercepted the communications and are gathering intelligence on Trump associates, the sources did so on condition that the countries not be identified out of concern those governments would incur the president’s wrath.
The Western European intelligence operations began in August, after the British government obtained information that people acting on behalf of Russia were in contact with members of the Trump campaign. Those details from the British were widely shared among the NATO allies in Europe. The Baltic nation has been gathering intelligence for at least that long, and has conducted surveillance of executives from the Trump Organization who were traveling in Europe.
These operations reflect a serious breakdown in the long-standing faith in the direction of American policy by some of the country’s most important allies. Worse, the United States is now in a situation that may be unprecedented—where European governments know more about what is going on in the executive branch than any elected American official. To date, the Republican-controlled Congress has declined to conduct hearings to investigate the links between Trump’s overseas business partners and foreign governments, or the activities between Russia and officials in the Trump campaign and administration—the very areas being examined by the intelligence services of at least two American allies. (more)
Extraordinary.
The sources said the interceptions include at least one contact between former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and a Russian official based in the United States. It could not be confirmed whether this involved the telephone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that has led to Flynn’s resignation, or additional communications. The sources said the intercepted communications are not just limited to telephone calls: The foreign agency is also gathering electronic and human source information on Trump’s overseas business partners, at least some of whom the intelligence services now consider to be agents of their respective governments. These operations are being conducted out of concerns that Russia is seeking to manipulate its relationships with Trump administration officials as part of a long-term plan to destabilize the NATO alliance.
Moreover, a Baltic nation is gathering intelligence on officials in the Trump White House and executives with the president’s company, the Trump Organization, out of concern that an American policy shift toward Russia could endanger its sovereignty, according to a third person with direct ties to that nation’s government.
These sources spoke on condition that they not be identified because they were not formally authorized to disclose the information. While Newsweek was told which allied nations intercepted the communications and are gathering intelligence on Trump associates, the sources did so on condition that the countries not be identified out of concern those governments would incur the president’s wrath.
The Western European intelligence operations began in August, after the British government obtained information that people acting on behalf of Russia were in contact with members of the Trump campaign. Those details from the British were widely shared among the NATO allies in Europe. The Baltic nation has been gathering intelligence for at least that long, and has conducted surveillance of executives from the Trump Organization who were traveling in Europe.
These operations reflect a serious breakdown in the long-standing faith in the direction of American policy by some of the country’s most important allies. Worse, the United States is now in a situation that may be unprecedented—where European governments know more about what is going on in the executive branch than any elected American official. To date, the Republican-controlled Congress has declined to conduct hearings to investigate the links between Trump’s overseas business partners and foreign governments, or the activities between Russia and officials in the Trump campaign and administration—the very areas being examined by the intelligence services of at least two American allies. (more)
Extraordinary.
dbphoenix
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Doc: Tell me, Future Boy, who's President of the United States in 1985?
Marty: Ronald Reagan.
Doc: Ronald Reagan? The actor? [rolls his eyes] Ha! Then who's vice-president, Jerry Lewis? I suppose Jane Wyman is the First Lady?
Marty: Whoa, wait. Doc!
Doc: And Jack Benny is Secretary of the Treasury!
--Back to the Future
Marty: Ronald Reagan.
Doc: Ronald Reagan? The actor? [rolls his eyes] Ha! Then who's vice-president, Jerry Lewis? I suppose Jane Wyman is the First Lady?
Marty: Whoa, wait. Doc!
Doc: And Jack Benny is Secretary of the Treasury!
--Back to the Future
Pat494
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Ronald was in my view America's best ever President. He did what he was good at. Namely entertaining foreign Heads of State and left the grot work to the hired help. I think Dumpy will be a hands on, all fired up , in their faces type of idiot.
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dbphoenix
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Given all the AIDS deaths he was responsible for, as well as Iran-Contra, we'll have to disagree on that.
Atilla
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He also, financed the creation of Al-Qaida too but back then they were our allies fighting the Russians who were trying to put taliban to bed. Stinger missiles destroyed countless helicopters. Who remembers Rambo
It destroyed the government and re-established the Taliban with help from Pakistan.
We all know where that led!
Also, Iran-Contra affair turned Saddam against the US. We also now know where that led too.
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