@glitterbag,
Quote:Geez, if you keep reading that stuff you're going to go blind.
Given the publications you are warning this fellow about and the dire consequences of attending to them reminds me of a French idiom for pornographic publications which means, "books you read with one hand".
@Walter Hinteler,
I wish I could say I liked Ibsen more than I do. I haven't quite figured out my response to his work but I think it is the lack of car chases.
#Resist and the MSM were momentarily stunned by the announcement that Trump has agreed to a meeting with the North Korean tyrant Phat-Boi-un, but they've begun to regain their footing and have coalesced around a series of talking points:
1) Trump deserves no credit for this development. If credit is due to anyone it belongs to South Korea and to some extent China
2) Kim Jung Un is snookering Trump. He has no intention of making any meaningful concessions, but a meeting with the US President raises his international status. The charm offensive NK launched at the Olympics is now followed by the suggestion that the regime is rational and even in search of a peaceful resolution of the current conflict. Unless Trump makes huge concessions, the talks will fall apart and Kim will blame Trump
3)Kim the sophisticated, master strategist who has been canny enough to survive in the dog-eat-dog world of NK political intrigue (or man-eat-dog; dog-eat-man world if you are references NK cuisine or the purported punishment Kim meted out to his Uncle) will take the milkshake of the incompetent, uneducated, and unstable Trump
4) Trump will be so desperate to hit a home run that none of his predecessors could manage, will cut a horrible, one-sided deal that he can crow about, but will actually make America less safe
5) Trump will have a melt-down during the meeting, insult and threaten Kim and the NK delegation and actually bring us closer to a nuclear war.
#1 is ridiculous. Trump is going to take credit for this development, but what president wouldn't? So far, he's been rather subdued about it but that's likely to change. The situation is too complex to credit only one player or one factor for this development, but it's purely spite prompting assertions that Trump has not been a major player.
#2 Once again these folks are clinging to their absurd, but necessary, belief that Trump is dumb as a rock. So dumb in fact that he is completely unaware of the consistent bad faith NK has demonstrated each and every time it has entered into "negotiations" with a US Administration, They played the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations (Plus Jimmy Carter and Madeline Albright) like fiddles, and even though Trump has made this claim on numerous occasions in public, apparently he is so dumb he has no idea what the words he speaks actually mean.
It is not only possible, but it is likely that if this meeting is held it will not produce any truly positive results. Maybe Kim's intelligence analysts rely on CNN as their only source and he believes Trump is such a buffoon that he will be able to give him the bum's rush. Maybe he believes Trump is mentally deranged and really might put down his cell phone one night and pick up his "nuclear football." In any case, I just can't imagine why he would give up the protection afforded to him and his regime by his nukes. Thanks to Hilary Clinton and Barrack Obama, the Libyan regime change demonstrated to the world and all of its tin-pot dictators what's likely to happen when a rogue regime gives up its WMDs. I bet Kim saw the horrific video of Ghadaffi being brutally beaten and fatally anal-raped with a bowie knife. I think I might prefer to go out in an incinerating nuclear blast than suffer that fate.
If the talks fall apart, it is absolutely certain that the North Koreans will blame Trump, just as they have blamed every previous administration. The difference this time will be that they will be assisted by Democrats and the MSM who will gleefully echo their claims.
#4 Really? Can anyone remind us of the last time Trump gave away the farm on a deal? Not being successful and folding like a tent are not the same things. I'm sure Kim is canny. He had to learn how to play a brutal game since childhood. Unfortunately for him though he's not going to be able to torture any of Trump's advisors to obtain helpful intelligence. He won't be holding Melania or Barron hostage to leverage Trump and if all else fails he won't be able to call in his sexpot assassins with their poison darts.
#5 You mean like Obama did with Iran? Or like Clinton and Obama did with the Russia Reset? Trump, undoubtedly, would love to achieve a result that might force those nerdy Norwegians to award him a Nobel Peace Prize. I would never put it past any politician to compromise the effectiveness of a resolution in order to achieve glory or political advantage, but as we all can agree, appearing tough is very important to Trump, and he is going to want to come out of the meeting being able to say he was tough. He can dress up the truth to make it seem like he was tougher than was actually the case, but not if he completely folds.
There are, in my opinion, only two possible results: a) We get a great deal b) The meeting is a total bust and in the days immediately afterward Trump and Kim engage in a twitter war of insults. #Resist & the MSM insist
Kim agreed to give up his nukes, but Trump called him "Little Rocket Man" as everyone was prepared to leave the room. My bet is "b"
#5 is a fantasy
@hightor,
hightor wrote:
Quote:Obama sent taxpayer money to a lot of anti-American causes.
Citations? It might be useful for us to see exactly what you consider to be "anti-American causes".
Stuff like sanctions on Russia. This guy is a "MSUGA" (Make Soviet Union Great Again) kinda guy. Then the USA can be a Soviet Union satellite state. He's part of the group that believe tRump has made treason great again. He's such a wonderful role model for them. They're teaching their boys to be just like him and girls to sit back and take it, especially when they are selected out of the masses by the great one. <sigh> sad, so sad.......
@blatham,
blatham wrote:
My impression is that the WSJ has maintained a surprising separation between reporting and editorial. Surprising because Murdoch now owns the paper. Murdoch had promised he wouldn't intervene in reporting but anyone who trusts Murdoch to be honest is a fool. Yes, there has been internal discord and intermittent grumbling from the reportorial side (who are far less partisan that Gigot and his people). I think we're seeing the bulk of the reportorial staff holding to a legacy which was not propagandist.
Yeah, that's what I mean. I remember something like this reasoning being explained way back in the Clinton era. It is still relevant, even in the Murdock era. I would add one other area that is separated from the other two - economics reporting which is highly conservative.
@blatham,
blatham wrote:
Quote:Geez, if you keep reading that stuff you're going to go blind.
Given the publications you are warning this fellow about and the dire consequences of attending to them reminds me of a French idiom for pornographic publications which means, "books you read with one hand".
But, the other hand is covering one eye so you don't go completely blind and one half of your brain doesn't go evil.
@Walter Hinteler,
Thanks Walter. From the piece...
Quote:...administration officials and White House aides were in agreement that Mr. Pruitt’s idea was unwise. Their main concern was that a public debate on science — particularly on an issue as politically charged as the warming of the planet — could become a damaging spectacle, creating an unnecessary distraction from the steps the administration has taken to slash environmental regulations enacted by former President Barack Obama.
The concerns are political only. "What do we need to do to present ourselves as conscientious stewards of the nation while we actually just doing what the big oil money wants us to do as quickly as possible"
I don't know if you recall John Dilulio's letter to Ron Suskind from early on in the Bush administration. He headed up the "Faith Based Initiatives" project (which was set up not merely as a sop to the religious right but more importantly as a means of defunding government and the left through directing existing funding to private and religious instituions). Dilulio was definitely a religious fellow who took on this programs because he thought it would help. And he was a serious guy with an impressive background and education. But he left the administration and because he and Suskind had developed a trusting relationship, and he wrote a long letter describing his experiences in the Bush adminstration. I'll quote some here:
Quote:In eight months, I heard many, many staff discussions, but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues. There were, truth be told, only a couple of people in the West Wing who worried at all about policy substance and analysis, and they were even more overworked than the stereotypical, nonstop, 20-hour-a-day White House staff. Every modern presidency moves on the fly, but, on social policy and related issues, the lack of even basic policy knowledge, and the only casual interest in knowing more, was somewhat breathtaking — discussions by fairly senior people who meant Medicaid but were talking Medicare; near-instant shifts from discussing any actual policy pros and cons to discussing political communications, media strategy, et cetera. Even quite junior staff would sometimes hear quite senior staff pooh-pooh any need to dig deeper for pertinent information on a given issue.
...I think, however, that the Bush administration — maybe because they were coming off Florida and the election controversy, maybe because they were so unusually tight-knit and "Texas," maybe because the chief of staff, Andy Card, was more a pure staff process than a staff leader or policy person, or maybe for other reasons I can't recognize — was far more inclined in that direction, and became progressively more so as the months pre-9/11 wore on.
This gave rise to what you might call Mayberry Machiavellis — staff, senior and junior, who consistently talked and acted as if the height of political sophistication consisted in reducing every issue to its simplest, black-and-white terms for public consumption, then steering legislative initiatives or policy proposals as far right as possible. These folks have their predecessors in previous administrations (left and right, Democrat and Republican), but, in the Bush administration, they were particularly unfettered.
the 2002 letter is here
Elsewhere, Dilulio had written, "Everything, and I mean everything, was run by the political office."
Trump is uniquely a clown; uneducated, incurious, mean-spirited, a pathological liar, a bully, corrupt and absolutely compelled to present himself as a world-class alpha male (if not quite as alpha as Putin). But there is surprisingly little difference in how the Bush admin operated and how the Trump admin does it.
@BillW,
Quote:economics reporting which is highly conservative.
Not my area of expertise but I'd guess that's quite true.
@BillW,
Your older neighborhood friends taught you better than mine taught me.
@blatham,
Quote:Trump is uniquely a clown; uneducated, incurious, mean-spirited, a pathological liar, a bully, corrupt and absolutely compelled to present himself as a world-class alpha male (if not quite as alpha as Putin). But there is surprisingly little difference in how the Bush admin operated and how the Trump admin does it.
Despite all that, he's a 100% great jerk, 100%!
Note, I used " 100% great" ~ tRump can't get passed this, thinking he is being hugely complimented, and then used 100% again to keep his ego built to the max.
@blatham,
blatham wrote:
Your older neighborhood friends taught you better than mine taught me.
Sorry, I never read them lying, fake news, altright, fascist, racist publications at any point in my life! Can't help you there - ha
@oralloy,
Yes, Philémon in the parallel universe of the island-letters composing the words "ATLANTIC OCEAN" on maps.
According to what I've been reading (mostly from TPM) on the Kobach voting rights trial, Kobach and his team are not doing well.
If you have any spare cash kicking about, the ACLU would be a great place to send it (I've donated to our provincial version of the thing).
Quote:Quote:ABC News Politics
@ABCPolitics
Press Sec. Sanders on talks with North Korea: "The president will not have the meeting without seeing concrete steps and concrete actions take place by North Korea."
http://abcn.ws/2Gaz6jH
11:39 AM - Mar 9, 2018
Of course, that’s the old policy. Which means Trump shot off his mouth and got excited and then his advisers had to explain to him why he can’t do that. Or maybe they haven’t explained it to him and are backing out without his permission. Whatever the explanation, the major policy change Trump announced appears to be completely moot because he plays the president on television but isn’t really president.
NYMag
The very stable genius strikes again.
