192
   

monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

 
 
nimh
 
  4  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 05:31 pm
@McGentrix,
That's a good list.

Not one where I expect the Trump administration to be any better.

Sure, it will limit some of the cited intrusions where it benefits right-wing groups. But I don't expect the government to stop, say, infiltrating far-left or muslim groups even if there is no suspicion of criminal activity.

I am trying to imagine the Trump administration telling officials to stop "limit[ing] access to government records through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests". What, because he's shown such enthusiasm for transparency so far?

Anyway, if you'll be as vigilant on government practices regarding surveillance, privacy and transparency with the Trump administration as the Obama one, I'm with you. You and the ACLU.
McGentrix
 
  1  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 07:37 pm
@nimh,
I'd love nothing more than to see the federal govt limited to what the Constitution says. That way I could choose which state I'd like to live in for the level of freedom I'd like to enjoy.
cicerone imposter
 
  2  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 07:51 pm
@McGentrix,
"Level of freedom" differs from state to state? Can you explain what those differences are? I've lived in three states, and have not noticed any difference on my freedoms.
McGentrix
 
  0  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 08:02 pm
@cicerone imposter,
cicerone imposter wrote:

"Level of freedom" differs from state to state? Can you explain what those differences are? I've lived in three states, and have not noticed any difference on my freedoms.


You aren't paying enough attention then.
RABEL222
 
  2  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 08:26 pm
@McGentrix,
Quote:
You aren't paying enough attention then.


Another one of your stock non answers.
blatham
 
  2  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 09:13 pm
@wmwcjr,
Yes. Ready-made for satirization. Conway, because she is utterly without shame, can be "effective" but you just can't lie that much and that baldly without stepping in the crap you've created.

What really pisses me off in this is continuing invitations from media to get her in front of the cameras. At the very least, any time she's on, there should be a follow up by someone who can bring the evidence to demonstrate when and how she tries to deceive.
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  3  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 09:20 pm
Not really a difficult case to make:
Quote:
Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey said in an interview Monday that President Donald Trump's comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin might be "the most anti-American statement" ever made by a U.S. president.

"How concerned are you about not just what the President is saying but the relationship that means the U.S. is going to have with Russia, where that goes from here?" MSNBC's Hallie Jackson asked McCaffrey.

"I'm actually incredulous that the President would make a statement like that," he replied. "One could argue that's the most anti-American statement ever made by the president of the United States, to confuse American values with Putin."
TPM
0 Replies
 
McGentrix
 
  0  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 09:32 pm
@RABEL222,
RABEL222 wrote:

Quote:
You aren't paying enough attention then.


Another one of your stock non answers.


Then you agree with CI that the states must all have the same laws and the same limitations on human rights because he's lived in 3 and has been too blind to see the differences?
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  4  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 09:37 pm
In a speech at CENTCOM today and via Spicer and in tweets, Trump:
1) brags about himself and his win
2) attacks the media and satirization by SNL

So week 3 begins with a continuation of full spectrum victim-whining and other-blaming. Personally, I've never seen anyone with the gifts for bringing dignity to the office of the president like this guy has.
blatham
 
  2  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 10:15 pm
On this black/white legal issue of Trump's EO
Quote:
Ten former high-ranking diplomatic and national security officials, nearly 100 Silicon Valley tech companies, more than 280 law professors, and a host of civil liberties and other organizations have formally lent their support to the legal bid to block President Trump’s immigration order.
WP
A fairly commonplace assertion we'll hear from some folks on the right and some on the left is that legal or constitutional questions which are in dispute should not be in dispute at all because the law or the constitution are utterly clear on the matter. This isn't a sensible position, it's just a manifestation of the too common zest for simple answers.

If it were so simple and obvious, the SC would get very few cases as lower courts would have quickly resolved the cases - matters being so clear-cut. And if somehow such cases got up to the SC, then that court's decisions would be pretty uniformly 9-0.

PS... an obvious question that arises right now is what Trump is going to say and how he is going to behave when SC decisions contradict his desires.
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 10:19 pm
@blatham,
It's going to take generations, if ever, to see a repeat of a Trump as president.
He not only starts with one of the lowest approval rating after innaugeration, but to keep slamming judges and the media is new in my generation.
blatham
 
  6  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 10:34 pm
@cicerone imposter,
The precedent most people point to is Nixon. Some similar psychological pathologies and resentments, similar facility for dishonesty, similar need to shelter himself in a tight coterie of extremist (and criminal) supporters, etc.

But Nixon was far more intelligent and far, far more knowledgeable about the workings and responsibilities of governance. Nixon was a bad dude in many ways but he wasn't a massively ignorant doofus wrestling promoter like this guy.
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 10:46 pm
@blatham,
I agree.
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  3  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 10:47 pm
Quote:
There are two very troubling things about Donald Trump’s tweeted threat to hold “the court system” responsible for future terrorist acts he claims his embattled travel ban might prevent. The first and worst, as my colleague Eric Levitz explains, is that such inflammatory charges endanger the independence of the judiciary, and with it the rule of law.

But on a political level, there is something else sinister about this sort of talk coming from the president of the United States: he is preemptively clearing himself and his administration of any responsibility for future terrorist acts its policies might fail to prevent — or even invite. As Jeet Heer notes:

Quote:
t’s…a candid admission about how [Trump] intends to play the politics of terrorism. If the U.S. is hit by a terrorist attack that can be connected to Islamic radicalism, Trump will blame his opponents, whether they be the courts, politicians, journalists, or whomever; the terrorist attack will be anyone’s fault but his own.
NYMag
Knowing Trump, we understand (those of us who still have neurons firing) that he will never take responsibility (or even share it) for such an event.

And we also know that he will not forego the opportunity to use such an event as a means of attacking all his perceived opponents so as to make himself look better and so as to increase his dominance.

Yeah, this is dangerous.
blatham
 
  3  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 10:50 pm
Apparently, Kanye West has deleted all his pro-Trump tweets.

As Obama once said, "Kaye is a jackass". Yes, he is.
0 Replies
 
McGentrix
 
  0  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 10:52 pm
@blatham,
I suspect that the terrorist would get the majority of the blame.

But, let me ask you (purely hypothetically because I really, really hope that nothing does actually happen)... if, in the next 90-120 days, there is a terrorist attack and the assholes doing it can be traced back to "refugees" let in after this judgement, who should bear some of the responsibility?
blatham
 
  3  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 11:01 pm
@McGentrix,
It's a fair question. Let's match it up with another hypothetical.

If the next terrorist attack killing multiple innocent people is perpetrated by a white supremacist or anti-abortionist or by a radicalized American-born citizen (statistically more likely) who should bear some of the responsibility?
McGentrix
 
  0  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 11:04 pm
@blatham,
Probably the terrorist and whomever helped them in any way.

Care to answer my question now?
blatham
 
  3  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 11:16 pm
Trump’s Authoritarian Approach to Managing Public Opinion

Quote:
It says a lot about the political system’s (and the news media’s) adjustment to the Trump Era that this tweet from the president of the United States seems like routine news:
Quote:
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting.

Polls aren’t inherently flawed, it seems: just those that are “negative” about Trump’s policies. That is because he is uniquely qualified to understand what the American people want. Why? Well, presumably because he won the presidency despite “fake polls” suggesting he would lose.

It appears Trump is going to keep repeating this chain of convoluted logic until people who look favorably upon him accept it implicitly: He won a big, landslide victory that was disguised by media lies and many millions of fraudulent votes against him; thus he has a mandate to do exactly what he is doing; and what he’s doing is popular, notwithstanding the lies about it from the same lying pollsters and media.

Once you accept the “landslide” premise, it all follows naturally, since Trump’s popular-vote defeat and incredibly narrow path to an electoral vote majority are wished away, and with them the reasonably good record of national polls, which were more accurate in 2016 than in 2012.

Thus, the foundational untruth about the actual results of the 2016 election paves the way to the authoritarian (in the most literal sense of the term) premise that only Trump or Trump-approved sources of information can ever, ever be trusted. And actually, that may understate the claim, since the president constantly asserts that media are deliberately, consciously lying about him. And so: Once you accept his overarching lie, everything that contradicts it must be a malicious untruth. The logic is inexorable...
NYMag
As blatant as all of this is, that Trump could even forward such an authoritarian message and have anyone buy into it comes as a consequence of decades of prior right wing propaganda which has paved the way for such a figure as Trump and such a bizarre narrative.

As I've observed/stated before, the fundamental premise upon which right wing media exists and justifies/promotes itself is that all other media is not to be trusted. Only right wing media is honest. Only right wing media will bring you the truth. All other media is filled with lies driven by "liberal bias". Listen to any Limbaugh broadcast, read any Coulter column, attend to any O'Reilly or Hannity show on Fox. The chances are about 95% that any one of them will contain this claim, explicit usually or sometimes implicit. But it will be there. Every broadcast, every column, every episode.

It is no work at all to understand why folks on the right here or anywhere else believe this to be so. It is the water they've been swimming in for decades.
0 Replies
 
glitterbag
 
  3  
Mon 6 Feb, 2017 11:28 pm
@McGentrix,
McGentrix wrote:

I suspect that the terrorist would get the majority of the blame.

But, let me ask you (purely hypothetically because I really, really hope that nothing does actually happen)... if, in the next 90-120 days, there is a terrorist attack and the assholes doing it can be traced back to "refugees" let in after this judgement, who should bear some of the responsibility?


I think that's a fair question, but it seems you already know whose fault it is. I'm not dismissing your concern, all I can tell you is that the police,Feds and all the other people devoted to preventing crime or terrorist attacks have to prevent every single one, but the bad guys only have to get it right once. I don't like the odds at all, even though most plans are foiled, but it happens, who should have warned us about Timothy McVeigh?
0 Replies
 
 

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