monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

“Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel,” Trump tweeted.

Monday, for example, a reporter asked White House press secretary Sean Spicer, “if this White House is no longer calling this a ‘Muslim ban’ … why does the president’s website still explicitly call for ‘preventing Muslim immigration?’”

“I’m not aware of what’s on the campaign website,” Spicer responded.

At that particular moment, the website did indeed include “DONALD J. TRUMP STATEMENT ON PREVENTING MUSLIM IMMIGRATION.”

It went on: “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

But then, shazam, the text on the same Web page went blank. Nothing.

Trump is giving an entirely new meaning to “Rose Garden strategy.” His goal is successful votes and Rose Garden ceremonies, with the content of those victories subcontracted. Trump, no doubt, views this as a strong executive focusing on the big picture. But this is not the result of management theory. It is the only possible choice for a chief executive who is being introduced to substantive issues and debates for the first time and seems to find them tedious. “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated,” Trump said at one point, in a statement more fitting to a congressional intern.

It is useful, even necessary, for outsiders to arrive in periodic political waves. It is part of the way that democracies renew themselves without coups and violence. But this kind of outsider perspective is precisely what Trump is not providing.

Some of the reason is just the swift, merciless education provided by reality. Yes, Middle East peace is just “as difficult as people have thought.” No, building a wall across a continent isn’t really possible. Yes, health-care policy is complicated.

But Trump, more than most, is severed from the people and priorities he ran on. What he said during the campaign about the struggles of the working class is important. But it has almost no relationship to his governing agenda.

Two months before Monday’s announcement that Sinclair Broadcast Group would pay $3.9 billion for Tribune Media and add to its dominance as the nation’s largest owner of local TV stations, a top executive at Sinclair beamed a short commentary piece to many of the company’s 173 stations.

In the segment, which looks like it belongs in a newscast, Sinclair vice president for news Scott Livingston stands before a wall of video monitors and warns that “some members of the national media are using their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control exactly what people think.” He accuses the national media of publishing “fake news stories” — a direct echo of President Trump’s frequent complaint — and then asks viewers to visit the station’s website to share “content concerns.”

The piece was a “must-run,” meaning news directors and station managers from Baltimore to Seattle had to find room for it. While other station owners also push “must-runs,” typically station promotions, Sinclair appears unique among broadcasters for what some analysts see as a political slant to its programming — from news coverage and must-runs sent by headquarters critical of Democrats to last month’s hiring of Boris Epshteyn, a former Trump White House official, as Sinclair’s chief political analyst.

Kushner Family Stands to Gain From Visa Rules in Trump’s First Major Law

WASHINGTON — It was the first major piece of legislation that President Trump signed into law, and buried on Page 734 was one sentence that brought a potential benefit to the president’s extended family: renewal of a program offering permanent residence in the United States to affluent foreigners investing money in real estate projects here.

Just hours after the appropriations measure was signed on Friday, the company run until January by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner, was urging wealthy Chinese in Beijing to consider investing $500,000 each in a pair of Jersey City luxury apartment towers the family-owned Kushner Companies plans to build. Mr. Kushner was even cited at a marketing presentation by his sister Nicole Meyer, who was on her way to China even before the bill was signed. The project “means a lot to me and my entire family,” she told the prospective investors.

There are plenty of people on this planet who gather all their knowledge from their own life alone. They don't read, they don't watch TV, they waste no time on Internet. Maybe they listen to the radio a bit. but for the most part they just speak with people around them, and learn from them, and from their own life. These people are often very original in their thinking.

I do think that the Internet has changed our rapport to lies and truth, and how lies and truth are spread.

...Frank Rich bluntly described the problem with Trump’s white working class base voters over a month ago:

Quote:

They will stick with him even though the numbers say that they will take a bigger financial hit than Clinton voters under the Republican health-care plan. As Trump himself has said, in a rare instance of accuracy, they won’t waver even if he stands in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoots somebody.

Recent polling has shown that Rich was not exaggerating. Despite the many missteps and flip-flops and examples of sheer floundering incompetence committed by the Trump administration in its first 100 days, only four percent of Trump voters would reconsider their support for the mogul, according to an ABC/Washington Post survey. Trump voters also see the media differently: “critical media scrutiny of him and his administration also is a sign that he’s doing something right — that he’s on their side, and the news media is the enemy,” as Greg Sargent puts it.

In other words, Trump’s hard-core white working class base isn’t weighing the evidence for and against his record in office and making a decision as to whether he still deserves their support. They literally are not listening to criticism of the president, and to the extent they are, it simply reinforces their affection for him.

An acute observer of white-working class voters, Thomas Edsall, offers a fresh warning to Democrats who count on “Trump’s broken promises” producing a backlash among his biggest fans:

Quote:

[T]he bulk of Trump’s supporters have nowhere else to go, nor do they want to go anywhere. They experience themselves as living in a different world from liberals and Democrats….

Trump’s basic approach — speaking the unspeakable — is expressive, not substantive. His inflammatory, aggressive language captures and channels the grievances of red America, but the specific grievances often feel less important than the primordial, mocking incivility with which they are expressed. In this way, Trump does not necessarily need to deliver concrete goods because he is saying with electric intensity what his supporters have long wanted to say themselves.
This does not, repeat not, mean the white working class should be ignored by Democrats. Elements of that demographic still vote Democratic regularly, and others—especially younger voters—are reachable and receptive to standard progressive arguments against Republican rule. More to the point, Trump’s general unpopularity means he could be toast in 2020 if he loses support much of anywhere. There are other potential targets, moreover, of a “populist” message, including, of course, the millennials Bernie Sanders excited in 2016 far more than white working class voters.

But it’s probably not the best idea to aim the central thrust of the Democratic comeback effort at the voters most emotionally committed to Trump, particularly if the main argument is: You people are fools. They aren’t listening, and if they do, they may go back to the polls to support Trump with a real spring in their steps.

And as Tom Edsall points out in the Times, their hero understands this:

Quote:

Trump can go either left or right as he betrays his campaign promises — as long as his followers believe that he is standing with them and is against what they’re against.

They are lost to us. Trump understands them far more clearly than they understand themselves.

Latest episodes
1 hour Tuesday 9 May: As Barack Obama delivers a speech on climate change in Milan and France welcomes a new president we assess the state of the world’s moderate politics. Plus: South Korea heads to the polls, Germany searches its army barracks for Nazi memorabilia and our Eurovision series continues with a look at Serbia.

1 hour Monday 8 May: After Emmanuel Macron’s sweeping victory in the French election we assess what’s next for the nation’s new president and ask what it means for leftist politics. Plus: Madrid’s new supersize casino development with echoes of Donald Trump, Australia’s fascination with Eurovision and a look at the newspapers.

1 hour Friday 5 May: We preview this Sunday's French election, analyse the US vote to repeal Obamacare and learn why Russia is sending a new mosaic to Serbia.

1 hour Thursday 4 May: We assess the aftermath following last night’s television debate between France’s presidential hopefuls Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron. Plus: how oil fits into Russia’s geopolitical strategy, Australia’s ailing newspapers face more strife and why a herd of very slow reindeer pulled the plug on a Norwegian television series.

1 hour Wednesday 3 May: Donald Trump’s pledge to repeal and replace Obamacare was clear but will a surprise reversal of GOP support inflict further wounds on the president’s big-ticket promise? Plus: Italy’s looming economic crunch rattles Europe, a look at the day’s newspapers, and why online grocery shopping isn’t catching on in Germany.

1 hour Tuesday 2 May: We unpick the leak of Theresa May’s disastrous Brexit dinner with EU leaders, learn why Taiwan plays a vital role in the stand-off between the US and North Korea and get the latest business headlines from Belgrade.

1 hour Monday 1 May: We discuss the peace and war in Afghanistan, look at Montenegro’s future in Nato and analyse the UK’s upcoming general election. Plus: our correspondent goes searching for wild boar in Rome.

Sinclair is trying to buy Tribune Media. This is not good. Sinclair is a political propaganda operation and has been that for a long time.

Former Sun editor Kelvin Mackenzie is to leave the paper after making controversial comments in a column about Everton footballer Ross Barkley.

Mr Mackenzie was suspended after comparing the player - who has a Nigerian grandfather - to a gorilla.

The BBC's media editor Amol Rajan said: "Now we know he will not be asked to contribute to the paper again".

A spokesman for The Sun said Mr Mackenzie "remained suspended" but would not comment on his departure.

According to the Financial Times, the terms of Mr Mackenzie's exit are being negotiated.
The Sun's publisher, News UK, is part of News Corp, run by Rupert Murdoch.

Ofcom is currently examining an £11.7bn bid from 21st Century Fox, also run by Mr Murdoch, of broadcaster Sky, of which it already owns 39%.

The BBC's media editor said Mr Murdoch and the company hoped that by showing they were willing to sack long-standing stars they will send a signal to media regulator Ofcom that they are fit and proper to own Sky outright.

blatham wrote:

They are lost to us. Trump understands them far more clearly than they understand themselves.

That's right.

The Democrats had millions of chances, but they fucked it up every time with their insistence on suppressing free speech and open debate with their doctrine of "political correctness." Their reliance on getting votes by appealing to "identity politics," and disingenuously promising to rectify every problem that profession "victims" believe they suffer from, has permanently ruined their chance to appeal to mainstream voters.

Their pretense to "fighting wall street" while selling their ass to corporate interests and lobbyists did not go unnoticed. Hillary said it all when she told the wall street crowd that it was necessary for her to take and advocate a "public" view that differed from her private view.

As they told Flounder, in Animal House: "Ya fucked up, Flounder. Ya trusted us."

The voters aint gunna fall for it for the 100th time. The day of the cheese-eater is over.

Must Reads if you are interested in how far off the deep end left-wing academia has gone

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447419/rebecca-tuvel-controversy-campus-radicals-free-speech-social-justice?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Trending%20Email%20Reoccurring-%20Monday%20to%20Thursday%202017-05-08&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/transracialism-article-controversy.html

http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/if-this-is-feminism-its-been-hijacked-by-the-thought-police/

Utter cowards are the editors of Hypatia, the journal in which the article first appeared, but they're simply responding as so many others have to the thought policing tactics of the radical (and incoherent) social justice warriors.

I fully admit to taking delight in witnessing left-wing monsters eating their own, but if this is the reaction to a fellow member in otherwise good standing, what possible hope is there for rational discussion between opposing viewpoints?

There seems to be push-back from certain progressive quarters, but I doubt it will be enough to stem the tide.

I've seen far more spittle-mouthed insults than rational discourse aimed at Trump supporters and this is, clearly, the preference of the Democrat's base.

Non-stop harsh criticism from the MSM merely confirms what a great many Americans believed going into the election: They are a failed institution that has traded journalism for activism.

Ignorance of history on your pkart ils no pexcsle. Lwsee alerled climmatle rlepleemaedly. Overgrkazing deforesftaition kand urban heat ilsllandsl to cite just a few all affect cloimate. Since theres only one atmosphgere for all of us and we are changing it we change the climate. You do know about greenhouse gasses and the greenhouse effect don't you

Can someone translate...I don't speak gobbledygook.

Democrats are not likely to "get it" by 2020 and unless Trump really screws the pooch on something (he's yet to despite all insistence that he has), if the economy is reasonably better in 2020 than it was in 2016, he will win a second term against a far left candidate like Warren.