Make what thou wilt
Twitter Link
Make what thou wilt
Twitter Link
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
Twitter Link
Remember when the crazies used to worry about Obama turning into a dictator?
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
This is the part where we celebrate his complete and utter incompetence at governance.
Hope is the denial of reality
Report: Trump transition ordered government economists to cook up rosy growth forecasts
and when he inevitably fails to reach those goals he'll blame Obama, and the illegals, then the legal immigrants, then the court system; and everyone who calls him on his bullshit will be labeled fake.
oh, wait...
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
When Trump told Americans to take the poll, what he really meant was for people who share his already twisted take on reality to take the poll and inflate his ego. They've already reset the results and have sent out a new poll, with slightly fewer options. They've managed to somehow make their intent even more transparent.Originally Posted by Steely Glint
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/lp/main...ability-survey
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Yeah, one of the reasons I was a bit skeptical of your narrative (though I appreciate that you appropriately framed it with caveats about sourcing etc.) was that it was a pretty bleak and dystopian picture of our government. I would like to think that if this kind of behavior was normal outside of the movies, it might have actually excited public discussion in the past. If it's the 'norm', though, I can understand willing to look the other way when discussing this particular situation. If it isn't - then I think it's an extremely disturbing, albeit understandable, precedent.
I see your argument, and I don't want to fall into some sort of uniqueness bias - obviously most presidencies have their highest 'leverage' moment shortly after an election, and even as competency increases, the willingness of others to enable them decreases. Yet this is where I sorta was convinced by Frum's piece a few weeks back - what's unique about this presidency is that here it's Congress with an ambitious agenda, and the President who's got to be coddled into enacting it by throwing him a couple of bones. So it matters less if Trump is less likely to get traction based on e.g. popularity as time goes on - as long as he humor's Congress' policy goals, he might get his few baubles with relatively little pushback from the legislative branch. Obviously said 'baubles' would be deeply concerning to the majority of thoughtful Americans, but as long as Congress gets their tax and healthcare reform, they might not care.Trump's inexperience and ignorance (combined with his other personality flaws) have always been one of the reasons for the Doom and Gloom so I don't see why we should not count it for being such. And yeah, I expect the administration will get more experienced and less prone to mistakes. And at the same time, the people and Congress get less and less willing to be cooperative and supportive. I see absolutely nothing on the horizon that is going to change the latter. And while there has never been an administration this inexperienced, few of them are really ready and they all go through this curve. The steepness of it means the Trump administration might increase its experience more quickly, but I don't see how it can beat performance average and that will have a severe impact on enacting controversial policies. Look at how things have gone for Obama's signature initiative, the ACA.
I have tried not to get swept up in the hysteria about Trump - though he is by far the most troubling POTUS I have seen in my lifetime, and I abhor most of his policy priorities, I recognize that government is a messy business, and the Senate is not actually all that terrible of a place. I am encouraged at the growing signs of a serious investigation into Trump spearheaded by Senate Republicans, along with ongoing pushback against Trump's more egregious moves. I'm encouraged, and hopeful - but far from confident.
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)
It arose out of the intensely uncomfortable (for the CIA) Church Committee which made the intelligence agency bend and spread 'em for a (in their opinion) far too public airing of their activities and questionable conduct (there were other annoying investigations but that was the one that caused them the most problems in this vein). And they've since taken steps to protect themselves from that sort of endeavor. Wildly inappropriate for an intelligence office which is supposed to be wholly subordinate but our system does create some problems with "who watches the watchers" when the watchers are supposed to conduct their affairs secretly since our system is geared toward doing so with transparency.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Don't worry guys I survived the #swedenincident
Although many were not as fortunate
Twitter Link
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Hope is the denial of reality
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
So is anyone else anticipating deliberate leaks of false information that will help the administration further discredit MSM?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Don't sulfur compounds help to mitigate brain cramps?
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
There were millions of brain cramps in Sweden the other day, MSM didn't report it but Fox did
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
That requires far too much competence. My money is on the "fake" policies simply being early stages of executive orders that were ultimately nixed (perhaps even because of the bad publicity).
Speaking of incompetence: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/...e-just-dropped
Last edited by Loki; 02-20-2017 at 04:13 AM.
Hope is the denial of reality
It’s Official: Trump Wants to Kill PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts
The move is no doubt motivated the by Republicans’ well-known fiscal conservatism: Trump’s three consecutive weekend visits to Mar-a-Lago are a steal at just $10 million in taxpayer dollars, for instance, and the First Lady’s decision to live in Trump Tower rather than the White House is only estimated to cost twice the NEA’s budget per year.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
I thought PBS was funded by donations so how can he kill it?
I found the channel to be utterly unwatchable when we were in Canada. Chloe loved Curious George at the time which is oddly enough is shown on Disney Junior over here. While over there I wanted to put a cartoon on for her and found that and thought great. Sheesh about 10 minutes of virtual begging for funds during each episode. I'd rather watch commercials!
"Since Trump wastes money here he has no right to get rid of wasteful spending there." Is that about the sum of your argument?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Most rural areas don't bring in the funding to support it. PBS comes in just under libraries for the accessibility and nurturing content it provides. Thats one reason they don't do commercials, even though most shows are already programmed around such breaks, so PBS does require some filler.
Its especially important now as a lot of colleges are selling their airwaves back to the government to be auctioned off for the wireless space, so a lot of areas are losing their only other go to station for free childrens programming.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
He's not going after wasteful spending, he's going after a government entity (the CPB, which is the source of PBS's government support, as it is also the source for NPR) which is fulfilling its mandate by reporting news factually (Trump's definition of fake news) which makes it "an enemy of the American People." There is not and will not be any fiscal conservativism from the Trump administration. He couldn't run his company that way, and Bush Jr. demonstrated that the GOP is better off if it doesn't try to run the government that way either. This is about him striking back at something which pierced his thin skin.
And I know you hate the media, Lewk, but surely even you recognize what an incredibly BAD idea it is to start declaring domestic entities the Enemy of the People (and soon he'll be replacing "people" with "state") for pointing out when a governmental figure (like Trump) is demonstrably lying in his public statements to the American people. How do you propose a democracy effectively function when its leaders are allowed to baldly lie to the voters in whatever ways they want?
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Hmm. So I would get why they'd try to insulate themselves from Congressional intrusion - I have no doubt that the intelligence agencies hate the busybodies in the SSCI and feel like legislative intrusion into intelligence matters is extremely frustrating. Yet I don't understand the relationship between this and the executive branch - they report to POTUS and in general the executive branch has been quite protective of their prerogatives wrt secrecy and intelligence, and blackmailing your boss (rather than your boss' powerful colleagues-cum-rivals) to get them to do something they're inclined to do anyways - protect executive power - seems counterproductive.
I'm also not sure who's doing this - obviously not the political appointees, so we're presumably talking about senior level career intelligence officers. Who directs them? Do they act alone? Is there some cabal? I don't know, this seems a bit too conspiracy theory-ish for me. I'm much more inclined to chalk this up to individuals acting on their conscience rather than the latest in a long line of tacit agreements between the executive and the intelligence agencies.
More broadly, one thing I have come to appreciate about intelligence agencies in the US is that despite their checkered history and all of the (legitimate) complaints about overreach, they tend to operate in a very... I guess the best word might be 'deliberate' framework. A while back the UK was having a debate about surveillance issues and they proposed a system with substantial similarities to the US' current FISA system; I was shocked that it didn't already exist. The FISA court system, while flawed and obviously in need of some fixes, provides a fundamental legal framework in which to conduct surveillance in the US. Similarly, I'm sure you've read the stories about how the CIA and DOD go about targeting people for drone strikes, using the famous 'disposition matrix' and a team of lawyers and intelligence personnel. Even the guidelines for rendition and torture during GWB's tenure were carefully constructed by lawyers and administered through a bureaucracy.
My point is that despite the macabre, occasionally Orwellian, and often overreaching nature of these activities by intelligence agencies, they fundamentally take place in a professionalized bureaucratic framework that is subordinate to POTUS. Despite my other misgivings, I find this an encouraging sign. These aren't cowboys going around willy-nilly without a care for their orders; rather, they are the actions of a deliberate and professional (albeit often misguided) process. I have no idea that in its heyday this was not the case, but the intelligence community in recent decades has subordinated itself to effective and legal control. I find that overarching story to be hard to square with an intentional and ongoing attempt to gain leverage over their own bosses.
As a (largely irrelevant) aside, I got to know a number of people working in the intelligence community when I was living in Maryland - mostly those in some variation of MI/DIA/NSA (lots of them worked at Fort Meade). What I found fascinating about most of them - other than how boring most of their jobs appeared to be - was that they were all committed patriots who were deeply professional in their approach to their jobs. I can't imagine any of them being comfortable in an environment where this kind of thinking re: their political overseers was common. Obviously, this is anecdotal, and all of these people were relatively low on the totem pole. But the impression I have gotten is that the intelligence agencies are firstly, highly bureaucratic and not particularly ripe for conspiracies, and secondly, deeply professional places. I have no doubt that they have political opinions about the current and past occupants of the Oval Office, but I think that they would carry out lawful orders to the best of their ability irrespective of who is calling the shots. (I do want to acknowledge, though, that I don't know many people affiliated with the CIA, and it's entirely possible the culture there is different, especially since the other agencies I'm mentioning are part of the DOD but the CIA is independent. I've had similar experiences with Israelis who have worked/work for their equivalents, but again have only limited exposure to people working at Mossad as opposed to army/MoD intelligence units.)
Last edited by wiggin; 02-21-2017 at 01:45 PM.
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)
More confirmation on one of my previous links. I'm predicting an increase in Lewk blaming liberals when these numbers don't pan out in the coming years.
The Trump White House is already cooking the books
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Yes and no. The thing is, the executive (particularly at the highest levels) does not necessarily care so much about protecting the exertions of executive power by prior office holders. The people with intelligence careers will often be sticking around longer than an administration. Radically different from this situation, but. . . I believe it's the tool they were used to.
I don't give much credit to multiple intelligence officials risking their careers out of principle. Dissenting maybe, but leaking? They COULD have gone whistleblower, after all. It's not the actions of a cabal or conspiracy-ish, it's just. . . institutional memory. An expression of overreach in a professionalized bureaucratic framework that. . . happens to be for a sphere which is all about gathering information secretly/illicitly. Structurally it's not terribly different from classic regulatory capture.I'm also not sure who's doing this - obviously not the political appointees, so we're presumably talking about senior level career intelligence officers. Who directs them? Do they act alone? Is there some cabal? I don't know, this seems a bit too conspiracy theory-ish for me. I'm much more inclined to chalk this up to individuals acting on their conscience rather than the latest in a long line of tacit agreements between the executive and the intelligence agencies.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Donald Trump’s streak of falsehoods now stands at 33 days
Donald Trump has been president for all or part of 33 days. He has averaged four falsehoods or misleading statements a day(!) in that time. There hasn't been a single day of Trump's presidency in which he has said nothing false or misleading.
This project is awesome: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graph...ims/?tid=a_inl
In the 33 days so far, we’ve counted 132 false or misleading claims.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
All leaders do that, difference is in the manner they respond to being called on it.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
I support some of Trump's economic policy (killing the CFPB would be awesome) however if he goes through with his isolationist trade policies the economy will suffer for it.
The part where he cuts taxes and increases spending?
Hope is the denial of reality
The parts where he cuts taxes and lowers burdensome regulation. He should also be cutting spending but we know how that goes...
Okay. Certainly an interesting perspective to think about. Obviously neither of us really know what has gone on in the past or what is currently going on, but I can see your angle on things being at least plausible. Thanks for sharing.
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)
No. All leaders are at least somewhat misleading, but no Western leader has ever been as mendacious in either quantity or quality of their dishonesty. You cannot say "well, all politicians lie" as if Trump is on an equivalent scale.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
