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Author Topic: Trump II  (Read 918085 times)

LesPalenik

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2340 on: April 17, 2017, 04:52:00 pm »

ANKARA (Reuters)
U.S. President Donald Trump called Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan to congratulate him on winning a referendum expanding his authority, sources in Erdogan's palace said on Monday.

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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2341 on: April 17, 2017, 06:56:55 pm »

Oh, the irony:

http://www.businessinsider.com/calexit-leader-louis-marinelli-russia-2017-4

The guy behind California's secession plans, presumably because "Russia stole the election," is moving permanently to... Russia :D

Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2342 on: April 18, 2017, 11:20:09 am »

Trump advisers to meet Tuesday to discuss Paris climate agreement:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-climatechange-idUSKBN17J1DN

"Advisers to President Donald Trump will meet on Tuesday to discuss whether to recommend that he withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, a White House official said on Monday.

The accord, agreed on by nearly 200 countries in Paris in 2015, aims to limit planetary warming in part by slashing carbon dioxide and other emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Under the pact, the United States committed to reducing its emissions by 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025.

Trump has said the United States should "cancel" the deal, but he has been mostly quiet on the issue since he was elected last November."


Withdrawal would not only make the USA a pariah that would probably face additional carbon emission based import duties in the rest of the world, it would also lose its voice in the decision-making circles, and lose opportunities for growth, Jobs, and innovation, in addition to the adverse climate effects.

Really leading policies (like a 'Fee and dividend' based economic model) are not to be expected from such a 'conservative' government, but the choices made now will have far-reaching consequences anyway.

Cheers,
Bart

P.S. UPDATE: White House meeting on Paris climate deal postponed: official:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-climatechange-idUSKBN17K22L
« Last Edit: April 19, 2017, 05:41:34 am by BartvanderWolf »
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Otto Phocus

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2343 on: April 18, 2017, 12:38:45 pm »

Our constitution is unclear on who has the authority to withdraw from a treaty. There have been two cases brought up before the SCotUS concerning presidents (Carter and Bush I) withdrawing from treaties without seeking advise and consent from the Senate.  In both cases, the SCotUS refused to rule on the constitutionality of this decision.

One opinion is that since the constitution requires Senate consent to make a treaty, it should require Senate consent to withdraw from a treaty, especially after the Senate ratified the treaty.  Others have a different opinion that the president has the authority to unilaterally withdraw from a treaty.

One other concern is that often once treaties have been ratified by the Senate, there are often related legislative actions taken.  In many cases, these include making federal law detailing the hows and whys about how the US will abide by those treaties.  Depending on how the specific legislation is written, the laws may not automatically become void if the president withdraws from the treaty. In that case, we would be in the awkward position of withdrawing from the treaty (presuming that the SCotUS does not object) but still having federal laws on the books.

Now we would get into a peeing contest between congress that makes the laws and the Executive branch that implements the laws. That could get real ugly real fast.
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2344 on: April 18, 2017, 12:51:31 pm »

Lawsuit against Trump over foreign payments expands:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-lawsuit-idUSKBN17K1WE

"A nonprofit watchdog expanded a lawsuit accusing U.S. President Donald Trump of violating the Constitution by letting his hotels and restaurants accept payments from foreign governments."

"The amended complaint said Trump violates the Constitution's "emoluments" clause, which bars him from accepting various gifts from foreign governments without congressional approval, by maintaining ownership over his business empire despite ceding day-to-day control to his sons, Eric and Donald Jr.

It said members of Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United Inc, which represents more than 200 restaurants and nearly 25,000 workers, have improperly lost business, wages and tips to Trump's competing businesses."


Cheers,
Bart
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Otto Phocus

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2345 on: April 18, 2017, 01:31:59 pm »

I understand that lawyers for Trump are trying to make the claim that the President has temporary immunity even for actions taken before assuming office. 

Unfortunately, The SCotUS disagrees with him.

Nixon v. Fitzgerald (1982) resulted in the decision that the president enjoys immunity (specifically immunity from damages) in civil cases if the case involves any official action on the part of the President.

Clinton v Jones (1997) resulted in the decision that the president enjoys temporary immunity during the period of his term in civil cases involving non-official acts committed during the presidential term.  However, the president does not enjoy immunity in civil cases involving actions committed prior to assuming the office.
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Schewe

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2346 on: April 18, 2017, 10:38:09 pm »

Well, this can't be good...it seems Trump and his administration have lost an entire carrier strike group...

Oooooops!

Carrier strike group wasn't headed to Korean peninsula, despite Trump's saber-rattling

Quote
An aircraft carrier strike group that the Trump administration  had said was headed toward North Korea in a powerful show of force has instead spent the last week thousands of miles away – and heading in the opposite direction.

Adm. Harry Harris, who heads U.S. Pacific Command, initially announced in a news release on April 8 that he had directed the Carl Vinson carrier strike group to "sail north" from Singapore, adding that the ships were being diverted from planned port visits to Australia.

The Trump administration cited the deployment of the naval strike force, which includes the carrier and four warships, as a clear warning to North Korea, which was said to be planning a nuclear test last weekend in conjunction with a national holiday.

We are sending an armada, very powerful,” to the waters off Korea, President Trump told Fox Business News on April 12.

A day earlier, Defense Secretary James N. Mattis told  Pentagon reporters that the aircraft carrier was “on her way up there.”

Some news organizations cited the armada's apparent race northward as a sign of a possible preemptive attack on North Korea, spurring global concerns of a possible war.

While the Pentagon sought to downplay those reports late last week, at no point did it or the White House suggest the Carl Vinson was not, in fact, nearing Korea to give Trump a more robust military option should he decide he needs one.

So, Trump says he's sending a whole darn aircraft carrier strike group to scare North Korea–and remember he said his submarines were even more powerful (but there's no word on where the subs are) but uh, they went south instead of north...



#MAGA (once he can figure out where the hell his carrier is)
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Schewe

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2347 on: April 18, 2017, 11:06:47 pm »

Well, at least Trump is making SOMETHING great again...

Donald Trump Is Making Dictionaries Great Again

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A new poll out on Tuesday puts numbers behind a trend you've probably seen evidence of in your feeds:dictionaries are hot right now. And that is thanks, in good part, to Donald Trump.

Dictionary.com commissioned a survey, conducted by Harris Poll, to ask more than 2,200 Americans about how they are dealing with current affairs. Half of them said they are reading more political news since the 2016 election and nearly 60% said they feel a greater need to analyze the meaning of words used by politicians. Per the poll, a third of Americans have looked up words because of the election and expanded their vocabularies, action that dictionary editors have seen in website traffic and on social media.

"People have been curious about Donald Trump and the words he has used — and the words used around him — since he announced his candidacy,” says Jane Solomon, a lexicographer at Dictionary.com. She can casually reel off a list of words Trump used or had thrust upon him that sent lookups spiking: shrill, schlonged, bigly, xenophobia, trumpery, alt-right, rigged, braggadocio, temperament, hombre. When something like Trump happens to an election cycle, the standard vocabulary simply doesn't cover it. But that's just part of the story.

In a time when many distrust politicians as well as the media meant to act as a check on those politicians — and when the very nature of reality seems beholden to appearances — people are starving for an arbiter everybody trusts, something concrete to point to and say "those, sir, are the facts." And the dictionary is about as close as you can get to a universally accepted neutral party. It is a weapon and a security blanket, used by Democrats and Republicans alike.

"People crave a source of truth," says Solomon, "and reference materials like dictionaries have historically been a source of truth, so people are turning to them." People are "re-identifying" with the dictionary, as one of her colleagues says.

So, it seems words do matter...maybe Trump's words are finally catching up to him?
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Schewe

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2348 on: April 18, 2017, 11:21:53 pm »

And now from Vice President Mike Pence's home tome news paper comes this...

Tully: The failed presidency of Donald J. Trump

Quote
From petty Tweets to huge policy mistakes, Donald Trump has led with mean-spirited policies and rhetoric, and a lack of seriousness. We shouldn’t be surprised.

Three months in, the Trump presidency is worse than even many of its biggest critics predicted it would be. Three months in, I still find myself occasionally stunned at the thought that America is being led by this mess of an administration. Three months in, Donald Trump has already done great damage to the country, its level of discourse, and the office of the presidency.

On Monday, Vice President Mike Pence spent time on the North Korean border, highlighting an increasingly dangerous situation that demands the most serious of minds. Meanwhile, back at home, Trump was tweeting away. The fan of the National Enquirer criticized what he calls the “fake media,” while also lobbing petty partisan jabs at Democrats and, of course, quoting a cable TV news personality who had offered flattering praise of him.

Much will be said about the Trump presidency in the coming days, as his 100th day in office approaches. But the verdict is in: In his early days in office, Trump has been a uniquely bad president. He’s been a mean-spirited president. He’s been a president unworthy of the office. The only up-side is that he has also been ineffective, so some of his worst intentions have thankfully stalled.

Ouch...that's gotta burn a bit :~)

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Schewe

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2349 on: April 18, 2017, 11:42:52 pm »

File this under woebegone and melancholy...

Fairytale Prisoner by Choice: The Photographic Eye of Melania Trump
Written by Kate Imbach on Medium.com

Quote
Why won’t the first lady show up for her job? Why? I became obsessed with this question and eventually looked to Melania’s Twitter history for answers. I noticed that in the three-year period between June 3, 2012 and June 11, 2015 she tweeted 470 photos which she appeared to have taken herself. I examined these photographs as though they were a body of work.

Everyone has an eye, whether or not we see ourselves as photographers. What we choose to photograph and how we frame subjects always reveals a little about how we perceive the world. For someone like Melania, media-trained, controlled and cloistered, her collection of Twitter photography provides an otherwise unavailable view into the reality of her existence. Nowhere else — certainly not in interviews or public appearances — is her guard so far down.

What is that reality? She is Rapunzel with no prince and no hair, locked in a tower of her own volition, and delighted with the predictability and repetition of her own captivity.


July 1, 2014
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In three years, Melania only posted one picture of herself and Trump. He dominates the frame; her face is in shadow and cropped out. It is both a selfie and an erasure, a depiction of her placement within their world.



Quote
Melania posted her last photo to Twitter on Thursday, June 11, 2015, five days before her husband announced his candidacy for president. It is an old photograph, of a then six-year-old Barron, taken on the beach. He is looking down at the ground ahead and waving goodbye to a professionally built sandcastle in the background.

That day Melania knew, of course, that the campaign was coming. In retrospect her choice of a Throwback Thursday post reads as prophecy: a goodbye to her golden towers, to the home destined to crumble. To this day she’s still up there, in the golden Tower, holding onto it for as long as she can.

I have ZERO sympathy for any of the Trump spawn except Barron who has no control over his life and Melania whose major flaw was actually marrying the big orange putz...she just thought she was marrying a rich asshole, not the leader of the free world (I still shutter when I type that).

But look at her photos...some are stunning and most are really sad :~(
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Schewe

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2350 on: April 18, 2017, 11:58:05 pm »

From the #Failing New York Times....

Mr. Trump Plays by His Own Rules (or No Rules)

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDAPRIL 18, 2017


Graphic by Jennifer Heuer

Quote
Anyone who has been paying the slightest attention knows by now that this president and this White House intend to play by their own set of rules — rules that in some cases come close to breaking the law and, at the very least, defy traditions of conduct and transparency Americans have come to expect from their public servants. We know that Donald Trump has refused, unlike other presidents, to release his tax returns; that his trust agreement allows him undisclosed access to profits from his businesses; and even that he clings to a profitable lease on a hotel only a stone’s throw from the White House when divesting himself of that lease is not only the obvious but the right thing to do.

But just when you think you’ve seen enough there’s more. On Friday, the administration announced it would no longer release White House visitors’ logs that have been available for years. (It cynically said posting these records would cost taxpayers $70,000 by 2020. Compare that with the multimillion-dollar tab estimated for every weekend trip Mr. Trump takes to Mar-a-Lago.) Meanwhile, news trickled out that on the very day that two of Ivanka Trump’s and Jared Kushner’s children were serenading the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, at Mar-a-Lago, the People’s Republic of China approved new trademarks allowing Ivanka to peddle jewelry, bags and spa services to a nation of 1.4 billion where she is a role model model for aspirational oligarchs.

In the great scheme of things, neither the visitor blackout nor Ms. Trump’s commercial coup seems a big deal. Yet both symbolize larger problems. One is an almost total absence of openness in an administration that is already teeming with real and potential conflicts and that has decided it can grant secret waivers to ethics requirements. The other is a culture of self-enrichment and self-dealing in which corporate C.E.O.s, lobbyists and foreign officials seeking the first family’s favor hold parties at Mar-a-Lago and at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, a couple of blocks from the White House.

Yeah, ya know, this simply is not right...this should not be our "new normal". But just like what happened with the Tea Party, I think Trump is the best thing to have happened to the Democrats in a long time (well, Trump and Bernie :~)

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jeremyrh

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2351 on: April 19, 2017, 10:26:02 am »

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Otto Phocus

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2352 on: April 19, 2017, 10:46:10 am »

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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2353 on: April 19, 2017, 12:34:51 pm »

Trump's EPA to reconsider oil and gas emissions rule:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-epa-idUSKBN17L215

"The move signaled another retreat from climate change action after the Trump administration in March halted an effort to gather methane data from existing oil and gas operations to rein in leaks of the powerful greenhouse gas."

Cheers,
Bart
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Peter McLennan

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2354 on: April 19, 2017, 04:01:38 pm »

And another henchman of Conservative Trumpworld bites the dust.  O'Reilly is toast. Good riddance.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-fox-oreilly-idUSKBN17L25V
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2355 on: April 19, 2017, 06:18:37 pm »

Not a smoking gun, nor a proof of collusion, but still ...

Exclusive: Putin-linked think tank drew up plan to sway 2016 U.S. election - documents
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-election-exclusive-idUSKBN17L2N3

"A Russian government think tank controlled by Vladimir Putin developed a plan to swing the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters’ faith in the American electoral system, three current and four former U.S. officials told Reuters.

They described two confidential documents from the think tank as providing the framework and rationale for what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded was an intensive effort by Russia to interfere with the Nov. 8 election. U.S. intelligence officials acquired the documents, which were prepared by the Moscow-based Russian Institute for Strategic Studies [en.riss.ru/], after the election."


Cheers,
Bart
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2356 on: April 19, 2017, 06:51:56 pm »

Not a smoking gun, nor a proof of collusion, but still ...

Exclusive: Putin-linked think tank drew up plan to sway 2016 U.S. election - documents
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-election-exclusive-idUSKBN17L2N3

"A Russian government think tank controlled by Vladimir Putin developed a plan to swing the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters’ faith in the American electoral system, three current and four former U.S. officials told Reuters.

They described two confidential documents from the think tank as providing the framework and rationale for what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded was an intensive effort by Russia to interfere with the Nov. 8 election. U.S. intelligence officials acquired the documents, which were prepared by the Moscow-based Russian Institute for Strategic Studies [en.riss.ru/], after the election."


Cheers,
Bart
Sometimes I feel we might have been better off if we could have voted directly for Putin instead of for his pet puppet.
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2357 on: April 19, 2017, 07:31:23 pm »

Sometimes I feel we might have been better off if we could have voted directly for Putin instead of for his pet puppet.

Can someone, anyone, find a single Trump voter who voted so because of "Russian interference"?

Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2358 on: April 19, 2017, 07:52:05 pm »

Can someone, anyone, find a single Trump voter who voted so because of "Russian interference"?

Stand up and be incriminated?

More likely non-Hillary voters can be found who's voting behavior was affected by raised doubts. The Russians probably didn't try to get Trump elected, but rather tried to weaken the support for Hillary Clinton, as per the Think Tank's strategy. Why were only Democratic mail servers hacked and the data given to Wikileaks? Even if she had been elected, it would be with less support, which would benefit Russia.

Cheers,
Bart
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Trump II
« Reply #2359 on: April 19, 2017, 08:25:47 pm »

Can someone, anyone, find a single Trump voter who voted so because of "Russian interference"?
Would that be you, Slobodan?    ;D
(Just kidding, so please don't send the KGB after me.   ;)  )
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