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 r_squared wrote:

Obviously that means a period of instability as "pax-americana" is readjusted, but I'm sure that the EU, China and Russia will expand to fill the void.

I'm absolutely sure that Russia will expand as much as it thinks that it can get away with.

I think that it's sad that Roosevelt's approach to US foreign policy, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" has been replaced by Trump's "Talk bollocks and flaunt your tiny penis".

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 r_squared wrote:

Obviously that means a period of instability as "pax-americana" is readjusted, but I'm sure that the EU, China and Russia will expand to fill the void.

I'm absolutely sure that Russia will expand as much as it thinks that it can get away with.

One of the reasons for not abandoning the Iran deal is that it risks pushing Iran closer to China and Russia.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 r_squared wrote:

Obviously that means a period of instability as "pax-americana" is readjusted, but I'm sure that the EU, China and Russia will expand to fill the void.

I'm absolutely sure that Russia will expand as much as it thinks that it can get away with.

One of the reasons for not abandoning the Iran deal is that it risks pushing Iran closer to China and Russia.

It also helps stabilize the region by not forcing Iran into an opposition stance toward Western interests. You get more bees with honey as they say, and sure Iran and Saudi Arabia will never be best friends, but Saudi Arabia and Iran are less likely to be at one another throats when they're both benefiting from trade agreements from the same people.

That too.

And it was stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Bailing on the deal hands a propaganda victory to Iran's hardliners, who were gradually losing their grip on power.

It also imposes a brake on the Iranian economy which will enable the government to blame the USA for their economic problems and deflect attention from their own dodgy external operations which have cost a lot of money and generated opposition from the general population.

There is one great positive of trashing the deal, though. It's part of Obama's legacy, so Trump can gratify his ego and hatred of Obama.

Trump - Make America Inconsequential Again.

The Auld Grump

 LordofHats wrote:
I am cynical on US Foreign Policy

Well, I don't blame you. The richest nation in the world, with one of the most powerful military forces in human history

with a foreign policy that has been a feth up since Reagan stepped down to open a presidential library...

If I'm being generous I could say that the fall of the Berlin Wall left them wondering what the hell they should do next, which is fair enough.

But the 9/11 bombers were from Saudi Arabia, and the reaction was to launch an invasion of Iraq???

Honest to God, what kind of logic is that?

In the film Hot Shots Part 2, President Benson's reaction to American problems in the Middle East was to invade Minnesota.

Somebody in Washington must have thought that film was a documentary or something.

The reaction was an invasion of Afghanistan. Iraq was a badly tied to flimsy connection mostly done for Neocon convictions.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
The bad news just keeps coming thick and fast for the USA:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-44178771

So the man who hates the USA, led two uprisings against American forces, and who is essentially Iran's man, is now the king maker in Iraqi politics...

1 trillion dollars spent, thousands of US servicemen and women dead, and all for this...

I don't know why the USA bothers with a foreign policy these dyas, becuase they've lost the skill they used to have...

If you know your Iraq history, Paul Bremer wanted him arrested back in 04-05, had an Iraqi judge give the nod to an arrest warrant, and was all set to go until...

Washington got cold feet and pulled the plug...

Sadr got the message that he could act with impunity and Washington wouldn't touch him, which of course encouraged him and his followers to raise the stakes further...

I suspect that a British Imperial Governor would have had Sadr hanging from the nearest lamp post...

Skill we used to have? We never had any to begin with. The 20th century is one long comedy of American foreign policy failures. The best achievement we ever had was walking out of WWII virtually undamaged, a position we have since wasted being a global bully completely blind to the reality that such a policy practice is only viable so long as our bullying benefited Western Europe and key regional allies.

Trump basically misses all the nuance that strategy hinges on, and is slowly obliterating it. It's hard not to look around and realize that US foreign policy, as shaky as its always been, really might not survive another 2 1/2 years of the cheeto being in charge. Neo-Colonialism is only slightly less bloody than outright Imperialism, and just as much a long term failure.

The upside, if you can call it that, is that outright imperialism is something the US isn't capable of maintaining and thus its collapse will come that much faster.

Well... here's your news topic for the week:

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes - and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!

12:37 PM - May 20, 2018

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
If the FBI or DOJ was infiltrating a campaign for the benefit of another campaign, that is a really big deal. Only the release or review of documents that the House Intelligence Committee (also, Senate Judiciary) is asking for can give the conclusive answers. Drain the Swamp!

Watch for "Obstruction of Justice!!!" stories dialed to 11...

Seems REALLY strange to just announce on twitter... just submit an order via usual channels.

 whembly wrote:

Seems REALLY strange to just announce on twitter... just submit an order via usual channels.

Ah! There you are, Mr. Van Winkle, we've been looking for you! We have some...troubling news...

 Spinner wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Seems REALLY strange to just announce on twitter... just submit an order via usual channels.

Ah! There you are, Mr. Van Winkle, we've been looking for you! We have some...troubling news...

Ya'll miss me?

If you are interested in the truth, you submit questions via the regular channels. Or, since you are the head of the executive department you go to your appointed people and have them follow up on those things.

If you are interested in getting people to disregard any findings before they are even released, then you blast about these kind of things on Twitter and do the “I’m just asking questions” thing.

Just more alternative facts.

 d-usa wrote:
If you are interested in the truth, you submit questions via the regular channels. Or, since you are the head of the executive department you go to your appointed people and have them follow up on those things.

If you are interested in getting people to disregard any findings before they are even released, then you blast about these kind of things on Twitter and do the “I’m just asking questions” thing.

Just more alternative facts.

Yeah... he's trying to set the narrative, ala like leaking juicy bits to favorable media. He's just blasting this via his favorite medium.

Based on further news report, he *is* (or rather the WH legal counsel) drafting an order via normal channels.

Next thing you know he'll be blaming his treason on Ritalin or violent culture

Just two days after a young man opened fire on his classmates and teachers at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, the National Rifle Association’s incoming president, Oliver North, blamed Ritalin and a “culture of violence.”

On “Fox News Sunday,” the controversial Iran-Contra figure told host Chris Wallace that the solution for the increasing number of school shootings ― there have been 22 so far in 2018, by one count ― is not gun control.

“We’re trying like the dickens to treat the symptoms without treating the disease,” he said.

“And the disease in this case isn’t the Second Amendment. The disease is youngsters who are steeped in a culture of violence,” he said. “They’ve been drugged in many cases. Nearly all of these perpetrators are male. ... Many of these young boys have been on Ritalin since they were in kindergarten.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/oliver-north-blames-school-shootings-171624705.html

 Ustrello wrote:
Next thing you know he'll be blaming his treason on Ritalin or violent culture

Just two days after a young man opened fire on his classmates and teachers at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, the National Rifle Association’s incoming president, Oliver North, blamed Ritalin and a “culture of violence.”

On “Fox News Sunday,” the controversial Iran-Contra figure told host Chris Wallace that the solution for the increasing number of school shootings ― there have been 22 so far in 2018, by one count ― is not gun control.

“We’re trying like the dickens to treat the symptoms without treating the disease,” he said.

“And the disease in this case isn’t the Second Amendment. The disease is youngsters who are steeped in a culture of violence,” he said. “They’ve been drugged in many cases. Nearly all of these perpetrators are male. ... Many of these young boys have been on Ritalin since they were in kindergarten.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/oliver-north-blames-school-shootings-171624705.html

Heh.

You know, it's bizarre that the one thing the media is actually responsible for, I mean, seriously, it's written in neon letters ninety feet tall on this one, it's not getting blamed for, or even bothering to reflect on it's role in this.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
You know, it's bizarre that the one thing the media is actually responsible for, I mean, seriously, it's written in neon letters ninety feet tall on this one, it's not getting blamed for, or even bothering to reflect on it's role in this.

Yeah, it is.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
There are millions of Americans still alive who voted for Richard Nixon, and we'll never know why they cast a vote for Tricky Dicky.

We've no chance of finding the reasons for people voting for Trump.

The complex thing about Nixon is that while he was a criminally corrupt and a soul destroying moral disaster, on a policy level he was actually really solid. And in 1972 he ran against McGovern, who's policy set was hopelessly liberal and not even slightly viable in the US economy at that time. Not saying people voted for Nixon based on a studied analysis of the policies of the two candidates, but even after all his corruption came out, people could at the very least claim they voted for the adult in the room. Trump voters most certainly do not have that defense.

Fun story, I think from 538 but maybe not. Bush won comfortable in 2004, but the housing crash that slowly became the GFC, combined with the lingering Iraq mess, the Hastert pedophile scandal, and the Abramoff corruption scandal, caused Bush's support to absolutely collapse. He started showing polls with 15% approval. At that time, around 2006, pollsters were asking their standard background questions for their surveys, including who people voted for last election. There's no reason to lie, people won't be challenged on that vote, and before then they had no problem finding a majority or near majority who said they voted for Bush. Suddenly no poll could find get more than about a third of respondents saying they voted for Bush. 10 to 15% of the population weren't lying because they had no reason to lie, they simply didn't like admitting they made a mistake, so they chose a new personal reality where they didn't make that mistake.

Point being, forget trying to find out why voters did something. We can't even get them to honestly recount what they did.


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 Easy E wrote:
I will re-post this link as it was an interesting interview with some folks who tried to dig in and answer that question on a person by person basis, especially people that voted for Obama twice and then flipped to Trump.

https://the1a.org/shows/2018-05-16/the-great-revolt-in-the-voting-booth

I am not a fan of the technique they used, as it draws more from the Journalist side than the Quant side, but it did lead to some interesting discussion and a better perspective on Trump voters. The problem with just using interviews as the basis of yoru analysis is that.... welll... people are really, really good at self-delusion and rationalization. We all wear masks, and many times you simply can not take what some one says at face value without digging in much deeper with a lot of follow-up questions.

I haven't read the book, but I did read the review in The Atlantic, which wasn't all that negative, though I read it as such. Combining cherry picked surveys and self selected interviews are what you use to build justification for a position you want to sell. It's not how you set about a genuine effort to figure out what's going on.

That said, I do agree that Trump is unlikely an aberration, Trump and his brand of politics is probably going to be a new normal for the Republican party. What is unsure, I think, is exactly what parts of Trumpism worked. Trump through a lot of stuff at the wall, and we still don't know exactly which bits stuck. We've since seen a few Trump style candidates ran, not with great success (a few went down in flames). What if someone has Trump's vulgarity, but not his racism? Stronger or weaker than Trump? What if they have Trump's instinct for public displays of cruelty, but not the populist economics of his campaign? Is that a stronger of a weaker candidate than Trump?

Over a few election cycles we will see a refining of Trumpism, and by then I think it will be clear what it is that appeals about Trumpism, to the point where we'll be amazed that it wasn't always obvious.


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 A Town Called Malus wrote:
I'm more annoyed at all those people who supported the actions of the Republican party but then didn't vote for Trump and seem to think that absolves them of blame for Trump. Trump is the inevitable endgame of the politics that they supported. He is the inevitable outcome of a party pushing facts aside.

You couldn't have got to Trump without the anti-reality stances of the Republican party on issues such as climate change, economics, etc. pushing the party into the position where it cannot use facts or legitimate research anymore as nobody worth their salt in an academic field can support their arguments as the evidence shows they don't work.

Well said. I've used the anecdote here a few times, but to me it illustrates how Republicans produced Trump quite clearly. In the 2016 primaries Jeb Bush was running with a tax policy where he would cut taxes massively across the board, but he claimed it would pay for itself because it'd produce 5% growth. Trump one upped him, with a policy that would cut taxes even more, but it would pay for itself because it would produce 6% growth. Jeb protested, saying Trump's 6% figure was absolute nonsense. But Jeb's own 5% figure was impossible nonsense, the US has achieved 5% only at the rarest of times, during the postwar boom and periods of massive population expansion, no tax policy on earth could come near to 5% when population growth is so slow.

Republicans had accepted as a basic platform of the party that impossible tax cuts would be justified with made up growth numbers. So when Trump came along and promised an even more impossible tax cut, justified with an even more imaginary growth number, what recourse did Republicans have? Were they supposed to say that while they lie, it's bad when Trump tells even bigger lies?


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 Kilkrazy wrote:
It does seem as though modern day USA is doomed to have a gun massacre every few months, so the issue will rarely be out of the news.

The political aspect of the Sante Fe mass shooting is that it will inject more fire into the bellies of the student protests against guns. I think demographically the situation is moving away from the hardline NRA position.

Popular support for gun control is always strongest when Republicans control government. It is easy for Democrats in congress to sound very principled about Republicans doing nothing about the issue. Remember there was no shortage of massacres during Obama's term, during most of which Democrats controlled at least congress. But nothing got done then, either.

I think something will break on this issue, eventually. The facts are too clear, and the number of gun owners slowly declines. The NRA's ever increasing crazy doesn't help either. But I do think the current political strength of the gun control advocates is something of a false dawn, real reform is probably some time away.


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Prestor Jon wrote:
I wanted to comment on this back when Sebster posted this Obama quote:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

That quote was a really interesting one to raise in the context of the point you're making, but I'm not sure it's quite for the reason you claimed. Thing is, that quote was taken out of context and used as an attack on Obama as soon as he made it. For Obama it was a real lesson about federal politics - honest, complex answers to difficult questions will be picked apart by political opponents to be used in soundbites, and the credulous base will eat them up with no interest in their accuracy. Trump has said and done a lot of genuinely stupid and horrible things, but in an environment where people are misquoting every politician to pretend they said stupid/horrible stuff, Trump's actual horribleness slides through without the impact it should have.

I disagreed with Bush, McCain and Romney on probably 80 to 90% of their policy positions, but I didn't agree with the way the left pretended they were horrible people. On the flip side I agreed with most of Obama and Clinton's policy set, but that had little to do with why I was so contemptuous of the right for their ridiculous attacks on their characters.

whembly had quite a phrase, which I will now butcher in paraphrase - when everyone is accused of being Hitler, then no-one is. Its a good explanation of how an environment full of false and misleading personal attacks on politicians opens the door for an actually horrible candidate. The irony, of course, is that whembly was convinced Hillary Clinton was an evil politician, because the far right media had been telling him for 20 years Clinton was tied up in criminal conspiracies and corruption, so he couldn't tell Clinton from Trump, the guy who was actually caught up criminal conspiracies and corruption.

 sebster wrote:
Trump and his brand of politics is probably going to be a new normal for the Republican party.

Keep in mind the GOP only got where it is now because their declining quality as a political party kept working. The new normal will only stay as such if it works, and I suspect we will see going forward that it does not. Not just the next election but the GOP pretty much has a waiting queue of PR disasters at this point. Increasing centralization of wealth as the expense of the middle class, trend away from white majorities, increasing political power of women, dramatically increasing effect of Global Warming (and the party has re-cemented itself as the denier under Trump), the realization that other countries no longer respect the US on the world stage, and others. Things will not be getting better for the GOP for some time.

 Easy E wrote:
One thing Obama got right, at least on paper; was the 50 state strategy. The execution was not always great, but the concept was sound.

Sure, but Obama ran the 50 state strategy in 2008 because it was pretty obvious from early on the Democratic tailwind was so strong the presidency was pretty much settled before the campaigning began. The real game was about getting control of congress.

In 2012 when the Democratic position was much weaker Obama shifted back to a more traditional focus. He still made a show of being across the whole country, but that was largely a branding thing, the real focus moved to the swing states.

For the record, I brought up the loss of jobs to automation in that thread, but it was pretty much passed over. To me that is the much bigger and more interesting political question, becasue to me it is clear that our politics/society/culture is not ready to handle it yet.

I think there are a lot of really difficult conversations about the near and medium term future that we are not having. The impact of automation in an economy with minimal growth is one of the big ones.


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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
That, that is the most stupidly accurate statement of the year.

I'm torn between that, and John Mulaney's routine about Trump being a horse in a hospital, “Like I think everything’s going to be OK, but I have no idea what’s going to happen next. And none of you know either."


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 Ouze wrote:
In other news, it looks like those SARS weren't removed, they were just restricted. Not clear who requested the restriction.

Ah, thankyou for the head's up. That's a good news story, or at least the removal of a very bad new story


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 whembly wrote:
Seems REALLY strange to just announce on twitter... just submit an order via usual channels.

Of course its announced on twitter. The whole thing is for public performance, red meat fed to the base. It's the next iteration of the Nunes memo, a wild accusation made to produce a few cycles of debate, to create a vague feeling on political controversy around the Mueller investigation, to make it easier to fire Rosenstein.

The idea that this would be done through normal channels misunderstands the entire purpose of what Trump is doing.


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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Keep in mind the GOP only got where it is now because their declining quality as a political party kept working. The new normal will only stay as such if it works, and I suspect we will see going forward that it does not. Not just the next election but the GOP pretty much has a waiting queue of PR disasters at this point. Increasing centralization of wealth as the expense of the middle class, trend away from white majorities, increasing political power of women, dramatically increasing effect of Global Warming (and the party has re-cemented itself as the denier under Trump), the realization that other countries no longer respect the US on the world stage, and others. Things will not be getting better for the GOP for some time.

The GOP's position is bad, but their position in 2006 to 2008 was so much worse. Generic polling showed Dem +15. It was incredible. The GOP bounced back really quickly, by 2010 they won the house back.

What the GOP did was what also worked for them during Clinton's presidency (although back then it was a much more difficult game, because partisanship was lower). They just obstructed, and then blamed Democrats. Voters didn't believe it, but they also got bored and frustrated with Dems failing to deliver on policy. Dem vote turn out dropped off, and Reps won congress, then the presidency.

I think we will likely see something similar. Dems will return to power due to a backlash against Trump/Republican government, and after passing a couple of things - maybe medicare for all and some kind of voting rights thing - Republicans will regain enough power to obstruct anything else. Then Dems will get bored, some will start flirting with socialist purity nonsense again, and Reps will win again.

I agree with you on the many areas that will be clearly harmed by Trump policy. But the funny thing about Trump's disastrous policies is that it will make it harder for establishment Republicans who would normally engage at least on some level about policy realities, but it won't make it harder for Trump style Republicans operating on cultural grievances and made up conspiracy nonsense.

 Vaktathi wrote:
EU officially makes US withdrawal from Iran Deal economically moot.

Interesting to see will Trump go ahead and push for US to sanction countries that still deal with Iran. US-EU trade war inbound?

tneva82 wrote:
Interesting to see will Trump go ahead and push for US to sanction countries that still deal with Iran. US-EU trade war inbound?

I think the threat of US sanctions on Europe was an empty threat. Maybe if it tested great with the base they might make some more noise about, but it barely seemed to register. Trump's big shows of bullying generally need a victim that the base has some in-built hostility towards. Anti-Europe sentiment exists, but its a bit elitist to resonate with the Trump base, I think.

Trump's attention has drifted away from Iran and I think it might not ever wander back there. Europe, Russia and China will carry on trading with Iran, and the whole thing will be buried under the next 10 scandals.

For instance, does anyone even remember Ronny Jackson by this point? He withdrew his nomination and then... nothing. Is he still White House doctor? Will we actually get a health report on Trump that isn't mixed up in some weird shenanigans? Who knows?

The new thing is going to be an investigation into the investigation into his possibly compromised campaign.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/donald-trump-russia-fbi-barack-obama-spying-surveillance-department-of-justice-a8360611.html

Spyghazi.

 d-usa wrote:
Spyghazi.

When there's a scandal we use the suffix "...gate".

When there's a scandal that accuses a non-scandal of being a scandal we have "...ghazi".

Republicans appear to be meme generation machines. Thanks Obama!

 d-usa wrote:
Spyghazi.

Wait the Pats were caught videotaping Ansar Al Sharia?

 sebster wrote:
The GOP's position is bad, but their position in 2006 to 2008 was so much worse. Generic polling showed Dem +15. It was incredible.

I'm not really convinced on that. The numbers might be similar, but there are very different reasons for those numbers. In 2006-2008 we had an unpopular republican president who was largely unpopular for policy reasons: tax cuts, a struggling economy, and an an unpopular war with no end in sight. It was certainly a favorable position for the democrats, but the republican party still had credibility left and wasn't all that far from power. In 2018 we have an unpopular president who is unpopular because he's a raging dumpster fire who doesn't even pretend to be a competent politician, backed by a party that has demonstrated that it has no plan or priorities or moral standards or really anything besides a desire to be in power. You can't even argue with Trump and the republican party over policy issues because the only thing they've managed to accomplish has been an unpopular tax cut for wealthy campaign donors. Everything else has been dumped or reversed the moment it looked like it would take any effort to pass something. The entire party has been revealed as utterly lacking in the ability to stand for something, anything at all. So where do you go in the post-Trump era? You're talking about a party that needs to completely reinvent itself and purge the failures before it can even think about competing, and that's a lot more difficult than waiting for the normal political cycle to come around again.

 Henry wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Spyghazi.

When there's a scandal we use the suffix "...gate".

When there's a scandal that accuses a non-scandal of being a scandal we have "...ghazi".

Republicans appear to be meme generation machines. Thanks Obama!

It actually depends on the length of the word.

Single syllable = -ghazi
Multisyllable = -gate

Investigaception?