The US Presidency 2019

[mariomike]

Most of the polls at the end are old and don't even include Trump.

He was in two polls.

First one rated him #44. Second one #42.

Note: Grover Cleveland was elected to two non-consecutive terms, serving as both the 22nd and 24th President of the United States—to date he is the only person to have achieved this distinction. Because of it, the total number of people who have served as president is one fewer than the number of presidents in order of succession.

 

[Cloud Cover]

That's a pretty low bar. He's ranked at the absolute bottom of the list of every man who ever got the job since George Washington.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States#Scholar_survey_results

They are the only ones with guaranteed job security. Well, maybe Jared not so much. 

That just makes it worse - I fear they are going to screw up what could be a one pony show.

 

[kkwd]

:not-again:

See rest of article here:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-calls-for-navy-to-rescind-medals-for-eddie-gallaghers-prosecutors

:brickwall:

More info on this is in this navy Times article.

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/07/30/their-case-collapsed-in-court-but-4-navy-prosecutors-still-netted-nams/

Signed by Capt. Meg Larrea, the commanding officer for RLSO Southwest, McDonald’s NAM citation praised him for his “superior performance” after reviewing a (redacted) number of hours of video and reading a (redacted) number of pages of discovery to prep for a trial where he “brilliantly cross-examined defense witnesses” and “expertly delivered the government’s case in rebuttal.”

 

[mariomike]

Jared is bringing peace to the middle east, Ivanka is, well, Ivanking.

Speaking of bringing your kids to work,

NBC

31 July, 2019

Watchdog tells Democrats he can't probe White House security clearances until Trump asks.

Four top Senate Democrats responded by asking Trump himself to order an investigation into White House security clearances for Kushner, Ivanka and others.

The real SWAMP creature is Christopher Wray. There has to be someone decent to be FBI Director.

FBI Director Wray: Russia intent on interfering with U.S. elections
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-security/fbi-director-wray-russia-intent-on-interfering-with-u-s-vote-idUSKCN1UI1XW

 

[FJAG]

Further to Trump's order to rescind Navy Achievement Medals:

Thousands of officers with Bronze Stars terrified after Trump rescinds four bullshit awards

By Paul Sharpe

WASHINGTON — Officers across the military who have been awarded Bronze Stars say they are terrified for the future after learning that President Donald Trump had on Wednesday rescinded four bullshit awards handed out to Navy prosecutors who lost the murder trial of SEAL Chief Eddie Gallagher.

“If POTUS figured out these guys don’t deserve a [Navy Achievement Medal], can you just imagine if he found out about how I got a Bronze Star for processing soldiers’ leave requests in theater?” said one officer, who spoke only on condition of anonymity. “Oh Christ, I can’t believe they even gave me a Combat ‘V’ for this for going on one patrol.”

Trump tweeted on Wednesday that he had ordered Navy Secretary Richard Spencer to claw back awards given to the prosecutors in the Gallagher trial, which critics say sets a dangerous precedent that military awards may require officers to earn them.

“I mean, hell, how many senior officers will this take out if Trump starts looking?” said one general officer with three Bronze Stars, all awarded for successfully not getting fired from command or not banging a subordinate over prior command tours.

“What’s next? Will they start taking away retirement Legion of Merit awards from command sergeants major?” asked one very high-ranking enlisted soldier while preparing for retirement.

Other soldiers feared that their Combat Action Badges could be next to go.

“Will Trump change the rules of engagement so that we had to actually do like combat infantryman stuff instead of just diving into a shelter when a rocket hits the FOB?” asked one soldier while rubbing his CAB as if it were a talisman.

At press time, at least one Navy prosecutor was seen removing his recently-purchased Navy Achievement Medal license plate frame from his car at Naval Base San Diego.

Lieutenant Dan and Grumpy contributed reporting.

https://www.duffelblog.com/2019/08/trump-awards/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=facebook_page&utm_medium=Duffel%20Blog&utm_content=Thousands%20of%20officers%20with%20Bronze%20Stars%20terrified%20after%20Trump%20rescinds%20four%20bullshit%20awards&fbclid=IwAR24muhsbW7hK-IaKcvLweNtNJCzy3vHmShrTXj1X7lb_VQclaTDx-sdlQg

;D

 

[FJAG]

Nancy Pelosi Slams Jared Kushner As A Baltimore ‘Slumlord’

The House speaker says Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser knows all about the rodent infestations in Baltimore that the president has griped about.

By Mary Papenfuss

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday bashed senior White House adviser Jared Kushner as a Baltimore “slumlord.” It was the latest parry against President Donald Trump’s relentless attacks, widely denounced as racist, on popular Rep. Elijah Cummings and his Baltimore district.

Trump has ripped the Maryland Democrat’s district as a “rodent infested mess” where “no human being” would “want to live.” Yet apartments owned by Kushner and his family in Baltimore County were hit with hundreds of building code violations, including for rodent infestation, and have been the target of tenant lawsuits. One tenant described in a court case a leaking ceiling, maggots in the living room carpeting and “raw sewage” spewing from the kitchen sink.

“The president — this comes as no surprise — really doesn’t know what he’s talking about” regarding Baltimore, Pelosi told journalists, Politico reported.  “Maybe you could ask his son-in-law, who’s a slumlord there, if he wants to talk about rodent infestations.”

Kushner’s Baltimore-area complexes were the target of a scathing investigation in ProPublica, which was co-published by The New York Times in 2017, headlined “The Beleaguered Tenants of Kushnerville.” When the apartments were cited for violations, Baltimore County issued a statement at the time noting: “We expect all landlords to comply with the code requirements that protect the health and safety of their tenants — even if the landlord’s father-in-law is President of the United States.”

Complaints about mice and rat infestations in the Kushner apartments are ongoing.
...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jared-kushner-rodent-infestations-white-house-balitmore-elijah-cummings_n_5d43829fe4b0acb57fc9cf4d

:cheers:

 

[Blackadder1916]

So another Trump lapdog as the head intelligence guru. What could go wrong?

Seems like the checks and balances of the system sometimes check and balance.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49200241

John Ratcliffe: Trump withdraws pick for US intelligence director

2 August 2019

US President Donald Trump has withdrawn his choice for director of national intelligence amid criticism that the Texas congressman was under-qualified.

Mr Trump tweeted that he told Texas Republican John Ratcliffe that the nomination process would be "miserable" for him due to unfair media coverage.

Mr Ratcliffe thanked Mr Trump and said he did not want the job to become "a purely political and partisan issue".

Critics have accused Mr Ratcliffe of padding his intelligence credentials

Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Friday, Mr Trump said Mr Ratcliffe was "treated very badly, very harshly by the press" and that he believes Mr Ratcliffe "made the right decision".

But he added the media was "part of the vetting process" for nominees, and told reporters, "a lot of times you do a very good job".

"I give out a name to the press and they vet for me," Mr Trump went on to say. "We save a lot of money that way. But in the case of John, I believe he was being treated very harshly and unfairly."

Mr Ratcliffe was appointed by Mr Trump days after his aggressive questioning of former-Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the ex-FBI director who led an inquiry into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Last Tuesday, after Mr Ratcliffe was picked, Mr Trump defended him as the best man to control US intelligence agencies - a frequent target of criticism by Mr Trump.

"We need somebody strong that can really rein it in, because as I think you've all learned, the intelligence agencies have run amok," Mr Trump said. "They run amok."

The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is appointed by the president and must be confirmed by the US Senate.

The position was created in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terror attacks. The DNI oversees the 16 civilian and military agencies that make up the US intelligence community.




Why was it withdrawn?

Analysis by Anthony Zurcher, North America reporter

Donald Trump never has been one to back away from a fight with the press. Yet here he is, publicly telling his selection for director of national intelligence that the appointment is not worth enduring the "slander and libel" of the "LameStream Media".

Perhaps the president has had a change of view. More probable, however, is that John Ratcliffe's chances of being successfully confirmed by the US Senate were diminishing by the day.

The drumbeat of negative information about Mr Ratcliffe's credentials-inflation was only exacerbating existing Senate concerns about his qualifications for the intelligence post. Some prominent Republicans were signalling reluctance to support the president's choice.

It wouldn't take too many Republican defections to sink Mr Ratcliffe's nomination if it came to a vote.

This is far from the first time the president has seen a political appointment founder - either before or after confirmation - because of insufficient vetting or objections from unexpected sources.

At this point in his presidency it seems unlikely that Mr Trump will back away from his nominate-from-the-hip style of personnel selection, but it's also clear at this point that such an approach comes at a price.

 

[Journeyman]

Wired  posted an interesting article last week on Ratcliffe, and his lying resume padding: "The Danger of John Ratcliffe."  LINK

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Wired  posted an interesting article last week on Ratcliffe, and his lying resume padding: "The Danger of John Ratcliffe."  LINK

I didn't realize that the technonerds at Wired had moved into the political arena. They used to be known for their reviews and articles on technological advances, not politics.

 

[Blackadder1916]

. . .  the technonerds at Wired had moved into the political arena. . . .

The author of the Wired piece

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_Graff

Garrett M. Graff (born 1981) is an American journalist and author. He is a former editor of Politico Magazine,[1] editor-in-chief of Washingtonian magazine in Washington, D.C., and instructor at Georgetown University in the Masters in Professional Studies Journalism and Public Relations program.

Graff was born in 1981 and raised in Montpelier, Vermont. As an undergraduate at Harvard University, Graff was an editor of the Harvard Crimson. He also held internships at ABC News' Political Unit and Atlantic Monthly. He served as deputy national press secretary on Howard Dean's presidential campaign; he helped create and maintain Dean's website.

He later took a job as the Vice President of Communications at EchoDitto, Inc. a Washington, D.C.-based technology consulting firm.[4] Graff also ran FishbowlDC for the blog Media Bistro. In 2005, Graff became the first blogger to receive credentials to cover the White House.

Well, he's probably a technonerd, but also has legitimate political reporting credentials.

 

[brihard]

I didn't realize that the technonerds at Wired had moved into the political arena. They used to be known for their reviews and articles on technological advances, not politics.

Realizing things is often easy with even basic research. Meaningfully critiquing a position or claim on its merits will take a bit more work, I’m afraid.

 

[mariomike]

Meanwhile, in today's news,

Peter Strzok sues over firing for anti-Trump texts
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/06/peter-strzok-lawsuit-firing-trump-texts-1448615

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Realizing things is often easy with even basic research. Meaningfully critiquing a position or claim on its merits will take a bit more work, I’m afraid.

I was simply commenting on the magazine used for the source.

 

[brihard]

I was simply commenting on the magazine used for the source.

Sure you were.  :

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Sure you were.  :

Yes I was.  : :. Mind reading is a parlour trick.

 

[Remius]

The author of the Wired piece

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_Graff
Well, he's probably a technonerd, but also has legitimate political reporting credentials.

Wired has a whole section on culture, politics and current events.  Security being at another thing they regularly cover.  The magazine commenting on this or having an op ed on subjects like this is not uncommon.  I don’t normally read that magazine but a quick search confirms it. 

 

[MarkOttawa]

Terry Glavin lets both sides have it with both barrels (whilst taking shots at our own pols):

As the Democrats show, America lost its way long before Trump
The country is convulsing in an epidemic of mass-shootings, a recrudescence of white racism, and divisions as deep as the depths of the 1960s.

We’re all going to have wait another 15 months to learn whether Americans have had their fill of the depraved presidency of Donald J. Trump, and because there’s no telling what further damage he might yet do to the cause of liberal democracy in the world, or to democratic norms and civic decency in America itself, it’s going to seem like an eternity.

Here in Canada, we will have plenty of frivolous matters to concern ourselves with in the 10 weeks that remain before we go to the polls, and plenty of opportunity to be amused by the occasional exertions our party leaders make in their efforts to convince us all that the choice we make on Oct. 21 will somehow matter to the course of global affairs. It won’t.

America’s afflictions, meanwhile, are chronic and debilitating. They did not begin with Trump, and they will not end on Nov. 3, 2020, but in the meantime there will be all sorts of opportunities to resort to the annoying Canadian habit of flattering ourselves by way of comparison to the American predicament. It’s like Tourette’s syndrome, and we’re especially susceptible to it now that our prime minister is the dashingly woke, tousle-haired Justin Trudeau.

But America’s problem is not just that its president is a louche bigot and something of a maniac, or that his most devoted constituencies tend to run along a spectrum that stretches well into the netherworld of the far right. It’s the opposition leadership, too, and it doesn’t help that the Democratic Party’s frontrunners embrace policies that would not be out of place among Canadian Liberals, New Democrats, Greens or even Conservatives.

In a survey of the contestants for the Democratic Party ticket and their various televised-debate performances, here’s the fervently liberal polemicist Peter Beinart, a journalism professor at the City University of New York, writing in the Atlantic: “It was almost as if these Democratic candidates were running for prime minister of Canada.” This was not intended as flattery.

It was intended to suggest that Canadian politicians can afford to be unserious in their detachment from the burdens of global responsibility [emphasis added], whereas contenders for the Oval Office office cannot be so frivolous. The Trump administration is cleaving to a balance-of-power strategy in its approach to China that is more suited to the 1930s. China, dangerously, is dead set against it. None of the Democratic front-runners have had anything of consequence to contribute to the debate about what to do.

“That might be okay if the United States were Canada,” writes Beinart. “But the next president will make decisions that could determine whether there’s a World War III.”

In the Washington Post, columnist Anne Applebaum has noticed the same thing about the Democratic candidates’ debates, in “the near-total absence of the rest of the world. There was no Europe, no China, no Venezuela. The glancing references to the Middle East mostly involved posturing about the past — specifically about how the candidates did or didn’t support the Iraq War more than 16 years ago.”

This might be explained by the awkwardness any leading Democrat would have to navigate in articulating any robust critique of a president whose foreign trade policies meet or exceed the anti-globalization rhetoric that animated the Democratic Party’s liberal-left activists over the past quarter of a century. And Trump is every bit as isolationist as any of the “anti-war” blowhards in the Democratic Party’s élite constituencies.

If the last refuge of a scoundrel is patriotism, pacifism must be the second-to-last. For all the gargoyles the Trump administration has attracted to itself, you would be hard-pressed to identify anyone as morally unhygienic as the glamorous Democratic Party ticket contender Tulsi Gabbard, whose excuse-making for the fascist mass-murderer Bashar Assad has until recently gone almost unnoticed. That’s to say nothing of her support for Trump’s attempts at restricting Muslim immigration, or the support she’s garnered from Russian diplomats and the 9/11-conspiracy fringe. Just because Republicans have been happy to point out these unpleasant facts about Gabbard does not make them untrue.

It is as if Trump’s leading and loudest detractors are afflicted by some strange Pavlovian malady. If Trump were to depart from demonizing Muslims and Mexicans for a moment and say something about the sky being blue, you can count on it, the New York Times and the Washington Post would be pleased to disabuse the American public of the notion. You’d be reading opeds arguing that the sky is rather more violet, and only seems to be blue because of the way sunlight enters Earth’s upper atmosphere.

In one of those Twitter eruptions that nowadays punctuate the erratic flow of American political discourse, just the other day Trump singled out, in his customarily ugly way, the dubiously credentialed civil rights celebrity Al Sharpton. Without an ear for irony, in the same statement confessing a 25-year friendship with Sharpton, Trump called him a con man and a troublemaker, “always looking for a score … Hates Whites & Cops!”

Straight away, the leading Democratic Party ticket contender Joe Biden, the former vice-president, rushed to Sharpton’s defence, calling him “a champion in the fight for civil rights.” Other contenders weighed in similarly blasting Trump’s comments as racist. California Sen. Kamala Harris declared that Sharpton “has spent his life fighting for what’s right and working to improve our nation,” and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren claimed Sharpton has “dedicated his life to the fight for justice for all.”

These résumé embellishments leave out a more sordid history of Sharpton’s pandering to anti-semitic hysteria and his descents into mob-incitement, not least the deadly 1991 riots in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, which were as close as recent American history comes to anti-Jewish pogroms.

America is in the throes of a debilitating culture war. The country is mired in the abyss of chronic gun-violence that only a constitutional amendment could come close to addressing – and which nobody expects will be possible. It’s a country convulsing in an epidemic of mass-shootings, a recrudescence of white racism, and divisions as deep as the depths of the 1960s. It’s true that Trump has pandered to racists in his deranged alarms about an “invasion” on the Mexican border. But it’s also true that asylum claims from the United States’ southern frontiers have more than doubled in the past four years, the courts have introduced unmanageable complexity into the American asylum system, and more than half a million people have been apprehended crossing the border so far this year, exceeding the annual figures for the past five years.

The international liberal-democratic order will offer up hosannas if Trump is evicted from the White House next year, but the America that was once a beacon of hope to the unfree and the persecuted around the world is already gone. It was gone before Trump. And there’s no telling whether that America will ever return again.

https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/glavin-as-the-democrats-show-america-lost-its-way-long-before-trump

Mark
Ottawa

 

[mariomike]

Reply #616,

the deadly 1991 riots in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, which were as close as recent American history comes to anti-Jewish pogroms.

I remember that. Two little African-American kids were run over. Members of the community were outraged because Hatzolah took care of the driver ( who was Jewish ), while the City of New York paramedics were still rescuing the children pinned under his station-wagon. One child died. The other was severely injured.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

America’s afflictions, meanwhile, are chronic and debilitating. They did not begin with Trump, and they will not end on Nov. 3, 2020, but in the meantime there will be all sorts of opportunities to resort to the annoying Canadian habit of flattering ourselves by way of comparison to the American predicament. It’s like Tourette’s syndrome, and we’re especially susceptible to it now that our prime minister is the dashingly woke, tousle-haired Justin Trudeau.

I love when Canadians look down their noses at the US, or the world, when we watch from our morally superior perch atop the rubbish heap the liberals have given us. We have a PM that has many of the same traits as Trump, when it comes to honesty, blame, taking responsibility and doing whatever he wants, regardless of what anyone but himself, thinks. At least the US isn't bleeding employment, money, trade and respect like we are. Nor is Trump emptying the treasury and giving it away, without qualification or oversight, to fixing the world's social problems, (if that is where it is really going) while ignoring his own citizens. While Trump may be a neophyte to politics and have that as some small excuse, trudeau can't use that crutch. So who is really doing the damage and further ruining their country? Which country is really the worse mess. We are not far from the same predicaments as the US. The difference being, the US is like a huge metropolis with problems. Canada is like the quaint country town that nobody believes can have big city problems, but we have them just the same and each citizen feels the pinch even worse.

I don't think our glass house will hold when someone decides to throw our rocks back at us. However, I'm sure our journalist of foreign affairs will sort it out for us. I mean, she's one of trudeau's wizards right?

Let's not kid ourselves, we are in as bad a shape as the US, if not worse. We shouldn't be pointing fingers or lecturing anyone given the state of our own government and country. Moralistic hypoctites, it's what we do best isn't it.

 

[RocketRichard]

I love when Canadians look down their noses at the US, or the world, when we watch from our morally superior perch atop the rubbish heap the liberals have given us. We have a PM that has many of the same traits as Trump, when it comes to honesty, blame, taking responsibility and doing whatever he wants, regardless of what anyone but himself, thinks. At least the US isn't bleeding employment, money, trade and respect like we are. Nor is Trump emptying the treasury and giving it away, without qualification or oversight, to fixing the world's social problems, (if that is where it is really going) while ignoring his own citizens. While Trump may be a neophyte to politics and have that as some small excuse, trudeau can't use that crutch. So who is really doing the damage and further ruining their country? Which country is really the worse mess. We are not far from the same predicaments as the US. The difference being, the US is like a huge metropolis with problems. Canada is like the quaint country town that nobody believes can have big city problems, but we have them just the same and each citizen feels the pinch even worse.

I don't think our glass house will hold when someone decides to throw our rocks back at us. However, I'm sure our journalist of foreign affairs will sort it out for us. I mean, she's one of trudeau's wizards right?

Let's not kid ourselves, we are in as bad a shape as the US, if not worse. We shouldn't be pointing fingers or lecturing anyone given the state of our own government and country. Moralistic hypoctites, it's what we do best isn't it.

Sure bud.


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