U.S. Politics 2017 (split fm US Election: 2016)

[The Bread Guy]

That's why I always quadruple-cheque my responses before posting when jacking somebody hear for pour writing skills, and then won more time after posting, because I just no that that is when I'll make a mistake (because I have).

Damned autocomplete ...

 

[Loachman]

If y'all care to re-read my previous post, y'all may recognize a two-post pattern...

Perhaps my humour is a little too subtle.

 

[Kirkhill]

My dear fellow - too posts do not a pattern make.

 

[George Wallace]

My dear fellow - too posts do not a pattern make.

I too have to now ask: "Which two posts are we off to?"

 

[The Bread Guy]

Compare & contrast statements from POTUS45's recent cabinet meeting (source) ...

... Vice President Mike Pence ... “It’s the greatest privilege of my life to serve as vice president to a president who is keeping his word to the American people, and assembling a team that is bringing real change, real prosperity, and real strength back to our nation.”

(...)

“On behalf of the entire senior staff around you, Mr. President, we thank you for the opportunity and the blessing that you given us to serve your agenda and the American people,” said Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, “and we’re continuing to work very hard every day to accomplish those goals.” 

“Mr. President, what an incredible honor it is to lead the Department of Health and Human Services at this time under your leadership,” said  Tom Price, the agency’s head.

(...)

“Mr. President, it’s an honor to represent the men and women of the Department of Defense,” (Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis) said. “We are grateful for the sacrifices our people are making in order to strengthen our military, so our diplomats always negotiate from a position of strength.” ...

 

[Remius]

Good on Mattis to be the only one to not pretend like they are all in North Korea.  That whole spectacle was embarrassing to watch.

 

[Kirkhill]

Donald has a problem:  He doesn't have Chris Matthews to blow his trumpet the way Obama had, so he has to blow his own.

Nobody would mistake the US 2017 for North Korea.

 

[Journeyman]

Donald has a problem

      :nod:

Nobody would mistake the US 2017 for North Korea.

No one is mistaking the countries;  I suspect the post referred to the repeated insistence on personal loyalty, as opposed to loyalty to the Constitution -- very Glorious Leader-esque.

Except for Mattis, Monica Lewinski would fit right in at that table... or under it.

 

[Kirkhill]

You stick to your side of the table and I'll stick to mine and we should get along fine.
:cheers:

 

[Journeyman]

You stick to your side of the table and I'll stick to mine and we should get along fine.
:cheers:

???

A)  Was offering my thoughts on a previous post; and

B)  I never thought of you as one of the Trump cheerleaders;  I always respected your ability to think.  I will, however, continue trying to avoid this thread, as part of my sticking to this  side of the table.
 

 

[Kirkhill]

Journeyman -

No need to avoid the thread and no need to avoid comment. I am happy to share a table, and a pint with you any time.

I am not a Trump cheerleader.  But I do think a whole bunch of folks are over-reacting and that may set my "threshold" a little lower than it should be. If I misunderstood the situation I apologize. 

By the way the mutual admiration society is intact.

Your health.  [

 

[Journeyman]

Nonetheless, there's a reason this thread ended up down in Radio Chatter.  As such, I'll minimize my presence.      Ok...I'll try

Your health.  [

As well    :cheers:

 

[FJAG]

Caution. The following is  :sarcasm:

America’s mass delusion
Surprisingly, the strategy of praying to God is not stopping the mass shootings in the U.S.
Scott Gilmore
June 14, 2017

Is America’s national Thoughts and Prayers Strategy (TAPS) no longer working? This is a troubling possibility to consider, but it may be time to ask the question.

Politicians, members of the media, and of course the public, quickly responded to the recent horrific shooting of several people during a baseball game in Alexandria, Va., including U.S. Congressman Steve Scalise, with a flurry of “thoughts & prayers”. President Donald Trump himself immediately assisted in TAPS efforts with his own tweet indicating that he too was doing his part by thinking about the victims and mentioning them in any communications he had with God.

Unfortunately, there is growing evidence that TAPS may not be delivering the results we would expect from appealing to an omniscient and all-powerful deity. For example, in spite of the well-executed TAPS implementation following the Alexandria incident, there was almost immediately afterwards another tragic shooting in a San Francisco UPS facility, killing two. Cleary something is amiss.

In a typical year, over 13,000 Americans will be killed by guns. To put that into perspective, that is six times more than the total number of American troops killed in Afghanistan over the last 16 years. America’s gun homicide rate is 25 times the average of other developed countries. There is now, typically, one mass shooting per day in the United States. Over the course of the year, 45 of those will be school shootings.

This data is very surprising when you consider the power of beseeching God. You would think parting the Red Sea, or smiting the Egyptians with a plague of frogs, would be far more difficult than just reducing gun violence. It is worth noting, however, that most well-known examples of successful celestial intervention in earthly affairs are over two millennia old. This marked drop-off has gone largely unnoticed in American political circles and may be worth exploring in more depth.

The problem, if indeed there is one, could be denominational. Are Jewish prayers as effective as Protestant prayers when it comes to preventing future shootings, or healing existing victims? For obvious reasons, we know that the prayers of a southern Baptist will have no prophylactic effects on a Muslim in New Jersey. But will they protect Catholics? These are questions we should possibly start asking.

Perhaps we are not praying enough. Church attendance is down considerably in the United States. This presumably has a direct impact on both the frequency and quality of prayers. If this turns out to be the issue, the government could look at improving public transit links to places of worship, or perhaps even subsidizing sermons as a means to end gun violence.
The other issue that should be considered is whether the wrong people are praying. For example, when a notoriously adulterous politician tweets out his “thoughts and prayers”, does that carry more or less weight than a nun who silently mouths the same words over her rosary? There really should be better metrics to track this.

Is it possible we are saying the wrong prayers or in the wrong way? Not enough effort has been made to determine if TAPS is equally effective when tacked on to a press release as it would be as an addendum to the Lord’s Prayer. And, have you noticed that you rarely hear a politician implement TAPS in Greek (Σκέψεις και προσευχές) or even Hebrew (מחשבות ותפילות)? Could that be the reason 93 Americans are still dying every day from gun violence?

There are so many factors that need to be taken into account if we want to get to the bottom of this. Kneeling or not? Eyes open or closed? Does incense make a difference? Out of respect for the hundreds of children who are shot and killed every year in the U.S., we must answer these questions.

The White House, perhaps in co-operation with some of America’s leading research centres like MIT or Stanford, should launch an urgent nationwide investigation into why TAPS is not working. A series of randomized control trials in various states would be easy to organize and may produce invaluable data. Likewise, the government could test the TAPS methodology against other pressing issues. Does it help fix America’s crumbling infrastructure? Can it reduce the deficit? Will it fix Obamacare? Has the Pentagon considered a robust prayer response to the North Korean missile program?

With so many daily deaths, so many unnecessary tragedies, America’s leaders must do whatever is necessary to fix TAPS. If they fail at this, the United States would be forced to consider some very dire alternatives. In the United Kingdom, for example, when they decided thoughts and prayers were no longer working, they had to implement handgun laws that reduced shooting deaths by over 50 per cent. Likewise, Canada, Australia and Europe neglected TAPS and as result are forced to rely on firearm controls and background checks to keep their gun violence levels at 1/25th those in the United States. If America doesn’t address the TAPS problem soon, this might happen to them too.

http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/americas-thoughts-and-prayers-approach-to-gun-violence/

:cheers:

 

[FJAG]

From the Bloomberg Press

Would You Let Trump Run Your Company?

Of all the ways to measure Trump, judging him as a chief executive would seem to be fairest.

By John Micklethwait

In Washington, people struggling to come to terms with all the details of James Comey’s sacking and the claim that Donald Trump asked him to drop the FBI’s investigation into Michael Flynn have reached back to Watergate for comparison. But in many ways the more appropriate perspective is through a business lens: The immediate issue is whether a boss tried to halt embarrassing revelations about his company; the underlying one is whether he knows how to run it.

Of course, running a country is not the same as running a company. A president is both more constrained (by Congress, the press, and voters) and less so (chief executive officers, as a rule, can’t bomb their opponents). And Trump is not the first incoming president to have boasted of his corporate experience; remember George W. Bush, the first MBA president? But Bush had also run Texas. No president has tried to claim the mantle of CEO-in-chief as completely as Trump.

On the campaign trail, he cited his business experience all the time, contrasting his decisiveness, managerial skills, and shrewdness as a negotiator with the amateurish stumbles of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (not to mention several generations of U.S. trade representatives). Many of his first supporters knew him only as the archetypal “You’re fired” boss on The Apprentice. He rushed to bring in figures from the corporate world, luring Rex Tillerson from Exxon Mobil Corp. to run the State Department and a string of Wall Streeters. The stock market initially boomed. Trump’s message to business has been simple: Finally you have an executive in charge of the executive branch. “In theory I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly,” he boasted to the New York Times shortly after his election. “There’s never been a case like this.”

So out of all the ways in which Trump might want to be measured, judging him as a chief executive would seem to be the fairest to him. Forget about ideology, his political agenda, or whether you voted for him; just judge him on whether he has been a competent executive. Would you want to leave him in charge? Or would you be calling an emergency board meeting?

The Comey fracas is the latest in a long list of apparent transgressions for which a normal CEO might lose his job. In the last week, Trump stood accused of having passed on intelligence secrets to the Russians. Any business chief who invited a competitor into the boardroom and then disclosed sensitive information would be in peril. (Klaus Kleinfeld lost his job at Arconic Inc. merely because he wrote an unauthorized stroppy letter to a truculent shareholder.) Appointing inexperienced relatives to important positions is not normally seen as good corporate governance. Jes Staley is currently in trouble at Barclays Plc just for allegedly protecting a friend. The White House was made aware that Flynn had lied to the vice president on Jan. 26, but he didn’t hand in his resignation to Trump until Feb. 13. Any board would want an explanation for that delay. Finally, any CEO who says something that is manifestly untrue in public or on his résumé is in hot water. Those who refuse to correct themselves quickly and satisfactorily often have to go—as happened to the bosses at Yahoo! Inc. and RadioShack.

Behind this list of individual transgressions sit four larger failings: This CEO-in-chief has failed to get things done; he has failed to build a strong team, especially in domestic policy; he hasn’t dealt with conflicts of interest; and his communications is in shambles.

It’s harder to achieve things in politics than in business, as many businesspeople-turned-politicians (including the owner of this magazine) will attest. But Trump’s record of achievement would make any corporate compensation committee cringe. Despite his party controlling both the Senate and the House, health care is stuck: Trump seems to have made the elementary CEO mistake of wanting to get rid of something without having any idea of what to replace it with. Tax reform, another signature theme, currently fills a single piece of paper. If any chief executive had shown that to his board, the members would have assumed it was an April Fools’ Day prank. The details of his great promise to build $1 trillion of infrastructure have yet to be delivered to Congress. He has issued a string of executive orders, but some of them, notably on restricting immigration, have been so poorly crafted the courts have blocked them.

It’s not a completely blank slate. Trump has appointed a competent Supreme Court justice. He’s made deregulation a priority. In national security, perhaps thanks to the grown-up trio of Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis, and H.R. McMaster (Flynn’s replacement as National Security Adviser), he’s shown some signs of deftness and purpose, such as the missile attack on Syria. On “fair trade,” the area ironically where most businesspeople wish him failure, he may have made progress with Mexico and Canada. But in general, America’s stock has dropped abroad: The president has messed around his customers and suppliers (one way to look at allies), with many drifting toward America’s principal long-term competitor, China.

Much of this would be retrievable if Trump had been doing what most sensible incoming CEOs do: building a team to govern the country. This second big failing is where he looks least professional. His list of unfilled posts and ambassadorships is far lengthier than Obama’s. Europeans don’t even know whom to discuss the G-7 with. And there’s the whiff of cronyism. Trump’s instinct has been to stick with friends, like Flynn, and relations, like his 36-year-old son-in-law, Jared Kushner. He seems to spend as much time listening to Kushner on foreign policy as he does to the more seasoned Tillerson-Mattis-McMaster trio. There appears to be little structure in the White House. It’s more like a court than a company, with the king retiring to bed with a cheeseburger and spontaneously tweeting orders.

This dysfunction is fed by a cavalier approach toward conflicts of interest. In most businesses, this is something most incoming bosses deal with quickly and automatically. There’s an ethics policy, and you follow it. That policy usually has two levels: first, obeying the law; second, setting standards and following processes that avoid even the impression of any conflict. This second prohibitive level is crucial.

No president has tried to claim the mantle of CEO-in-chief as completely as the incumbent

It may well be up to Congress or the courts to decide whether Trump has broken any laws with his alleged requests to Comey. Similarly, Trump’s children and relatives haven’t done anything illegal in promoting a Washington hotel that sits on federally owned land or by hyping their connections to Chinese investors. But what is manifestly clear is that Trump and his family have failed the prohibitive test. They haven’t clearly separated out their personal businesses from their public duties and powers. He’s appointed relatives to positions—such as making peace in the Middle East, in the case of Kushner—that they’re legally entitled to hold but are not obviously qualified to do.

Then there’s communications. In business it sometimes helps to be unpredictable, but when two senior people publicly announce opposing versions of what they think the CEO wants (as Tillerson and Nikki Haley, his United Nations ambassador, did recently regarding President Bashar al-Assad in Syria), that is not a good sign. Twitter worked well for Trump on the campaign; as a way of setting policy, it’s self-defeating. If a CEO put out a press release implying he had recorded a conversation, as Trump has done with Comey, the board would want to listen to it.

And finally there’s that awkward thing, the truth. Both politicians and businesspeople exaggerate their achievements, but they seldom get caught in verifiable untruths, such as claiming your crowd is bigger than your predecessor’s or saying that you invented the phrase “priming the pump,” without at least a hasty apology. It’s not surprising that Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, has called for “less drama” from the White House.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-18/would-you-let-trump-run-your-company

:cheers:

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Another journalistic opinion, even if it's high priced. It's still just an opinion, based on nothing substantial. Another hack piece in the ongoing saga.  :boring:

Personally, I'd like to see the White House initiate hearings and investigations into Comey, Warren, Pelosi, Obamas, the Clintons, et al.

Comey self incriminated himself when he took privileged conversation, spun it, then leaked it. He needs to be in prison.

Lynch needs to be investigated for her interactions with the Clintons and her downgrading of Clintons' investigation by Comey and if true, prison.

And that list goes on and on.

 

[The Bread Guy]

PMJT's apparently #POTUS45's "new found friend" now ...

 

[George Wallace]

PMJT's apparently #POTUS45's "new found friend" now ...

Does that mean that he was once lost?

 

[Rifleman62]

The way things are going for Pres Trump, he is desperate for friends, any friend, hence PMJT.

 

[Loachman]

I think that that was his cutting sense of humour.

 

[The Bread Guy]

I think that that was his cutting sense of humour.

... or, given the civility of the Tweet, that of one of his staff.