***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[whywesteppin]

this is epic. trump is screwing over those who voted for him: https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...3fc584-bd5e-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html

I'm not even mad.

 

[rolaholic]

‏@jbendery: Trump is only making time for one intelligence briefing a week. Pence is getting at least six. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-intelligence-briefings_us_5849fb0be4b0e05aded33b1d …

Dude really wants to be a part-time president

 

[EddieDoyers]

‏@jbendery: Trump is only making time for one intelligence briefing a week. Pence is getting at least six. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-intelligence-briefings_us_5849fb0be4b0e05aded33b1d …

Dude really wants to be a part-time president

Not surprised with this stunt
He never intended to be a real president
He just wants to make money off the position while leaving an experienced politician to actually run stuff behind the curtain

 

[gry60]

this is epic. trump is screwing over those who voted for him: https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...3fc584-bd5e-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html

I'm not even mad.

Da smugness is keeping me quite warm tonight.

 

[EddieDoyers]

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/donald-trump-transition-pace-concern-232334

Obama officials alarmed at slow pace of agency-level transition

Donald Trump is beating President Barack Obama on the pace of splashy Cabinet announcements, but the president-elect is lagging his predecessor when it comes to other transition efforts critical to fulfilling his campaign promises.

The slower pace applies not only to key appointments throughout his administration, but also to Trump’s lower-profile agency review teams, whose nitty-gritty work with Obama’s career bureaucrats could make or break Trump’s pledge to get his presidency off to a barn-burning start.

Obama administration officials assigned to the transition say Trump’s representatives have been AWOL at some agencies, leaving them sitting on binders full of briefing materials that have been amassed since March.

The slower pace of agency-level transition efforts could have a real impact on Trump’s ability to quickly tackle big issues such as Obamacare, infrastructure and immigration reform.

“I’ve just been hearing all’s quiet on the western front, that sort of thing,” said Bill Valdez, who as president of the Senior Executives Association represents the high-level career employees assigned to help introduce the Trump teams to their agencies. “One of my colleagues worked at Department of Labor, and they’ve seen one person there — very low-level staffer — who has basically just come in and said, ‘Where are the keys to the men’s room?’ And then the rumor was that somebody at a higher level was going to come this week, but so far nobody’s shown up.”

A source within the Department of Labor said that this week the third of three Trump team members made it into the building — after a fourth member was named only to be removed days later.

The halting communication with the agencies is causing consternation among Obama administration officials — both the political aides who will resign as of Jan. 20 and the career public servants whose employment spans presidencies — tasked with helping facilitate a smooth transition. In some cases, such as at the U.S. Agency for International Development, they haven’t heard from anyone in Trump world.

Frustration started spilling out into public view earlier this week when Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy told reporters on Monday that the agency is ready and willing to help, but doesn’t have anyone to hand off information to.

"We’re most anxious to have the transition team around,” McCarthy said. “We have had one individual who came the day before Thanksgiving, and we have not heard from anybody since.”

A Trump transition spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.

That’s not to say that the president-elect is coasting on his way to the inauguration. He’s been maintaining an aggressive meeting schedule at Trump Tower, and is well ahead of previous presidents-elect in naming members of his Cabinet, at eight. That number climbed to 10 with the unofficial news on Wednesday that Trump is expected to nominate retired Marine Gen. John Kelly to run the Department of Homeland Security and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as EPA chief.

By comparison, Obama had named only six Cabinet nominees by this point in 2008.

But presidential historian Martha Joynt Kumar noted that Obama had also named people to all but one of the 12 most important White House posts — and it’s typically those West Wing staff members who would help with the process of choosing other nominees.

Trump has appointed only four of those people so far.

“That’s your decision-making structure,” said Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project, about the West Wing staff. “There’s so much information for policy, for appointments and even for your publicity — there’s a lot that you need to assemble.”

There are major exceptions. One senior administration official said there were no complaints coming out of the Commerce Department, where aides were “pleasantly surprised” by Trump’s landing team. It includes about half a dozen people, some with prior Commerce experience.

Trump’s team is taking “solemn and serious stock” of Commerce’s different agencies, said the senior Obama administration official. But that’s only offering so much reassurance to career staff: Trump has named investor Wilbur Ross to run the department, and his strident calls to untangle the North American Free Trade Agreement seem in contrast to the more measured perspective of the veteran Commerce officials on Trump’s transition team.

Interactions with defense officials appear to be picking up steam after a slow start, as well.

There has been "one big meeting about Air Force issues" that included Air Force civilian and military leaders, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said in an interview with POLITICO on Tuesday.

"I know one of the transition team members, so I have kind of had informal discussions," she added. "It is going as planned. That's my take. If anything, the indication I get is the desire to increase the topline of defense."

The Department of Energy also has seen “several folks who have shown up and are beginning interviewing people,” said Valdez.

As for the National Security Council, there’s been progress, but obstacles remain. While Trump’s NSC landing team has been in place for weeks, not all of them have yet been granted the necessary clearances to receive classified information, according to a source close to the transition.

Trump’s halting pace is in sharp contrast to Obama’s running start in 2008.

“Our teams started going into the agencies the Friday after the election,” said Lisa Brown, co-director of agency review for the Obama-Biden transition. Even before the election, Brown said, Obama’s team had submitted all the names of its landing team members to the White House — major departments like Treasury, Justice and Defense had 12 to 15 people, even smaller agencies had around five members. They were all armed with a template of questions about behind-the-scenes operations — the transition had already looked up all the publicly available data before votes were cast.

All that organization helped drive Obama’s agenda forward. Valdez recalled that Obama landing teams asked bureaucrats in December to have lists of shovel-ready projects ready by Inauguration Day. They ended up being a major part of the economic stimulus, which passed less than a month into Obama’s presidency.

The names of Trump’s landing teams, on the other hand, are still dripping out.

“The bureaucracy’s just not getting that direction,” Valdez said.

Even as Trump has reportedly skipped intelligence briefings and eschewed the advice of career diplomats who are, as State Department spokesman John Kirby put it, “standing by” to brief him before he makes policy-reversing statements to world leaders, the White House has been loath to criticize.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest ruled out offering any sort of assessment of Trump’s effort from the podium.

“If I stand up here and sort of offer up a new assessment where, in my view, they may or may not have fallen short, that may not lend itself to the kind of cordial, professional, collegial relationships that will contribute to the most effective transition,” Earnest said Monday.

Indeed, the neutrality has been practically institutionalized, with standardized talking points that obscure disparate levels of engagement by Trump’s team.

Health and Human Services spokeswoman Marjorie Connelly told POLITICO that the agency “is now in contact with the president-elect's transition representatives and has begun the process of briefing those individuals. Communication between the two teams will move forward on an ongoing basis, but we will not be in a position to confirm each interaction or the specific details of those interactions.”

Education spokeswoman Dorie Nolt provided a near-verbatim statement about the Trump team’s interactions with that department.

But the relatively slow pace could be at least partially offset by new legislation and an Obama executive order that prompted the career officials to start compiling transition materials early this year.

“There’s so much that the government itself has done that any lateness that they may have is in part offset by the amount of information that’s provided that they would need on personnel, programs, budgets, schedules, ongoing actions, lawsuits,” Kumar said.

And while Trump’s pace is sowing uncertainty among bureaucrats, who are devoted to their missions despite their nonpartisan status, some say it’s fine for him to take his time.

“The longer it takes to get the Trump folks in here,” said one career staffer tasked to an Obamacare project to expand coverage, “the longer we'll have to work on our reforms.”

 

[AEA18]

‏@jbendery: Trump is only making time for one intelligence briefing a week. Pence is getting at least six. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-intelligence-briefings_us_5849fb0be4b0e05aded33b1d …

Dude really wants to be a part-time president

Not surprised with this stunt
He never intended to be a real president
He just wants to make money off the position while leaving an experienced politician to actually run stuff behind the curtain

Need a Wizard of Oz meme/gif with Pence behind the curtain

 

[AEA18]

 

[boris]

he didn't lie what he saved, all Trump said is he's gonna make sure carrier doesn't leave. and he's gonna save jobs.

im almost certain once da regulatory landscape becomes more business friendly they'll save more.

This isn't going to stop automation.

 

[rexanglorum]

Shannon blowing that dog whistle hard.

You just KNOW she wants some BBC. She's still young, you should visit her, cultivate a relationship and turn her onto social justice. I would send Ninja on this mission but he ain't black.

I'd go and show her some things but I am an everyday American so I'm not sure how interested she would be.

Also, has anyone ever noticed how much everyday Americans love Portlandia and Bob's Burgers?

 

[EddieDoyers]

Shannon blowing that dog whistle hard.

You just KNOW she wants some BBC. She's still young, you should visit her, cultivate a relationship and turn her onto social justice. I would send Ninja on this mission but he ain't black.

I'd go and show her some things but I am an everyday American so I'm not sure how interested she would be.

Also, has anyone ever noticed how much everyday Americans love Portlandia and Bob's Burgers?

Practically me, Rusty, Ninja, and Rico aren't everyday Americans according to her statement

Very telling of a Trump supporter right there.

 

[teamjordan79]

this is epic. trump is screwing over those who voted for him: https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...3fc584-bd5e-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html

I'm not even mad.

literally shaking

 

[ninjahood]

he didn't lie what he saved, all Trump said is he's gonna make sure carrier doesn't leave. and he's gonna save jobs.


im almost certain once da regulatory landscape becomes more business friendly they'll save more.

This isn't going to stop automation.

aint gotta worry bout that for decades for small time manufacturing.

 

[gry60]

he didn't lie what he saved, all Trump said is he's gonna make sure carrier doesn't leave. and he's gonna save jobs.


im almost certain once da regulatory landscape becomes more business friendly they'll save more.

This isn't going to stop automation.

aint gotta worry bout that for decades for small time manufacturing.

What do you mean?

The easier and more repetitive the task, the easier it is to automate it.

 

[dathbgboy]

The way things are shaping up, the unions are in for another battle like in the 80's when CEO pay skyrocketed as unions were dismantled. Cats at the helm in Trump's cabinet are doing their best to rewind the clock one last time so that they can profit before the inevitable happens, especially Pruitt.

Only thing stopping automation from happening widespread is laws and the taboo of it killing jobs, it's certainly not cost. Once it becomes the norm, we'll see a lot more of it.

 

[ninjahood]

he didn't lie what he saved, all Trump said is he's gonna make sure carrier doesn't leave. and he's gonna save jobs.


im almost certain once da regulatory landscape becomes more business friendly they'll save more.

This isn't going to stop automation.

aint gotta worry bout that for decades for small time manufacturing.

What do you mean?

The easier and more repetitive the task, the easier it is to automate it.

doesnt mean we anywhere jetsons age yet b.

small manufacturers aint gonna blue print robots to do tasks that a automation investment is gonna be cost prohibitive when da labor cost is going down with da incoming loosened regulatory landscape.

aint no off da shelf

 

[deleted]

You would be surprised with the amount of things a Roomba can accomplish

 

[whywesteppin]

it'll still be decades before they can automate something as complicated as driving.

 

[Belgium]

 
GENEVA (AFP) - 
Human rights standards worldwide are under "unprecedented pressure", the UN said Thursday, warning that "the rhetoric of fascism" was becoming commonplace in parts of Europe and the United States.

Speaking ahead of the international Human Rights Day on December 10, UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein urged people around the globe to push back against a dangerous erosion of rights protections.

"2016 has been a disastrous year for human rights across the globe," Zeid said in a statement, warning that "if the growing erosion of the carefully constructed system of human rights and rule of law continues to gather momentum, ultimately everyone will suffer."

International human rights standards, he said, were "under unprecedented pressure" and risked "unravelling".

Zeid pointed to conflicts, like the one raging in Syria, that have unleashed a massive refugee crisis, extremist movements that are subjecting people to "horrific violence", climate change, discrimination and "yawning economic disparities".

The failure of many leaders to effectively and honestly deal with such issues has pushed many to turn to "the siren voices exploiting fears, sowing disinformation and division, and making alluring promises they cannot fulfil," he warned.

His comments follow a string of populist victories in Europe, and the stunning November election of Donald Trump as the next US president.

"In some parts of Europe, and in the United States, anti-foreigner rhetoric full of unbridled vitriol and hatred, is proliferating to a frightening degree, and is increasingly unchallenged," Zeid warned.

"The rhetoric of fascism is no longer confined to a secret underworld of fascists, meeting in ill-lit clubs or on the 'Deep Net'. It is becoming part of normal daily discourse," he said.

Zeid, who is set to launch a campaign entitled "Stand up for someone's rights today" on Saturday, urged everyone to "push back the violence and hatred which threaten our world."

"At a time of enormous turmoil and rapid change, the values which uphold peace across the world are too important to be left to international institutions and governments alone," he said.

 

[Belgium]

Europe's Donald Trump on steroids has received a guilty verdict for insulting a group and inciting discrimination. No penalty imposed though.



Probably won't dent his public image much, his party is still doing very well in the polls. This will only boost his reputation if anything.

Dutch anti-Islam political leader Geert Wilders has been convicted of insulting a group and inciting discrimination.
But no penalty was imposed by the court near Amsterdam on Wilders, whose party is leading in polls ahead of parliamentary elections in March.
Wilders was also acquitted of inciting hate over telling supporters in March 2014 he would ensure there were fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands.

He called the guilty verdict "madness" in a tweet posted a short time later.
He said he would appeal.

The three-week trial was triggered when police received 6,400 complaints about remarks Wilders made during a municipal election campaign in The Hague.

At a campaign meeting, he asked supporters whether they wanted "fewer or more Moroccans in your city and in the Netherlands".

When the crowd shouted back "Fewer! Fewer!" a smiling Wilders responded: "We're going to take care of that."
At the trial, prosecutors took testimony from Dutch-Moroccans who said his comments made them feel like "third-rate citizens".

'Line crossed'
Wilders had argued his comments should be protected by his right to freedom of speech, reports the BBC's Anna Holligan in the Schiphol court.
But judges ruled there were limits and that this right could not be used to limit the freedom of others - in this case, a minority group.
"If a politician crosses the line, that doesn't mean free speech is being restricted," said Presiding Judge Hendrik Steenhuis. "A crime cannot be protected by the right to free speech."
The verdict suggests that, in effect, Wilders and his party staged a stunt. Judges found evidence that they planned the remarks in advance and coached the supporters on how to respond. He had intended to insult, they said.

The judges described it as an "extraordinary case" because Wilders was the leader of a political party and had a duty not to polarise society.
They said the conviction was punishment enough and that there would be no jail sentence or fine, as the prosecution had requested.

This guilty verdict will do little to damage Geert Wilders' political aspirations.

In fact, the trial has provided the populist leader with the two vital elements upon which his party thrives - a platform to promote his political message and masses of media attention. In court he repeated warnings about the dangers of Islam and immigration.

Many supporters see this trial as reaffirming their belief that Wilders is a courageous leader prepared to stand up for them and address the issues a politically correct elite is afraid to talk about. They have been emboldened by populist victories in the UK and US. Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV) is currently 10 percentage points ahead of the ruling liberal party in the polls.

In response to the guilty verdict, Mr Wilders accused the judges of convicting "half of the Netherlands" - a reference to research commissioned by the PVV which found 43% of the Dutch public believe the country has a problem with Moroccans.

Wilders was previously prosecuted in 2011, over anti-Islam comments such as comparing the religion to Nazism and calling for a ban on the Koran. He was acquitted and the case was widely seen as giving the populist leader a publicity boost.

 

[IATT]

 

[IATT]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...481247155313&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.a3e8e504a92c

 

[whywesteppin]

i just don't get how these conservative old men in love with provocative young girls are so against liberal values like access to birth control.

oh wait. it's because a) they're misogynistic and/or b) they're closeted.

 

[sonoftony]

‏@jbendery: Trump is only making time for one intelligence briefing a week. Pence is getting at least six. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-intelligence-briefings_us_5849fb0be4b0e05aded33b1d …

Dude really wants to be a part-time president

This guy won't last his whole term

 

[Based Jesus]

 

Shannon blowing that dog whistle hard.

You just KNOW she wants some BBC. She's still young, you should visit her, cultivate a relationship and turn her onto social justice. I would send Ninja on this mission but he ain't black.

I'd go and show her some things but I am an everyday American so I'm not sure how interested she would be.

Also, has anyone ever noticed how much everyday Americans love Portlandia and Bob's Burgers?

You leave Bob's Burgers out of this!

Anyways chick shouldve just said white people. We all know it's what she meant.

It's not even subtle. They're the only group left once you remove minorities.

 

[gry60]

[/QUOTE]

he didn't lie what he saved, all Trump said is he's gonna make sure carrier doesn't leave. and he's gonna save jobs.


im almost certain once da regulatory landscape becomes more business friendly they'll save more.

This isn't going to stop automation.

aint gotta worry bout that for decades for small time manufacturing.

What do you mean?

The easier and more repetitive the task, the easier it is to automate it.

doesnt mean we anywhere jetsons age yet b.

small manufacturers aint gonna blue print robots to do tasks that a automation investment is gonna be cost prohibitive when da labor cost is going down with da incoming loosened regulatory landscape.

aint no off da shelf

There is such a thing as absorbing costs over the years, provided that after a certain period (let's say 10 years), the cumulative cost of automating equipment is lower than the salary + benefits paid to the amount of workers needed to keep the same level of production over the same period of time. This is actually the thing that is driving the widespread adoption of automation: Long term, automation IS cheaper.

Now if you're advocating lower salaries to keep human labor relevant, we're talking about staying in the race to bottom, and an overwhelming amount of government involvement WILL BE necessary to maintain the satisfaction level of the population and social stability considering that the price of goods and services is not going to get cheaper on its own.

What you're describing regarding regulations cannot happen in a peaceful and stable society. They are contradictory.