And as for Day Six January 26, 2017
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
This from Fred Kaplan in Slate is remarkable. A management echelon of the US State Department has resigned en masse, apparently they were told to resign last week by tribunes of the incoming Presidential team but then there were second thoughts… Not sure if they walked or were pushed today. It’s not clear from the article. As the piece notes having tried to impose a bill for the ‘wall’ on Mexico and with a Mexican President backing out of a meeting scheduled with Trump and now a trade war breaking out with its southern neighbour, (and reading the link to this article it seems that the consensus is that the US may be walking into significant issues of its own making should tariffs be imposed) T. May having arrived in the US, there’s a remarkably chaotic situation in relation to foreign affairs management across the Atlantic.
But if this next is correct then there’s also a remarkable lack of communication within the administration…
Mattis and the new CIA director, Mike Pompeo, even seem to have mustered the leverage to derail an executive order that Trump was set to sign on Wednesday resuming operations of CIA “black sites” and at least reviewing U.S. policy on torture, which was ended in 2006 and is currently banned by law. Just hours before the scheduled signing on Wednesday, the New York Times and Washington Post reported in detail on this “draft” order—which stunned Mattis and Pompeo, who had heard nothing about it. In his ABC interview, which was taped early that day, Trump confirmed that he would be signing this order along with two others on building the border wall and barring immigrants from certain Muslim countries. By the time he signed the orders, the one on black sites and torture wasn’t on the table.
Though Trump, as we know ‘feels’ that torture works.
This ‘new’ radical right politics, and we see not dissimilar dynamics in the UK in relation to Brexit, sure is different.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
There’s a certain opinion abroad which states that the GOP are allowing Trump free reign now, fully intending to pin blame on him for everything they want and get on their wishlist. Impeachment by Christmas?
It may all come down to who swallows whom first, the GOP establishment or the Tea Party/Alt Right fascists.
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I think Trump is probably too canny to let that happen – but what you suggest does sound plausible. Listening to some US podcasts this last week the general feeling was that Trump couldn’t give a rashers about the GOP. That’s telling in itself.
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Hitler didn’t come to power just on the back of the Nazi movement – there was the calculation by the Prussian aristocratic class and the big industrialist to use him to stave off a socialist government getting elected by the people. That he got out of their control wasn’t part of the plan
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Yep, could the GOP hem Trump in? Does it even realise the danger?
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-As long as Trump pursues a policy agenda that Republicans support, and which they played a large role in crafting, they will continue to shrug off his nuttier and more despotic tendencies-
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/why-republicans-wont-break-with-trump
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You’re right. A few years later, the Republicans also thought they could control Joseph Mccarthy, something that went on to bite them in the ass :
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1982/04/11/the-rise-and-fall-of-tail-gunner-joe/c25bcaea-32df-481a-bdd6-4c5828ab9579/?utm_term=.4ff47d1ba15e
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And May is pinning her hopes on a trade agreement with a Trumpist government in chaos with a depleted State Department.
She doesn’t have the civil servants to handle it (all the competent ones are working on Brexit and they’re swamped) and the State department has just lost it’s senior management in a political purge.
It’s gonna be great!
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The Trumpt attention to detail is spreading through his staff:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/27/white-house-drops-its-h-in-misspelling-of-theresa-mays-name
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And now the UK press have been delayed entering the presser because they submitted their DoBs in uk format – dd/mm/yy instead of mm/dd etc…
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If May’s performance so far is anything to go by, there will be a “deal” and “the deal”. We’ll get some of it on paper and the rest will be hidden.
For Trump, there could be strategic benefits to giving the UK a good deal. If post-Brexit Britain could be held up as successful, then others are more likely to leave. Smaller countries and blocs are easier to get trade deals with.
All of which also benefits Putin.
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Sure – there’ll be some announcement of something. It’ll be great.
But whether it helps Little Britain after Article 50 is signed, is an entirely other matter.
Legally, insofar as international applies to these people, I’m not sure Little Britain can sign trade agreements before they’ve left the EU.
Trumpism might possibly ‘work’ superficially economically in the short term, but they haven’t found their Albert Speer – instead they’re staffed by Goerings.
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‘ the single most striking thing about his matchlessly strange first week is how primitive, atavistic, and uncomplicatedly brutal Trump’s brand of authoritarianism is turning out to be….
Trump’s lies, and his urge to tell them, are pure Big Brother crude, however oafish their articulation….Trump is pure raging authoritarian id…
Orwell saw.. that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power…
the lunacy is a deliberate challenge to the whole larger idea of sanity…
There is no political cost for Trump in being seen to be incompetent, impulsive, shallow, inconsistent, and contemptuous of truth and reason. Those are his politics. This is how he achieved power.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/orwells-1984-and-trumps-america
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Yeah there’s a thuggish narcissism and – frankly – stupidity in all this.
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‘Ignorance is Strength’
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Oh look, there’s going to be a Trump-backed anti-abortion protest in
Washington DC.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38774702
No doubt the same people who were flooding the Internet comments and the letters pages of The Indo and Irish ‘Examiner with attacks on the Women’s March will be lauding this to the skies.
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The very same people.
I call it the ‘Myers Effect’.
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Meanshile, Salon think Conan O’Brien taking his show to Mexico will subvert Trump.
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Trump fails to mention the Jewish community in his Holocaust Remembrance Statement:
https://newrepublic.com/minutes/140192/doesnt-trumps-holocaust-remembrance-day-statement-mention-jews
On its own, this would be problematic. But bear in mind the prescence of Steve Bannon, a man who used to run a website with an aggressively anti-semitic comments section, and things look more sinister…
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http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/The-top-Jewish-officials-in-the-Trump-Administration-479769
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‘Trump is becoming more, not less, paranoid and extreme. …
a man not only incapable of coping with contradiction, but somewhat demented and not fully rational….
The growing belief that the leader of the US may be unhinged is becoming a seriously destabilising factor in the US and around the world.’-Patrick Cockburn.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/theresa-may-erdogan-turkey-trade-deal-brexit-human-rights-a7549636.html
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I’m genuinely concerned that the opposition to Trump sees this as a hearts and minds battle, and that, sooner or later, he’ll be caught out in a big enough lie, or that the GOP will be shamed into dumpimg him. Way beyond that already; he’s declared war and the rest of us are making fun of his grammar.
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Yes. Entirely agree. There’s far too much of ‘he’s awful, isn’t he?’ and as you say, hoping that he’ll go ‘too far’ when the real issue is ‘he’s awful, yeah, what are we going to do about it?’.
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People from designated countries already being sent back from US airports. Including, it would appear, green card holders. meanwhile T-May in Turkey meeting her next new best friend.
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“Parsi said it appeared that US border officials were deciding on whether green card holders could re-enter the US on a “case by case” basis which involved asking individuals about their political views.”
I expect a statement any moment from Niall O’Dowd saying an attack on one immigrant community is an attack on all.
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‘”I don’t want them here,” said Trump, following a ceremony honoring the swearing in of Defense Secretary James Mattis. “We will never forget the lessons of 9/11…”
The 9/11 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Lebanon. None of those countries are impacted by the visa ban.
http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/trump-muslim-ban/
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Well, for any naive enough to think Trump etc was business as usual now we know. But again what next? Slate had a good piece on how Senate Dems including Sanders have voted for Trump nominees – unlike their Republican opposite numbers tactics in recent years. It’s all screwed up.
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Trump’s executive orders on immigration will be challenged in the courts.
The House is solidly Republican. But Democrats in the Senate may filibuster Supreme Court appointees and some legislation.
There are checks and balances but Trump has state power. His schlock and awe blitzkrieg has the Democrats discombobulated.
Public opinion is important and Trump’s low ratings may perhaps go even lower as the craziness continues. This may affect how proposed legislation will fare in the Senate.
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‘Left-wing activists have found a collateral target in their efforts to resist President Trump — powerful Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer.
Enraged that the Senate Minority Leader has voted in favor of several cabinet nominees, a coalition of political, environmental and anti-poverty organizations led by the Working Families Party plan to protest near Schumer’s Park Slope home and in front of his Peekskill office this week.’
http://nypost.com/2017/01/28/chuck-schumer-under-fire-from-left-wing-activists/
“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”-Schumer.
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‘the immigration restrictions don’t apply to nations such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., and Turkey where Trump’s businesses have significant investments and real estate projects both completed and ongoing.’
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/trump-imposes-ban-on-travel-from-several-muslim-countries-halts-refugee-program/
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“Washington is responsible for its policy on refugees, Theresa May told reporters, when asked about Trump’s ban on people from certain countries seeking refuge in the US”
Speechless
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She is, if possible, and this is difficult for me to say, worse than M. Thatcher on certain scales.
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May has no spine. She just wants to stay on as PM and party leader for as long as possible and while her default position on most issues is right wing, I don’t think there’s a single principle she wouldn’t discard or adopt if it meant that she keeps her job.
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