TRUMP is seriously dangerous

[Belligerent Savant]

.

PANIC! At The Disco.

Don't worry, folks... Paste Magazine assured those in TERROR of the prospects for the next four years: TRUMP will never be President!

Keep that finger on the pulse, Paste.
(fire your editor)

No matter. It won't stop this thread from chugging along. In fact, a page count of 500 may actually open up a hole into our spacetime fabric, allowing a fleeting opportunity to reach back and rewrite history, pulling the levers in favor of the other beast.... I am quite confident, given the persistent energy displayed thus far in this epic thread, that we'll surely hit that 500 page mark soon enough.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/ ... eside.html

Don't Panic: Donald Trump Will Never, Ever Be President
By Ben Gran | May 4, 2016 | 2:50pm

A point-by-point breakdown of why Donald Trump is going to lose in November:

1. Most Americans Hate Trump

Donald Trump is very popular with the idiots, racists, gun-lovers and woman-haters who came out to vote in the Republican primaries, but he’s a terrible, TERRIBLE candidate for the general election. Most Americans hate Donald Trump. No seriously, check out the polls: Donald Trump is the most unpopular presidential candidate since David Duke in 1992. 67 percent of Americans have an “unfavorable” view of Donald Trump, while only 31 percent view him “favorably.” (Two percent of Americans have “no opinion” about Donald Trump. Wow. What must it be like to live like that? Who are these people? Are they all Zen Buddhist monks? I kind of want to find these people who have no opinion about Donald Trump and hang out with them—I need that kind of detachment and inner peace! Serenity now!)

Even aside from his big-picture unfavorable ratings, Donald Trump is especially unpopular with minority groups, women, and younger voters (a.k.a. “Millennials”). Trump is running an openly racist campaign, and the 2016 general election will have the most diverse electorate in history. Donald Trump has a long track record (not just during this campaign!) of saying horrible things about women, and women tend to vote at higher rates than men. Women have outvoted men in the past two presidential elections by a range of 4 million-7 million votes, and Trump is viewed negatively by 70 percent of women nationwide.

Simply put, women and minorities HATE Trump, and those are the groups of voters who will really decide the election in November. Plus, where are the “new voters” that Trump is really bringing to the general election? Trump has been really good at energizing the racist morons and losers who already came out to vote against the Black Guy in 2008 and 2012, but he’s not going to bring hordes of new voters to the polls in November. Lots more people are going to be strongly motivated to vote AGAINST Trump than to vote FOR him. Latino turnout is going to be off the charts. Millennials hate Trump too, and they’re the most populous generation in America now. And I’m no expert on what women want (just ask my wife! Ha ha!) but is it possible, ever so slightly, that some women might be particularly motivated to turn out to vote against a sexist bully while also, oh by the way, electing the First Woman President???

Basically, if Black turnout and Latino turnout stay anywhere near the levels where they were in 2012, and if women turn out to vote against a man who openly despises them, and if those zany Millennials can stop Snapchatting nude photos to each other long enough to actually show up at the ballot box, Trump is toast.

2. Trump’s Message is Pessimistic and Whiny

Trump’s message is basically this: “America is a bunch of losers. We don’t win at anything anymore. We don’t have a country anymore. We’re getting killed on trade and taken advantage of by loser countries like Mexico and China.” (The idea that America is “losing” to Mexico and China might be news to Mexico and China, both of which have horrible problems: Mexico’s horrifying drug violence, China’s plummeting economic fortunes. Lots of people in those countries would be happy to have America’s problems right now.)

Trump is trying to appeal to America by insulting America. His overarching message has no real basis in reality, for a country with low unemployment, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average is near 18,000 and which has economic strengths that most of the rest of the world would envy. In fact, Trump’s anti-trade message is likely a non-starter with most of the country; Gallup polls indicate that 58 percent of Americans view free trade as an “opportunity,” while only 34% see trade as a “threat.”

Trump’s message works for angry white racists, paranoid Fox News viewers, and other people who are at high risk of dying from an accidental self-inflicted gunshot or mishandling fireworks, but this message of self-hating defeatism and American decline does not match the overall mood of the country. He’s telling America that they’re losers and that their country is dying—but this message of defeat and decline is not a winning formula for the general election. Usually, the most optimistic presidential candidate wins. Americans don’t like their presidential candidates to dwell on negativity and problems.

3. Trump Is Not Remotely Ready for This

Trump does not have the character or temperament for winning a presidential election. Running a nationwide presidential campaign is the ultimate test of a person’s mettle, courage and intellect, and Trump is an insecure, thin-skinned man-baby who has never been in a real fight in his life. He’s not going to be tough enough to handle the scrutiny and the pressure; he’s never been tested like this before.

And sure, he won the Republican nomination against the most incompetent opposition in political history, but that was a cakewalk compared to what’s waiting for him in the general election campaign. The Republicans barely attacked Trump during the primary—Jeb Bush was too much of a milquetoast to stand up to Trump during the debates, and he spent most of his Super PAC war chest attacking Marco Rubio instead of Trump. The Republican clown car was too crowded for the field to narrow soon enough to establish a clear alternative to Trump, and by the time Cruz and Kasich tried to do their pathetic “Stop Trump” alliance, Trump had unstoppable momentum.

Democrats are licking their lips in anticipation, and the full offensive is about to be launched. He’s going to be hit from every direction with the full force of the Democratic Party and all of its various Super PACs as they barrage him with brutal attack ads. Hell, Democrats won’t even have to write ad scripts—they can just show unedited footage of Trump saying incredibly racist, sexist, stupid things.

And that’s before Trump’s inevitable meltdown during the debates, when he gets angered by the relentless spotlight, and whines about the “unfair” questions, and can’t contain his misogynistic contempt for Hillary, and comes across on national television looking like America’s Worst Sexist Boss. (I hope Megyn Kelly moderates every single debate.) Who knows how insane Trump will become by the end of this? Remember when the stress of campaigning drove John McCain to choose Sarah Palin as his running mate?

4. The “Smart” Republicans Didn’t Want This to Happen

Donald Trump’s own party doesn’t really want him to win. Sure, the disorderly rabble of the GOP primary voters have given Trump a plurality of the popular vote and a majority of convention delegates, but most of the real power behind the Republican Party—the big donors and establishment insiders and elected officials—are hoping for Trump to lose and then quietly go away, without permanently alienating Trump’s voters from the GOP. They’re offering up the 2016 election as a sacrificial lamb in the hope that they can avoid having Trump permanently destroy their party, and then regroup in 2020 with a better nominee and a more stable coalition.

Because here’s the thing: the same country that just twice elected Barack Obama is not about to turn around and elect a racist demagogue. America has many flaws, but American voters tend to avoid making the absolute biggest, most historically damaging screw-ups; we tend to get the big things right when it matters most. We chose FDR instead of Fascism. We chose Al Gore instead of George W. Bush (but the Supreme Court let Bush have the White House anyway). We chose Obama instead of Palin. The media is going to do their best to depict the 2016 election as being closer than it really is, because the media’s in the business of selling a great story, and “Big Loser Predictably Loses Big” is not a great story.

Donald Trump’s nomination is a sign of the Republican Party’s absolute failure and weakness, not a commentary on America’s strength. It is to the eternal discredit of the Republican Party’s that they have embarrassed the country by nominating a man like Donald Trump. But he’s not going to win in November, because he doesn’t have the votes! No matter what the angry white GOP primary voters think, America as a whole—this complex, multiracial, Information Age, economically resilient, World’s Greatest Democracy of a country—is not going to elect an angry orange clown. Donald Trumpmight do a lot of damage to America’s political culture, but he will never be president.

[seemslikeadream]

James FallowsVerified account
‏@JamesFallows James Fallows Retweeted Financial Times
It is hard to overstate the bottomless pig-ignorance & recklessness, of this step.
Presidents from Nixon onward had careful PRC/ROC protocol

“What has happened in the last 48 hours is not a shift. These are major pivots in foreign policy w/out any plan. That’s how wars start,” Mr. Murphy wrote. “It’s probably time we get a Secretary of State nominee on board. Preferably w experience. Like, really really soon.”

Trump’s Phone Is a National Security Threat

By Joshua Keating


The first publicly known phone call between a U.S. president-elect and a leader of Taiwan since 1979 took place on Friday when Donald Trump accepted a call from President Tsai Ying-wen.

The U.S. has not formally recognized Taiwan since re-establishing relations with the People’s Republic of China that year. The phone call could infuriate the Chinese government, which considers Taiwan part of China and has taken extreme umbrage at U.S. support for Taiwan in the past.

The Financial Times writes that “it is not clear if the Trump transition team intended the conversation to signal a broader change in U.S. policy towards Taiwan,” which generously implies that the Trump transition team has any idea at all what it’s signaling. It’s important to remember that Trump is not taking the State Department briefings that presidents-elect usually have before these calls and doesn’t seem to have any regard for how his statements will be interpreted.

News of this unprecedented call comes a day after Trump caused a befuddled reaction from traditional American ally India when he reportedly fawned over Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during another phone call. Then, earlier on Friday, the president-elect reportedly invited Rodrigo “Asia’s Donald Trump” Duterte to the White House, despite the fact that the Philippine president has called President Obama a “son of a whore” and encouraged death squads to kill thousands of drug dealers. (A Duterte aide described this as an invitation, but it also seems possible it was just one of the casual “come by and see me some time” lines Trump has been using on other leaders and Duterte interpreted it as something more formal.)

Making this Taiwan news all the worse, the Trump organization has reportedly been in discussions about building a series of luxury resorts and hotels there, so this could potentially be one of the many areas where he could use American foreign policy to advance his own business interests. The Philippines, which recently named a Trump-linked developer as its special envoy to the United States, is another one. A government official receiving gifts from foreign governments is a violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, and there’s only one potential remedy for such an abuse, scholars have said.

In any event, this is all very dangerous. Americans may have gotten used to the idea, by now, that Trump is mostly just winging it, but foreign governments will read his ad libs as official and deliberate U.S. policy positions. At this rate, Trump is on track to spark a major international crisis before he even takes office. If there’s anyone within his transition team that’s at all concerned about protecting national and international security over the next four years, it’s imperative that they do two things as soon as humanly possible: 1. Appoint a secretary of state who has a baseline knowledge of international affairs that Trump will actually listen to, and 2. Take away his phone now.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... aking.html

All right, here's your 'seriously dangerous.'

http://fortune.com/2016/12/02/donald-trump-taiwan/

Donald Trump Probably Just Made China Really Mad

by Katie Reilly @katiemacreilly DECEMBER 2, 2016, 6:25 PM EST

President-elect Donald Trump on Friday spoke with the president of Taiwan—a move that breaks with nearly 40 years of diplomatic tradition, amid reports that the Trump Organization is looking to expand there.

The phone call with President Tsai Ing-wen threatens to upset China, which has a long-running dispute with the self-governing island. The United States broke ties with Taiwan in 1979, and no president or president-elect is believed to have spoken with a leader of Taiwan since then.

The call was first reported by the Financial Times, and Trump’s transition confirmed in a statement that he had spoken with Ing-wen, who congratulated Trump on his election victory.

“During the discussion, they noted the close economic, political, and security ties exists between Taiwan and the United States,” the transition said. “President-elect Trump also congratulated President Tsai on becoming President of Taiwan earlier this year.”

"Wahhhh they called me...they called me wahhh wahhhhhh...."

Trump wants to expand business empire to Taiwan, creating another potential conflict of interest
http://shanghaiist.com/2016/11/18/trump ... expand.php

The controversial legal theory that could get Trump sued
A doctrine embraced by president-elect's anti-immigration backers could be key to challenging his business conflicts.
By JOSH GERSTEIN 11/29/16 05:04 AM EST
10_donald_trump_25_ap_1160.jpg
Liberals and some conservative critics of Donald Trump’s business ties are pointing to the same theory as a key to getting the issue in front of a federal court, if Trump doesn’t completely divest himself of his business holdings. | AP Photo

A legal doctrine embraced by President-elect Donald Trump’s allies in the anti-immigration movement could open the door for a legal challenge to Trump’s ongoing business ties with foreign governments.

Under the theory, competitors to Trump’s U.S. hotels or even some of his Trump-branded properties overseas could claim their businesses are being hurt as foreign nations seek to curry favor with Trump.

Many conservative legal scholars contend that the approach, known as “competitor standing,” undermines the Constitution’s limits on the powers of the courts.

However, the doctrine has been repeatedly embraced by advocates for stricter immigration policies, including a group affiliated with Trump backer and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and by Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The Immigration Reform Law Institute, which says it opposes mass immigration, has leveled the competitor standing argument repeatedly in recent years to help plaintiffs get standing to block immigration and labor policies alleged to put American workers at a disadvantage.

"It has kinds of mixed results," institute attorney John Miano said. "It normally works more than it doesn't work, but then the courts sometimes make up reasons on the fly ...You don't know what they're going to make up to deny standing."

Now, liberals and some conservative critics of Trump’s business ties are pointing to the same theory as a key to getting the issue in front of a federal court, if Trump doesn’t completely divest himself of his business holdings. They say a competitor's lawsuit could be used as a way to enforce the Constitution's "foreign emolument" clause, which prohibits U.S. officials from accepting gifts or benefits from foreign governments without permission from Congress.

"It's critical," former Obama White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen said. "You know how nobody ever heard of the foreign emolument clause and now there are 3 POLITICO stories on it every day?...Competitor standing is going to be the same."

A lawsuit seeking to enforce the Constitutional provision would face an uphill battle, but it would make sense to launch such a challenge through a direct competitor facing potential harm from foreign government's benevolence towards Trump's businesses, legal experts said.

"Competitors have remarkable success getting standing to claim their competitors are being regulated too leniently," said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Siegel, a former Justice Department appellate lawyer. "If anyone could have success, a competitor would be a good choice."

American investors in projects in competition with Trump businesses anywhere in the world might level legal challenges, but one obvious flashpoint for such litigation is Trump's brand-new luxury hotel in Washington. Trump promoted the hotel at events there on two occasions during the campaign. Some diplomats are considering directing business to the hotel in order to curry favor with the incoming president and his aides, The Washington Post reported earlier this month.

Some lawyers say Washington is a relatively friendly venue for a business looking to press such arguments. "If you want to bring a case on competitor standing, you're best off bringing it in the D.C. Circuit," Miano said.

But the challenges facing such a suit would still be daunting. For one thing, judges might demand concrete proof or details of how a competitor is suffering direct harm as a result of the foreign-government-business going to Trump.

"Unless someone came up with a really strong argument that they're being hurt by this, judges are going to say you need more than speculation, more than just anonymous quotes," said University of Cincinnati law professor Brad Mank. "If there's any way to get rid of a case involving really messy factual issues ...I think judges would want to avoid the case."

And there are other potential pitfalls for such a suit.

The Supreme Court has indicated that competitors, environmentalists and others can have standing to sue when their injury is something the law in question was intended to prevent or ameliorate. But the foreign emoluments clause isn't a law, it's part of the Constitution, so it's unclear how judges would apply that principle, known as the "zone of interests."

"I'm sure that if a hotel in Washington said foreign diplomats shouldn't be able to stay at the new Trump hotel, the government would at least argue that that's not what the emoluments clause is there for, that it's there not for protecting competition and business interests, but to protect all of us from having the problems caused by conflicts of interest of government officials," Siegel said.

Since the Reagan administration, the competitor-standing theory has fueled a series of immigration-related challenges brought by labor unions, including bricklayers and longshoremen complaining about competition from foreign nationals in the U.S. More recent cases have been filed by American tech workers objecting to various labor and immigration policies allowing U.S. employers to hire foreigners.

Perhaps the most colorful recent competitor standing case involved Americans who formerly worked as shepherds or goatherds.

A judge threw out their challenge to Labor Department guidance that eased the process for hiring foreigners to do such work in the U.S. However, the D.C. Circuit overturned that decision in 2014, ruling that the American workers had competitor standing and that the guidance letters were improperly issued. The appeals court panel's decision was unanimous: two Democratic appointees joined one Republican appointee in backing the herders.

In addition to litigation, there are a couple of other options to enforce the foreign emolument clause drawing new scrutiny as a result of Trump's global business empire.

One is impeachment, which seems remote. Another, put forward by former Obama White House Counsel Bob Bauer has suggested that Congress could seek to regulate Trump's foreign business ties by legislation, but it's unclear whether lawmakers could reach a consensus on such a measure or whether Trump would sign it.

Eisen acknowledges that it's far from clear how the courts would come out on a competitor lawsuit, but he said he's still hoping Trump will try to head off the question by placing his assets in a blind trust run by an independent trustee, not his children.

"I'm still personally hopeful the president elect will avert many future competitor standing stories by doing a true blind trust," the former White House lawyer said. "If he doesn't, it's going to be litigation boom times in competitor standing and people will have all kinds of motivations to bring those cases."
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/t ... ory-231899

[seemslikeadream]

While the world is tackling corruption, Trump's America is taking a step backward
With the dawn of a new era due to start next year with Trump’s inauguration, his administration is unlikely to sustain America’s recent leadership of global attempts to clean up politics and business

Laurence Cockcroft

There are many conversations taking place about why the US voted for Donald Trump and the UK voted for Brexit. The extent to which the electorate feels that the governing elite is “corrupt” has been overlooked, though ironically it was picked up by Trump himself with his promise to “drain the swamp”. As many as 70 per cent of EU citizens and US citizens consider their own political parties to be “corrupt” – a broad term which is based on a general sense that leaders are out for themselves rather than society as a whole.

But politically speaking, the US has used the international system to fight corruption over the last 40 years. President Obama made constant efforts to regulate the system of political lobbying, while seeking to extend the anti-bribery principles of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to first all OECD members and later all G20 countries. With the dawn of a new era due to start next year with Trump’s inauguration, how likely is it his administration will sustain that process? The short answer is unlikely, given his history – several bankruptcies, more than 30 court cases against him and his refusal to place his assets in a blind trust.

There are five main kinds of corruption. First, political finance. While all EU countries have fairly tight campaign finance laws they are often disregarded. Recent scandals involving the PP in Spain and the UMP in France match New Labour’s record in soliciting loans to the party to avoid the very rules it introduced under the Political Parties and Elections Act of 2000. In the US, “Citizens United” – the Supreme Court decision of 2010 – unravelled past attempts to limit corporate contributions to campaign finance and heralded a new era of “paying for policy”. The decision was heavily criticised by Bernie Sanders, and more modestly by Hillary Clinton, but it is highly unlikely that Trump’s nominees for the Supreme Court will seek to roll it back.


Second, the lobbying industry. Political lobbying has escalated to the point where it keeps up to 100,000 people busy in Washington despite the effort by Senator McCain and the then Senator Obama to control it. In Europe, there are approximately 10,000 lobbying organisations registered in Brussels. Trump’s alleged rejection of potential senior government leaders as having had no association with the lobbying industry is again very unlikely to go far: the funding of Congressional candidates means they have a symbiotic relationship with the lobbying industry.

Third, although the finance sector and the crash of 2008 has been subjected to an unparalleled array of analyses almost none of these have been prepared to identify corruption as a root cause. But the successful prosecution for “reckless lending” in the sub prime market, the clearly misleading ratings by the ratings agencies and the deliberate manipulation of the interest rate and forex markets were certainly wider symptoms of a corrupt system. The extraordinary creation of unsolicited accounts within Wells Fargo was another. Yet both the ECB’s Single Supervisory Mechanism and the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority have still failed to address the real issue of a corrupt banking culture.

In the US, Senators Sanders and Warren have sought to expose the failure of the major US regulators to focus on the same issue. Surprisingly some in Trump’s circle – most notably Steve Bannon – are on record as suggesting that some banking CEOs should have gone to jail. But the identity of likely candidates for Treasury Secretary belies this threat.

The interface between the on-shore banking sector and “secrecy jurisdictions” which facilitate shell companies was dramatically exposed in a series of leaks culminating in the Panama Papers. Estimates on the scale of funds held in these jurisdictions – including Switzerland – indicate a minimum of $10 trillion. The complicity of governments such as the UK in fostering this network is well established; less publicised is the role of several states in the US – notably Montana, Wyoming and Delaware – in facilitating the formation of shell companies on an automated basis on a huge scale. This regime, under threat but still very much alive, is one of the largest incentives to corruption by both corrupt political leaders and organised crime, as well as deliberate “transfer pricing” by multinational companies.

Obama has proved unable to overcome the objections of congressional representatives to making these arrangements transparent. It seems unlikely that a President who needs to hide his own affairs will push for transparency at state level.

Fourth, international bribery by western companies – supposedly a problem of the past following the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention of 1977 – continues to reflect low standards of business in emerging markets. Recent fines imposed on GSK in both the US and China and on Walmart in the US confirm the scale of the problem, even for blue-chip companies. Only four countries can be (optimistically) described as “compliant” with the Convention – measured by the number of cases under investigation – and it is clear that 25 out of 27 EU countries are far from diligent in taking action against their bribe-paying national champions. Trump, meanwhile, has described the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 as a “horrible act”.

Fifth, self-congratulation over the Paris Agreement on climate change has disguised the fact that corruption threatens the control of carbon emissions. In the US, lobbying by powerful corporations such as Koch Industries has weakened the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which is responsible for setting emission targets. While the Koch brothers did not back Trump they indirectly backed Congressional representatives who form a front hostile to the EPA – the key agent of the US government. Trump, as a non-believer in climate change, will certainly line up with the forces seeking to limit the power of the EPA.

Trump is a danger to the forces at work against corruption across the world, not only in the USA. His election occurs at a time when strong forces in the developing world such as Brazil, India and South Africa are embracing the need to address corruption as a threat to the nation state. For the West, led by the US, to step backwards on its commitment to fight corruption would be fatal to the global anti-corruption effort.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/don ... 52531.html

Can Trump be checked and balanced?
By contributors | Dec. 3, 2016 |

By Ulrike G. Theuerkauf | ( OpenDemocracy.net) | – –
The US Presidential system has been much heralded as a prime example of horizontal accountability, but there is no guarantee how Donald Trump will be kept in check.
The US presidential system has been much heralded for its system of checks and balances. But Trump’s victory has given rise to a number of questions about the future of US democracy and world politics. The most important of these questions is arguably this: what checks and balances in the US political system will Trump face during his presidency? Based purely on the institutional setup of the US presidential system, how much damage can Trump cause? The answer, unfortunately, is quite a bit.
For a long time, the US presidential system has been regarded as a textbook example of horizontal accountability (i.e. accountability between government institutions) for its famous system of checks and balances [1]. A standard question in introductory courses to Comparative Politics asks students to assess “who is more powerful: the US President or the UK Prime Minister?”. Students are expected to distinguish the international from the domestic sphere, and to discuss how the US President is seen as more powerful in the international arena, while the UK Prime Minister has greater because less constraint in domestic politics. Elements in the institutional design of the US political system that ensure more checks and balances than that of the UK include:
• US federalism with a powerful second chamber of parliament (the Senate) in contrast to a devolved but unitary British state with a second chamber of parliament (the House of Lords) that wields more symbolic than actual political power [2];
united_states_capitol_-_west_front
h/t Wikipedia
• a powerful US Supreme Court that is an important political player in its own right [3], in contrast to a still young British Supreme Court whose powers are inevitably curtailed by parliamentary sovereignty ;
• the fact that the US President, unlike the UK Prime Minister, is not allowed to initiate legislation; and
• the mutually independent relationship between executive and legislature in the presidential system of the USA that stands in contrast to the mutually dependent relationship between executive and legislature in the parliamentary system of the UK. This means two things: the UK government, unlike its US counterpart, can dissolve parliament before the official end of its term in office (through a vote of confidence). Conversely, the UK parliament, unlike its US counterpart, also can remove the government from power before the official end of its term in office (through a vote of no confidence) [4]. Removing the executive – or more specifically: the President as the head of the executive – from power in the US presidential system is only possible through the process of impeachment which, unlike the vote of no confidence in parliamentary systems, is a legal procedure that can only be used if the president is accused of a criminal act.
In terms of checks and balances, the argument in favour of the mutually independent relationship between executive and legislature in presidential systems like that of the USA is that, since government and parliament do not depend on each other to remain in office, they may be more willing to hold each other to account [5]. Yet there is a flipside to this argument, as well as to all the other points mentioned above.
As Linz discussed in his Perils of Presidentialism [6], the mutual independence of executive and legislature in presidential systems has the downside of rigidity: the president, once in power, will stay there for the entire term of office unless there is cause for impeachment. This process itself is very complicated and no president in US history has been removed from office through impeachment so far (Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached by the US House of Representatives, but acquitted by the Senate.) Thus, once Trump is sworn in, it is very unlikely that he will not complete his four-year presidency.
Also, while the US President does not have the de jure power to initiate legislation, this can also be circumvented de facto if a member of Congress proposes a bill in his stead. This is not an uncommon occurrence in the US political system [7] and, given that the President’s ability to influence the content of legislation rises under unified government [8], the current Republican majority in Senate and House of Representatives could give Trump considerable sway over influencing the legislative agenda.
Similarly, if, as is the case right now, a majority of Senators are from the same party as the President, there may be less incentives to “check and balance” the President, depending on how much loyalty they feel to Trump and the party line he embodies. This too could weaken the degree of horizontal accountability provided through federalism and the powerful second chamber of parliament.
Finally, Trump‘s nomination of the next Supreme Court Justice will almost certainly tilt the balance of power among Supreme Court judges in favour of the right, which is likely to influence its voting and vetoing behaviour in that direction.
Ultimately, and just like anywhere else in the world, the degree to which legislature, executive and judiciary hold each other to account in the US presidential system can shift depending on who occupies which political office. In this sense, checks and balances are never set in stone, as the level of horizontal accountability may differ depending on the balance of power between political parties and – especially in the current situation of a unified government – the willingness of members from the Republican Party itself to keep Trump “checked and balanced”.
Even though the focus of this article is on horizontal accountability, it’s also important to remember that vertical accountability (i.e.the manner in which citizens hold governments to account, not only through elections but also civil society action) is of equal importance for democracy to remain intact. Calls to stay mobilised against Trump illustrate this.
The US presidential system has long been hailed as an exception to the rule that presidential democracies are famously vulnerable to democratic breakdown [9]. It would, however, be foolish to ignore that a populist leader with the support of his party can cause some real damage to US democracy if he is not kept in check.
Ulrike G. Theuerkauf is Lecturer in Politics and International Development at the University of East Anglia.
http://www.juancole.com/2016/12/trump-c ... anced.html

[Belligerent Savant]

.

A perspective on the 'TRUMP' phenomenon (and related BREXIT/other looming referendums in the EU):

[seemslikeadream]

Where Does Trump Get His News?
BuzzFeed News analyzed all the links Donald Trump tweeted since he launched his presidential campaign to determine where the president-elect gets his news.

posted on Dec. 3, 2016, at 10:39 a.m.
Charlie Warzel

BuzzFeed News Reporter
Lam Thuy Vo


The sites Trump has tweeted since announcing his campaign in summer 2015 mapped by frequency. BuzzFeed News / Lam Thuy Vo
Since winning the presidential election, Donald Trump has reportedly skipped out on the majority of his intelligence briefings; this past Sunday, Trump made headlines after sharing false information blaming his loss of the popular vote on mass voter fraud — a claim previously reported by the conspiracy news site Infowars. It’s been widely reported that Trump is an obsessive consumer of cable news — he has himself admitted to receiving at least a portion of his military advice from “the shows.” But, pundits and chyrons aside, relatively little is known about where the next president will find the news and commentary that might color his time in office. What exactly is Trump’s media diet?
What we know of Trump’s relationship to the modern internet suggests the president-elect rarely browses it himself. Trump campaign press secretary Hope Hicks told GQ he relies largely on Google News printouts from staffers and sparingly reads his own email. And a 2007 deposition suggests that Trump doesn’t use a computer or carry a smartphone during the daytime hours, and often dictates daytime tweets to his assistants.
To better understand Trump’s media consumption, BuzzFeed News turned to the president-elect’s largest source of public proclamations and shared news: Twitter. While Trump’s media consumption and methods appear opaque and unconventional, the stories he chooses to share with his now 16 million–plus followers offer a unique window into the news and commentary that catch his eye.
All the Sites Trump Has Tweeted: An Interactive Chart
BuzzFeed News reviewed 26,234 of Trump’s 34,062 tweets, which we received through the Twitter API and developer Brendan Brown, who has archived Trump’s tweets beyond what is accessible via the API (a stream of data that includes information like tweet text, time, and date). We filtered that data down to the 2,687 hyperlinks tweeted by Trump’s personal Twitter account since he announced his candidacy in June 2015. By programmatically expanding the shortened links in his tweets we were able to group and count them to generate a rudimentary portrait of the news and opinion he publicizes and, presumably, consumes.
A few things to note before the data: The analyzed tweets were broadcast between June 1, 2015 — the month Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign — and Nov. 17, 2016. The majority of Twitter.com links tweeted by Trump’s account were retweets. Sites that were categorized as “media” were broadly defined as organizations that publish content regularly. Campaign-related links include links to President-elect Trump’s own website as well as links to sites related to the GOP.
(Click to zoom.)

Sources: TrumpTwitterArchive.com, Twitter.com/@realdonaldtrump
(You’ll find a downloadable spreadsheet of Trump’s tweets from June 16, 2015, to Nov. 17, 2016, here.)
Our analysis revealed a media ecosystem that appears to largely reinforce and affirm the views publicly expressed by Trump and his closest advisers. The news stories Trump tweets share several characteristics: 1) They often favor sensationalism over facts and reporting; 2) They frequently echo direct quotes from Trump himself or his closest advisers; and 3) They routinely malign his enemies and vindicate his most controversial opinions.
When it comes to news sources, the stories tweeted by Trump (and the staffers who sometimes manage his Twitter account) suggest that he is unfazed by news of questionable accuracy, likely to rely on hyper-partisan news, and apt to promote mainstream news only when it validates his opinions. While politicians from both sides of the aisle use their Twitter accounts to share content that furthers their agendas, Trump’s reliance on sources and stories of questionable accuracy stands out both in frequency and in engagement. The stories shared by Trump’s account throughout his campaign suggest the president-elect has constructed a powerful online filter bubble that largely flatters and confirms that which he claims to be true.


Using his tweeted links as a guide, Trump’s favorite information source appears to be Twitter itself. Nearly half of the hyperlinks shared by Trump’s account during his presidential campaign come from Twitter URLs. Many show Trump retweeting his fans, including — according to Fortune — at least 75 retweets of white supremacists and a false claim about gun violence demographics. Trump’s other most frequently tweeted links are to his Facebook page (266 links) and his website (201 links — most referring to statements, event schedules, and voter information).

During campaign season Trump shared more Breitbart links to his more than 15 million followers than any other news organization (in August Breitbart chairman Steve Bannon joined Trump’s campaign as CEO and will enter the West Wing in January as Trump’s senior White House adviser). While Trump also shares links from mainstream sites — his second most shared site during the time period analyzed was the Washington Post — Trump’s preferred content seems to be right-leaning, hyper-partisan sites and opinion blogs including Daily Caller (21 links), Newsmax (18), the Gateway Pundit (14 links), the Conservative Treehouse (11), the Political Insider (1), Conservative Tribune (1), Infowars (1), newsninja2012.com (5), and westernjournalism.com (1). Trump’s Twitter account also shares links from a number of obscure personal blogs, like agent54nsa.blogspot.com, which hosted a joke post about a fake game show about Monica Lewinsky hosted by a character named “Stink Fartinmale.”

Trump rarely shares the kind of flagrantly concocted fake news stories promoted by Macedonian teens. Yet the president-elect does seem to have an affinity for factually murky stories bolstered by opinion, circumstantial evidence, and hearsay that appear generally supportive of his most controversial statements. Frequently throughout the presidential campaign Trump tweeted stories that seemed to back up his claims that “thousands” of Muslims cheered from New Jersey rooftops as the World Trade Center towers fell on 9/11, despite no evidence from police or confirmed news reports. Other Trump-tweeted stories include a Breitbart piece with the headline, “Trump 100% Vindicated: CBS Reports ‘Swarm’ On Rooftops Celebrating 9/11” and a New York Post piece about Orlando Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen allegedly celebrating on 9/11.
These stories prove slippery in their presentation by Trump or in their framing of the facts they claim to report. The Post headline, despite Trump’s insistence, does little to bolster his claim — Mateen was a teen in school in Florida and not in New Jersey, where Trump claimed the cheering took place. And while the Breitbart headline suggests “swarms” of cheering Muslims, the video evidence — in the form of a Sept. 16, 2001, local newscast — shows only anecdotal evidence of cheering (framed as such by the newscasters). The reference to a “swarm” overstates the anecdote which notes that a group of eight individuals possibly of Muslim faith were arrested in New Jersey after 9/11.


Like a number of the stories Trump shares via Twitter, strong headlines and flimsy evidence are touted as vindication of a controversial claim, but leave the vigilant reader with the daunting task of proving a negative.
BuzzFeed News’ analysis shows that, despite Trump’s repeated claims of a deeply biased mainstream media, the president-elect shares news stories from a high number of traditional media outlets. Throughout the course of the campaign, Trump frequently tweeted from mainstream organizations like the Washington Post (26), New York Post (22), The Hill (21), Politico (15), CNN (12), USA Today (10), Bloomberg (7), Forbes (7), CBS News (6), ABC News (5), and NBC News (5) among others. In nearly every instance, the stories shared were news items about polls that favored Trump (many from the primaries) or negative articles about Hillary Clinton — many of them aggregations of WikiLeaks emails.
It’s hard not to look at the the frequency and demeanor of Trump’s tweeting of mainstream outlets and not see a desire for validation from the nation’s biggest traditional newsrooms. When covered positively, Trump’s response is effusive — in one response to an article from the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, Trump remarks “it is a true person of character that can change his opinion & do what is right.”
But such accolades are often supplanted — if not eradicated — at the first sign of adversarial coverage. In July 2015, for example, Trump fired off a tweet praising a “great article” in Politico Magazine by Rich Lowry. Nine months later, Trump’s tune had changed. “Wow, @Politico is in total disarray with almost everybody quitting,” Trump tweeted. “Good news — bad, dishonest journalists!”


It’s worth noting that BuzzFeed News’ analysis of Trump’s shared links suggests that when the president-elect does tweet a report from a mainstream publication, it is often to share positive news about himself or a report that supports his positions. Trump, for example, was quick to share a Slate story touting polling data on his own leadership qualities — he shared the story twice in two days — adding an “I agree!” endorsement. But beyond one other nonscientific online poll, Trump did not share any of the more than 4,400 Slate stories containing his name — many of them adversarial in their coverage — published on the site within the past year.
Analysis of the links Trump shares on Twitter charts a media echo chamber that is often literal. Stories shared by the president-elect were frequently sympathetic recaps of his campaign rallies, composed mostly of quotes from Trump himself containing unsupported claims. Of the 2,687 links Trump tweeted since beginning his campaign, the story with the highest number of combined likes and retweets (53,700) comes from LifeZette, a politics site whose editor-in-chief is pro-Trump political commentator Laura Ingraham (and who is reportedly on Trump’s short list for White House press secretary). The story’s only quotes come from the stump speech in which Trump first pledged to “drain the swamp” in Washington. Similarly, links tweeted by Trump’s account highlight praise from those in Trump’s inner circle. In one tweet from July, Trump shared a CNBC op-ed suggesting that America “need[s] a tough negotiator like Trump to fix US trade policy,” a post authored in part by Trump policy adviser Peter Navarro.
BuzzFeed News’ analysis of Trump’s media universe shows the president-elect isn’t immune from sharing more blatant misinformation. Throughout the campaign Trump’s Twitter account shared two separate stories from prntly.com, a site that used to sell business cards and postcards and now calls itself “America’s Top News Site.” Prntly has been described by the Washington Post as “fake news” and is run by a former ecstasy dealer from Albany. According to the Post, Prntly has allegedly made up its own sources, lifted copy from other sites and pawned it off as “exclusive,” and allows users to sign up and write their own news stories without any vetting.


The two Prntly stories Trump has shared — both since removed from the site — include claims that Trump’s appeal with Rust Belt voters is higher than any candidate since FDR (no citation or evidence) and that Trump successfully pressured Ford to move a Mexican plant to Ohio (incorrect and disproven by numerous outlets including the Washington Post). Similarly, Trump has shared news articles from hyper-partisan and frequently nonfactual blogs like Powdered Wig Society, which, recently lamented, “WaPo put out a list of fake news sites and Powdered Wig is not included. Dammit! We shall endeavor to try harder.” The blog post shared by Trump cites Prntly as its source and refers to Hillary Clinton as “Hitlery” Clinton.
Frequently, stories shared by Trump from hyper-partisan outlets sacrifice facts for convenience of narrative. One Gateway Pundit piece retweeted by Trump this past August alleged that a “Democrat Fire Marshal Turn[ed] THOUSANDS of Trump Supporters Away at Columbus Rally.” The tweet helped to stir up a micro-controversy among Trump supporters of unfair bias and toward the Republican candidate. A follow-up article from the Columbus Dispatch corrected the number, reporting only a few hundred were turned away and that convention center officials capped the rally at 1,000 — a number the Trump campaign agreed to beforehand.
Trump’s Twitter account is just one part of the president-elect’s information diet, but it’s an instructive one. With its broad reach comes considerable influence; a BuzzFeed News analysis found that Trump’s average news tweet receives about 10,265 engagements (a combination of retweets and favorites) with a median engagement of 4,729, while his top news tweets garnered well above 53,000 total engagements.
Throughout the campaign, Trump’s engagement from his account outperformed Hillary Clinton’s substantially. In the three months leading up the election day (Aug. 9 to Nov. , Clinton’s account tweeted 2,449 times with an average of 3,964 retweets; Trump tweeted 587 times with an average of 10,863 retweets. And many of Trump’s biggest non-news tweets pulled in hundreds of thousands of total engagements. Thanks to Trump’s facility with Twitter and his uncanny ability to use it to simultaneously bypass and program traditional media, the account has been a uniquely powerful megaphone for his candidacy — and an unconventional preface for his presidency to come.


https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-stati ... 60&no-auto

[8bitagent]

[seemslikeadream]

SATIRE FROM THE BOROWITZ REPORT
OBAMA POLITELY ASKS TRUMP TO WAIT UNTIL INAUGURATION BEFORE DESTROYING WORLD
By Andy Borowitz , 10:10 A.M.


WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In an Oval Office meeting that White House aides described as “friendly but strained,” President Obama politely asked President-elect Donald Trump to wait until he is officially sworn in to begin destroying the world.

According to the aides, Obama said that, while he understood that Trump was eager to create potentially cataclysmic diplomatic crises around the world, tradition dictated that he wait until he is actually President to do so.

Obama cited the example of George W. Bush, who waited until he took the oath of office before wreaking destruction on a massive scale.

“There’ll be loads of time for you to do stuff like that,” Obama reportedly said.

During the meeting, which lasted nearly an hour, Obama repeatedly asked Trump “if he understood what was being said to him,” the aides reported.

After the meeting, Trump spoke briefly with reporters but cut the session short to “jump on a phone call with Kim Jong-un.”

“He’s a terrific guy, he’s doing just a terrific job over there,” Trump said, of the North Korean leader.

Obama did not take questions from reporters but was later seen sitting at his desk, holding his head in his hands.
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz ... ying-world

Trump Attends 'Heroes and Villains' Party, Conway Goes as Super Woman
by ALASTAIR JAMIESON

PlayTrump, Conway attend costume party Facebook Twitter Google PlusEmbed

President-elect Donald Trump attended a "Heroes and Villians" costume party at a major donor's home Saturday night, accompanied by campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who was dressed as Super Woman.

Trump entered the event, hosted by the Mercer family at their home in the village of Head of the Harbor in St. James, New York, wearing a suit.

Image: Kellyanne Conway, campaign manager for Donald Trump, smiles Saturday night as she arrives for a party dressed as Super Woman.


Kellyanne Conway, campaign manager for Donald Trump, smiles Saturday night as she arrives for a party dressed as Super Woman. Evan Vucci / AP
Asked by a pool reporter who he was dressed as, Trump replied: "Me." The reporter asked of that meant he was attending as a hero or a villain, Conway emerged from a vehicle in her costume saying: A hero, all the way!"

He ignored a question about whether he regretted his phone call with Taiwan's president.

Senior adviser Steve Bannon also attended, but did not appear to be wearing a costume.

Robert Mercer, the billionaire owner of the home, is co-chief executive of Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund. Daughter Rebekah Mercer sits on Trump's transition team.

Conway later tweeted she was "honoring the ultimate hero," adding: "Crowd thrilled w/ surprise!"
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-el ... an-n691686

[seemslikeadream]

The Conservative Activist Behind Trump's Bogus "Millions of Illegal Voters" Claim
Sunday, 04 December 2016 00:00
By Sue Sturgis, Facing South | Report

The Twitter profile of Gregg Phillips, the conservative activist who appears to be the source for President-elect Donald Trump's claim that millions of people voted illegally in the recent election.

Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who's trailing Democrat Hillary Clinton by over 2 million popular votes nationwide, sparked controversy when he took to Twitter to claim that he "won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally."

Trump's wild claim about a massive illegal voting crisis was immediately debunked by fact-checkers. The Tampa Bay Times' Politifact website rated his statement "Pants on Fire," noting that it "found zero evidence for Trump's charge … and a lot of reasons to conclude that it didn't happen."

Where did the bogus information come from? Politifact traced it back to the Twitter account of one Gregg Phillips:

Tweets by Phillips on Nov. 11 and Nov. 13 said that "we have verified more than 3 million votes cast by non-citizens" and that Phillips had "completed analysis of database of 180 million voter registrations. Number of non-citizen votes exceeds 3 million. Consulting legal team."
Phillips refused to discuss his claims in detail with Politifact, saying he's not yet ready to release his supporting information publicly. When asked by the British online newspaper The Independent to discuss his evidence, Phillips refused. "We will release it in open form to the American people," he said. "We won't allow the media to spin this first. Sorry."

So who is Phillips?

A resident of Texas with a business degree from the University of Alabama, he's the chairman and CEO of AutoGov, an Austin-based company that makes software to help hospitals, nursing homes and other health care organizations decide whether to admit Medicaid patients. He founded the company in 2004 following an 18-month stint as executive deputy commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees Medicaid and SNAP food benefits. Phillips played a key role in crafting 2003 legislation to privatize parts of the Texas safety net and came under fire for conflicts of interest and cronyism there and in a similar position he held in Mississippi, as the Houston Chronicle reported.

Phillips was involved in mainstream Republican politics back in the 1980s and 1990s, serving as finance director of the Alabama Republican Party in 1989, finance director of Mississippi Gov. Kirk Fordice's successful 1991 election campaign, and executive director of the Mississippi Republican Party in the mid-1990s, according to his LinkedIn profile. He went on to become the managing director of Winning Our Future, a super PAC founded to support the unsuccessful 2012 presidential run of former Republican U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia.

But Phillips told a conservative talk radio show back in 2013 that while he once identified as a "Reagan Republican" he came to feel "less like a Republican and more like a conservative." Since then, much of his political work has focused on drawing attention to alleged voter fraud, even though study after study after study has found it to be exceedingly rare.

Phillips frames the issue of election integrity as a partisan problem. As he told the same radio show, "I'm an aficionado of the way these Democrats commit voter fraud."

Close Ties to True the Vote

Phillips serves on the board of True the Vote, a Texas-based group with roots in the conservative tea party movement. While its stated objective is stopping voter fraud, True the Vote's poll monitoring activities have raised concerns about voter intimidation. The group also promotes voter roll purges and voter ID laws, which disproportionately restrict racial minority groups' access to the ballot.

In 2010, poll watchers with the King Street Patriots -- the Houston-based tea party group that later became True the Vote -- were accused of "hovering over" voters, "getting into election workers' faces" and blocking or disrupting lines of voters who were waiting to cast their ballots during early voting, as TPM Muckraker reported. The incidents happened primarily at polling places in Hispanic and African-American neighborhoods.

In 2012, True the Vote's national election coordinator told poll watching recruits in Boca Raton, Florida, that their job was to make voters feel like they're "driving and seeing the police following you."

True the Vote's national election coordinator told poll watching recruits in Florida that their job was to make voters feel like they're "driving and seeing the police following you."

True the Vote is a charitable nonprofit under IRS regulations, which means it's not supposed to engage in partisan political activity. However, as Facing South reported, the group appears to have violated that rule in 2012 by contributing $5,000 to the Republican State Leadership Committee, which supports GOP legislative candidates.

Also raising questions about True the Vote's charitable status was its involvement in the 2012 "Verify the Recall" effort in Wisconsin, in which the group recruited tea party volunteers nationwide to enter petitions calling for the recall of controversial Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) into an online database and analyzing the signatures for fraud. True the Vote's efforts were fraught with problems, as ProPublica reported:

Using its own methodology, True the Vote concluded that more than 63,000 signatures were ineligible. It also identified 2,590 names that were "potentially false" based on a predetermined list of names the group believed would be used fraudulently on the petition. Organizers declined to share this list with state officials.
The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, a non-partisan state regulatory agency consisting of six former state judge appointees, later discounted much of the group's findings and methodology, concluding they were "significantly less accurate, complete, and reliable than the review and analysis completed by the G.A.B." and that they "would not have survived legal challenge."
Phillips joined True the Vote's board in June 2014. Four months later, the group announced it was releasing VoteStand, a free smartphone app that allows voters to report cases election irregularities and fraud to the organization.

Phillips' Twitter profile says he's VoteStand's founder. The app was initially released in 2012 by the Gingrich super PAC.

Justifying More Voter Suppression?

Though Phillips is not talking to the press about his allegations of widespread voting irregularities, True the Vote used the uproar over Trump's tweeting about them to double down on the claims.

This week the group released the following statement:

True the Vote absolutely supports President-elect Trump's recent comment about the impact of illegal voting, as reflected in the national popular vote. We are still collecting data and will be for several months, but our intent is to publish a comprehensive study on the significant impact of illegal voting in all of its many forms and begin a national discussion on how voters, states, and the Trump Administration can best address this growing problem.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 with its ruling in the Shelby County v. Holder case out of Alabama, elected state officials nationwide have purged voters from the rolls, cut early voting, shuttered polling places, adopted strict voter ID laws and imposed restrictions on voter registration drives.

Voting rights advocates are worried that claims of voter fraud like those promulgated by Phillips and amplified by Trump signal that the incoming administration will take steps at the federal level to make it more difficult for some groups of people to vote.

Voting rights advocates are worried that claims of voter fraud like those promulgated by Phillips and amplified by Trump signal that the incoming administration will take steps at the federal level to make it more difficult for some groups of people to vote.

Those concerns have been heightened by Trump's pick for attorney general: U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican with a long record of hostility to voting rights. In addition, Trump has pledged to appoint conservative Supreme Court justices, which could lead to votes to further dismantle the Voting Rights Act.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont discussed the dangers of the bogus voter fraud claims during an appearance this week on Conan O'Brien's late-night talk show.

"When [Trump] says that, he's really sending a signal to Republicans all over this country, Republican leaders, and what he's saying is we have got to suppress the vote, we have got to make it harder for poor people, people of color, immigrants, elderly people to participate because they may be voting against us," Sanders said. "And that's scary stuff."
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/3860 ... ters-claim

[82_28]

This Carrier AC thing is stupid. How many fucking components need to come from China and elsewhere in order for the factory to assemble it? I have no idea, but shit has to be sourced. Also, is he going to shut down the entire shipping industry? The ports all around the US will not be happy to begin with.

Just for kicks I looked up the first thing that came to mind.

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news ... e-777.html

Boeing hires Chinese aviation company to make 777 parts

Trump is a motherfucking idiot.

[SonicG]

I am having a real hard time wrapping my head around the "Taiwan call"...Even postulating that it is all fine and dandy to proactively support Taiwan's struggle for democratic independence, would you really want to start it with such an asinine incident? It's like they think they are really tweeking China's nose. Thus the tepid response on China's part...'Walk right into the fucking trap already then,' they must be musing...I'm sure Trump will be getting all his ties made in Mississippi from here on out...

[82_28]

Sources close to the president of Taiwan and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump are giving the lie to the Trump team’s assertion that a controversial call from Taiwan’s Pres. Tsai Ing-wen was simply a spontaneous call of congratulations.

The Washington Post spoke with sources within the Taiwanese government and the Trump transition team who confirmed that the call was actually planned months in advance after extensive negotiations on each side.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/12/trumps- ... s-to-plan/

[seemslikeadream]

A Warning for Americans From a Member of Pussy Riot
Mediator
Jim Rutenberg
MEDIATOR DEC. 4, 2016

Nadya Tolokonnikova, a member of the Russian punk band and art collective Pussy Riot, was in Miami Beach last week for Art Basel. Credit Casey Kelbaugh for The New York Times
MIAMI BEACH — On Tuesday, Donald J. Trump wrote on Twitter that people who burn the flag should be punished with “perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”

Two days later, I went to a little cafe here to meet with Nadya Tolokonnikova of the Russian punk band and activist art collective Pussy Riot. The group’s 2012 guerrilla performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, which viciously mocked Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church, resulted in a two-year prison sentence for Ms. Tolokonnikova and another of its members.

I had been in South Florida for family reasons and when I saw that Ms. Tolokonnikova was swinging through Miami for Art Basel, I immediately reached out to her. I’d come to view her as an emissary from a dystopian political-media environment that seemed to be heading our way, with governmental threats against dissent, disinformation from the presidential level and increasingly assertive propagandists who stoke the perception that there can be no honest arbiter of truth.

It’s what Ms. Tolokonnikova was protesting, and it’s what led to her brutal internment, which lasted more than 20 months and ended in 2013.

Leading up to Ms. Tolokonnikova’s trial, Russian news reports carried suggestions that she and her bandmates were pawns of Hillary Clinton’s State Department or witches working with a global satanic conspiracy — perhaps linked to the one that was behind the Sept. 11 attacks, as lawyers for one of their offended accusers put it. This is what we now call “fake news.”

Pussy Riot became an international symbol of Mr. Putin’s crackdown on free speech; of how his regime uses falsehood and deflection to sow confusion and undermine critics.

Now that the political-media environment that we smugly thought to be “over there” seems to be arriving over here, Ms. Tolokonnikova has a message: “It’s important not to say to yourself, ‘Oh, it’s O.K.,’” she told me. “It’s important to remember that, for example, in Russia, for the first year of when Vladimir Putin came to power, everybody was thinking that it will be O.K.”

She pointed to Russian oligarchs who helped engineer Mr. Putin’s rise to power at the end of 1999 but didn’t appreciate the threat he posed to them until they found themselves under arrest, forced into exile or forced into giving up their businesses — especially if those businesses included independent media critical of Mr. Putin (see Berezovsky, Boris; Gusinsky, Vladimir).

Of course, the United States has checks, balances and traditions that presumably preclude anything like that from happening, she acknowledged as we sat comfortably in sunny Miami Beach while it played host to a celebration of free expression (Art Basel).

“It is a common phrase right now that ‘America has institutions,’” Ms. Tolokonnikova said. “It does. But a president has power to change institutions and a president moreover has power to change public perception of what is normal, which could lead to changing institutions.”

As if to make her point, later that day the informal Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski declared that The New York Times’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, “should be in jail.” In October, The Times published an article about leaked pages from Mr. Trump’s 1995 state tax returns.

If influential advisers to Mr. Trump continue to so loosely issue jail threats to journalists for doing their constitutionally protected work after Inauguration Day, well, that’s a big change to the institution of the presidency in my book, as well as in the one the founders wrote.

None of it is all that shocking to Ms. Tolokonnikova, who at 27 has seen this music video before.

When I met her, she was relaxed, wearing a white T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Wild Feminist.”

She was planning a lecture that night urging artists to become more engaged and pick up where the politically conscious punk bands like the The Dead Kennedys left off — their messages largely lost in the music of corporate-label imitators who hardly said boo through the debates over two wars, the Great Recession and racially charged police shootings.

Photo

In February 2014, riot police officers detained Nadya Tolokonnikova, center; her husband, Pyotr Verzilov, right; and a Pussy Riot member, Maria Alyokhina, left, during a protest in support of opposition activists in front of a Moscow court building. Credit Sergei Chirikov/European Pressphoto Agency
So it was that some of the most provocative musical statements of the presidential election came from the Russian women of Pussy Riot, whose work is about things much bigger than their own careers.

They have been working on their English-language music with Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio and the producer Ricky Reed, Ms. Tolokonnikova said.

The last video they released, in late October, was called “Make America Great Again.” It showed fictional Trump agents in red armbands raping and torturing in a campaign against Muslims, Mexicans, women who have abortions, gays and lesbians.

It was certain to offend. But it wasn’t illegal, at least not here — at least not yet.

And it was a modest Russia-in-America answer to the more voluminous pro-Trump propaganda Mr. Putin exported to the United States. Some arrived through his sophisticated state-financed news networks (one, Sputnik, featured #CrookedHillary hashtags on its Twitter feed). And if assessments by the United States intelligence community are correct, some came through state-supported internet skulduggery.

Ms. Tolokonnikova said she became more involved here because the stakes were bigger than one country.

“What happens in one country makes huge influence on what’s going on in other countries,” she said. “So, I didn’t want Donald Trump to be elected because it would obviously encourage authoritarian politicians around the world to be more authoritarian, and it did.” (To wit, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines claiming without substantiation that Mr. Trump had endorsed his murderous drug crackdown.)

Yet as the web enables Mr. Putin to spread propaganda that encourages nationalist movements to campaign for walls and isolation — most recently, it is claimed, in Italy, where a referendum was held on Sunday — it also breaks down the cultural barriers between countries.

There are places in Russia where the internet provides a rare route to real news, given that Mr. Putin has effectively pressured so much of Russia’s independent journalism out of existence on television, on radio and in print.

But truth cannot break through if people never find it or believe it when they do. And the problem in Russia is the same one we’re seeing here, Ms. Tolokonnikova told me. “A lot of people are living really unwealthy lives so they have to work not one but two jobs, so they don’t have time to analyze and check facts, and you cannot blame them,” she said.

And, after so many years in which the “lift-all-boats” promises of globalization didn’t come to pass, she said, “they don’t trust bureaucrats, they don’t trust politicians, and they don’t really trust media.”

That’s why the top Russian propagandist Dmitry K. Kiselyov can assert that “objectivity is a myth” and, here in the United States, the paid CNN Trump-supporting contributor Scottie Nell Hughes can declare: “There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore, of facts.”

When there is no truth, invasions are “liberations” and internment camps are “relocation centers.”

But, as Ms. Tolokonnikova said, “There is always a way if you really want to tell the truth.”

Doing so, for her, has come at a cost, even after prison. Informal Cossack security forces beat her and other Pussy Riot members as they prepared to perform in Sochi during the 2014 Olympics. That same year, a youth gang attacked her with trash and a green antiseptic chemical in Nizhny Novgorod, where she was protesting prison conditions. The men were clearly identifiable but, she said, police made no arrests.

Ms. Tolokonnikova has also co-founded a news site called Media Zona. She said it avoided opinion so that readers would accept it as a just-the-facts counter to disinformation.

“You are always in danger of being shut down,” she said. “But it’s not the end of the story because we are prepared to fight.”

Her counsel for United States journalists: You better be, too.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/04/busin ... -riot.html

[seemslikeadream]

As Breitbart wages "war" on Kellogg’s, advertisers flee

Breitbart News, an ultraconservative website that has served as a platform for the white nationalist “alt-right” movement, is touting its growing readership and “main street American values” as a reason advertisers should stick with it.

Some marketers, however, are heading for the exits, directing their advertising dollars away from Breitbart amid the publication’s call for a boycott against Kellogg’s (K), which has pulled its ads from the site. That prompted Breitbart to declare “war” on Kellogg’s: Editor-in-Chief Alexander Marlow said on the site that “to blacklist Breitbart News in order to placate left-wing totalitarians is a disgraceful act of cowardice.”

Breitbart’s campaign against Kellogg’s is unusual on a number of fronts, not in the least because news organizations traditionally maintain a separation between their business operations and their editors and reporters so that journalists can operate independently from business interests.

And whether the boycott will help Breitbart financially appears questionable, given that attacking a major advertiser isn’t likely to make the site more appealing to other brands.

“Reporters don’t behave that way in the U.S., nor should they,” said Lee Wilkins, professor and chair of the department of communications at Wayne State University, who’s an expert in media ethics. “Most journalistic organizations have checks between the people who pay for your news work and the news work itself, so that you are as a journalist protected from those influences.”

She said she views Breitbart as a blog rather than a journalistic organization. “If you aren’t a journalism organization, then those safeguards are never in place.”

Other companies saying this week that they’ll pull their ads from Breitbart include Vanguard, 3M (MMM) and AARP, among others.

Kellogg’s said it decided to remove its advertising because Breitbart didn’t align with its values. It said the decision has “nothing to do with politics.” Stephen Bannon, Breitbart’s former chairman, served on President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign and is now set to become one of the incoming president’s top advisers in the White House.

Vanguard said it removed its ads as soon as it became aware that they were running on Breitbart. “As a policy, Vanguard does not advertise on any overtly political websites, including the site in question,” a spokeswoman wrote in an email. She said the ads appeared as part of a “remarketing” program, which are ads that appear to clients and investors when they visit third-party websites because of their browsing history.

“Our remarketing advertisements are limited to pre-approved sites (again, no political sites), however it was brought to our attention last week that this site was inadvertently included,” she said.

Breitbart’s advertiser showdown comes as the anti-Trump campaign #GrabYourWallet is taking aim at the site, officially adding it to its own boycott list on Thursday. #GrabYourWallet was created before the election by Sue Atencio, a 59-year-old grandmother, and marketing specialist Shannon Coulter, as a way to express concerns about Trump’s boasts of sexual assault. Since his victory, the boycott of stores that sell Trump brands has picked up steam.

“Because of the way digital advertising works, we’re not yet adding companies that advertise on Bretibart to the boycott list,” Coulter said. “We’re giving them time to work with their media buyers and ad networks to ensure their ads no longer appear there.”

While Breitbart is billing Kellogg’s decision as “bigoted and anti-American,” it’s a well-established American business practice for corporations to shift their sponsorship to companies they believe will help bolster their brand. In the case of reaching conservative audiences, advertisers that exit Breitbart aren’t necessarily snubbing those consumers because other conservative-leaning outlets, such as Fox News or Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, have an overlap.

“There are a lot of places advertisers can go to reach the same audience, and even maybe a bigger audience,” Wilkins said.

Nevertheless, Breitbart has been buidling its readership in the past year. Five Thirty Eight noted that its traffic has increased along with Trump’s political career. While many news sites got a bump in traffic as the campaign heated up, Breitbart’s growth was faster than other sites.

Some Breitbart readers are joining the boycott with enthusiasm, tweeting statements such as “cereal shouldn’t be political” with the hashtag #dumpkelloggs. At the same time, their message is generating pushback from internet wags who are creating satirical names under the hashtag #BreitbartCereals, such as “Race Krispies” and “Grope Nut Flakes.”

Breitbart is “behaving stupidly,” Wilkins said of the Kellogg’s boycott. “Unfortunately, we are all allowed to be stupid.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/as-breitbar ... d=31953376

[seemslikeadream]

Alec Baldwin to Trump: 'Release Your Tax Returns and I'll Stop. Ha,' After Hilarious SNL Spoof Hurts Trump's Feelings
Trump wasted no time responding to SNL's cold open mocking his compulsive Twitter habits.

By Janet Allon / AlterNet December 4, 2016


SNL opened with another skit featuring Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump Saturday night. The bit was a hilarious send-up of the President-elect's ridiculously itchy Twitter finger and showed him retweeting random teenagers' inane tweets, rather than pay attention as his national security advisors tried to brief him.

What did Trump do as a result? He tweeted his outrage and threatened to turn the TV off. That'll show them. “Just tried watching Saturday Night Live – unwatchable! Totally biased," Trump wrote indicating that he does not have even a rudimentary knowledge of comedy. "Not funny and the Baldwin impersonation just can’t get any worse. Sad.”

Actually, the bit was pretty funny. Kate McKinnon reprised her role as an exasperated, possibly medicated Kellyanne Conway, who has more or less given up on steering her boss to a responsible, grown up course.

“There’s a reason why Mr. Trump tweets so much," McKinnon as Conway offers by way of explanation. "He does it to distract the media from his business conflicts and all the very scary people in his cabinet.”

“Actually, that’s not why I do it,” Baldwin as Trump said. “I do it because my brain is bad.”

Bad-brained Trump was up and watching SNL and obviously had all of his critical faculties intact, something that ought to bring comfort to a concerned nation.

As of this writing, however, Baldwin got the last word on our tweeter-in-chief, tweeting: "Release your tax returns and I'll stop. Ha."

No doubt Trump will respond shortly. The fact that Trump even spends his time bothering with such inanities when in seven weeks he will be inaugurated is beyond terrifying.

Here's the offending skit:
http://www.alternet.org/culture/alec-ba ... poof-hurts

This Week in Donald Trump's Conflicts of Interests: He's Not Really Going to Leave His Business
Donald Trump stands to make good money as president.

By Matthew Rozsa / Salon December 4, 2016


It took Donald Trump no less than three tweets after 3 in the morning on Wednesday before he issued a final one in which he proclaimed unilaterally that he would soon to be free of business conflicts of interest while running the presidency of the United States:

I will be holding a major news conference in New York City with my children on December 15 to discuss the fact that I will be leaving my ...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2016
great business in total in order to fully focus on running the country in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! While I am not mandated to ....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2016
do this under the law, I feel it is visually important, as President, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2016
Then he finally declared in a triumphant tweet at 3:59 a.m. on Wednesday morning:

Hence, legal documents are being crafted which take me completely out of business operations. The Presidency is a far more important task!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2016
As NBC News pointed out on Wednesday, these tweets do not in any way clear up concerns about conflicts of interest. “If in fact he just puts his children in charge of the business, it wouldn’t actually eliminate any conflicts of interest, especially when they’ve been sitting in on meetings with foreign leaders,” NBC News wrote.

“What the Trump campaign has done here is bought themselves time to figure out what do to — and a way to answer the continuing barrage of questions about Trump’s business conflicts for the next few weeks.”

And here’s a sampling of some looming conflicts of interest in our weekly roundup of “This week in Donald Trump’s conflicts of interest“:

1. Conflicts keep piling up involving Trump’s hotels.

Trump seems to be dragging the swamp mud he promised to drain right through his brand-new Washington hotel: Trump International Hotel.

As The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, the Independent Community Bankers of America is booking events there. If you’re a betting sort, the odds are better than not that we’ll be seeing more stories about would-be power brokers staying at Trump’s Washington hotel in order to get on good terms with the president-elect.

Indeed one Twitter post this week indicates that Trump International Hotel will the setting of Bahrain National Day next week on Dec. 7.

inbox: invite to Bahrain National Day celebration. location? Trump International. it begins. pic.twitter.com/j8nPklGkCi

— Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) November 29, 2016
2. Donald Trump is doing business with a top Philippine government official.

Century Properties Group Inc. of Manila is a company that helped back the $150 million Trump Tower in Manila set to open there next year. Although Trump doesn’t own the building and the company is only licensing his name (for $5 million), the chief executive and controlling shareholder of Century Properties is Jose E. B. Antonio. This is the same man who as of last month also served as special government envoy to the United States for Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.

For his part, Duterte has had a very contentious relationship with President Barack Obama but, according to a Friday article The Hill, he had a talk on Friday with President-elect Trump that one of Duterte’s aides described as “very engaging” and “animated,” and led to Trump inviting Duterte to visit the U.S. next year.

While Antonio, the Manila hotel’s CEO, has claimed to have visited Trump Tower after Trump’s election, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks has denied that he had a chance to meet with Trump himself.

3. Trump has a beef with the Internal Revenue Service, whose boss he may soon be replacing.

Remember how Trump kept refusing to release his tax returns during the campaign? And recall how he has used the fact that he’s being audited as an excuse to keep his returns close to the vest (even though an audit does not prohibit him from releasing these documents)?

Now as the president, Trump will have the chance to make a drastic change that could affect a lot of the way the Internal Revenue Service functions. He’ll be able replace the current IRS head, John A. Koskinen, whose term is set to expire on Nov. 12, 2017.

Republicans have already tried to impeach Koskinen, so it’s unlikely they’ll be sad to see him go, and Trump could conceivably appoint a replacement whose decisions about Trump’s complicated tax past would be more favorable.

4, Trump could make $3 million every year the Secret Service patrol New York’s Trump Tower.

As Salon reported on Friday, the Secret Service — and, by extension, taxpayers — may have to spend $3 million annually so that Trump and his family can be protected while using Trump Tower in Manhattan.

By insisting on splitting his time between the White House and Trump Tower, Trump may require the Secret Service and the New York City Police Department to rent space from his very own real estate company two vacant floors in the 68-story building so that they can effectively do their job.

5. Trump risks international trouble because he reportedly has a deal planned in China.

On Friday, it was revealed that Donald Trump took a phone call from the president of Taiwan, endangering decades of foreign policy in which the United States treated mainland China as its only Chinese representative.

Trump said that he was called by Taiwan, but, according to reports, he’s been rather interested in Taiwan for building up his portfolio.

As The Guardian reported Saturday, a representative from the Trump Organization “made inquiries about a major investment in building luxury hotels as part of the island’s new airport development.”

Additionally, thanks to extensive research published Thursday by Bloomberg, we have a greater understanding of just how far and wide Donald Trump’s web of real estate dealings spread — scattered in at least 23 countries across the globe. Here’s a sampling from seven countries:

In Azerbaijan, Trump licensed his name to be used on a tower that’s being developed by Garant Holding, whose chairman Anar Mammadov is the son of the country’s transportation minister. (Mammadov has been suspected of money laundering to Iran.)

Inside Brazil, Trump has a licensing deal for five office towers.

In neighboring Canada, the president-elect is developing a Vancouver tower, while his planned development in Toronto is facing lawsuits and bankruptcy.

For China, Trump Hotels CEO Eric Danziger announced in October plans to open properties in 20 to 30 cities.

In India, Trump has licensed his name to be applied to two real estate projects and recently met with business partners who have ties to the Indian government.

For Indonesia, Trump Hotels is planning a pair of properties; he received as much as $5 million in 2015 from a Jakarta media company.

In the United Arab Emirates, Trump has a licensing and management deal for a Dubai golf course and luxury villas now going up. A Trump-branded golf course, to be designed by Tiger Woods, is also in the pipeline.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politi ... s-business

[seemslikeadream]

'They Are Both Profiteers': Meet The Two Most Repellent Reptiles to Slither into Trump's Swamp
Steven Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross will bleed the country dry.
By Amy Goodman / Democracy Now! December 2, 2016


We look at two of Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks: Steven Mnuchin for treasury secretary and Wilbur Ross for commerce secretary. Mnuchin has deep ties on Wall Street, including working as a partner for Goldman Sachs, and his hedge fund played a role in the housing crisis after it scooped up the failing California bank IndyMac in 2008. Trump’s commerce secretary pick, Wilbur Ross, is a billionaire private equity investor who specializes in flipping bankrupt companies for profit, often buying the U.S. companies at low prices and then selling them to overseas investors. He and his companies have sometimes shipped jobs and factories overseas—practices Donald Trump has railed against. We are joined by David Dayen, whose recent article for The Nation is "Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin—Profiteers of the Great Foreclosure Machine—Go to Washington."



This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn to look in more detail at two of Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks: Steven Mnuchin for treasury secretary and Wilbur Ross for commerce secretary. Mnuchin has deep ties to Wall Street, including working as a partner for Goldman Sachs, where his father also worked. Mnuchin’s hedge fund also played a role in the housing crisis after it scooped up the failing California bank IndyMac in 2008. Under Mnuchin’s ownership, IndyMac foreclosed on 36,000 families, particularly elderly residents trapped in reverse mortgages. Mnuchin was accused of running a foreclosure machine. People protested outside his home. The bank, which was renamed OneWest, was also accused of racially discriminatory lending practices. In 2015, Mnuchin sold the bank for $3.4 billion, $1.8 billion more than he bought it for.

Trump’s commerce secretary pick, Wilbur Ross, is a billionaire private equity investor. Ross specializes in flipping bankrupt companies for profit, often buying the U.S. companies at low prices, then selling them to overseas investors. He and his companies have sometimes shipped jobs and factories overseas, practices Donald Trump has railed against. He, too, had a role in the foreclosure crisis. In 2007, Wilbur Ross bought the second-largest servicer of subprime loans in America, a company called American Home Mortgage Servicing.

To talk more about Mnuchin and Ross, we’re joined by David Dayen, author of the award-winning book Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud. His most recent piece for The Nation, "Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin—Profiteers of the Great Foreclosure Machine—Go to Washington."

So, talk about the significance of this, David. Talk about who Mnuchin and Ross are.

DAVID DAYEN: Right, so they are both—I call them profiteers because they, like most banks and mortgage servicing companies, just profited from the lack of attention to the foreclosure crisis at the federal level. Mnuchin foreclosed on 36,000 people—in California alone. He foreclosed on much more through OneWest Bank, where he was CEO. And Wilbur Ross, through American Home Mortgage Servicing, which eventually became a company called Ocwen, also did so, and they did so illegally. These were fraudulent foreclosures, where fake documents were used to prop up those foreclosures. There are depositions with individuals from OneWest Bank saying that they spent 30 seconds looking at foreclosure files before signing affidavits that said that they knew everything in that file and reviewed all the business practices. There were forged documents routinely from Wilbur Ross’s American Home Mortgage Servicing. They were done by a third-party company known as DocX, where the CEO of that company actually is in prison right now, went to prison for five years for forging millions of mortgage assignments to be used as evidence in court cases all over the country. So, these were very normal practices, but it’s very ironic that the Obama administration kind of lost track and didn’t pay attention to this crisis that was going on. And now, after Trump’s election, he brings in two people who profited almost the most from that to help run his Cabinet.

AMY GOODMAN: And what does it mean to be head of treasury and commerce? How does that relate to what their history is around the issue of foreclosure?

DAVID DAYEN: Well, certainly, the Treasury Department is a regulatory position now. Steven Mnuchin will be the head of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which is a superregulator that monitors systemic risk, where there was a lot of systemic risk from the financial crisis and the foreclosure crisis, and he can kind of shut it down. Steven Mnuchin has said that he will seek to privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, where nine out of 10 mortgages are owned or guaranteed right now. That’s going to be a huge windfall for the hedge funds that bought Fannie and Freddie stock at a low point, at a dollar a share. If that’s spun out and privatized, it would be $30 to $40 a share.

Incidentally, one of the biggest benefactors of that would be John Paulson, who was a business partner to Steven Mnuchin in the OneWest deal. So, you know, through deregulation, through just the lack of attention to these matters, Steven Mnuchin is going to have a lot of control. Wilbur Ross, maybe less so at the Commerce Department, but still you’re talking about Donald Trump’s closest advisers, and it’s very likely they’re going to take their eyes off the ball with respect to the practices of the mortgage industry.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, David Dayen, I want to thank you for being with us, author of the award-winning book Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud. We will link to your piece in The Nation.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/steven- ... umps-swamp