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[Hot Pepsi]

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The situation is dire, but I question whether Trump et al are as clever and organized enough to execute a step-wise plan as that article suggests. They may simply be trying to keep their Coalition of Bigots together by following through on campaign promises.

[Guy Profumo]

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A thought occurs:

When POTUS comes across, HMG can decide he's not to meet Farridge, can't they?

At least not officially as he has no role in the politics of the United Kingdom - not a party leader, not an MP?

[Lang Spoon]

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Let's hope so HP. The piece Geoffrey linked to yesterday had reassured me a bit, now I'm back to shiteing it. I doubt Trump has an endgame here outside of becoming stinking rich Mobuto style, but Bannon definitely does have a plan.

[Levin]

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Lang Spoon wrote: Oh Christ.

This isn't worrying at all. Seems a reasonable explanation of his declaring candidacy so early as well- naked Klepto bahaviour. We are fucking doomed. Fucking Feds and homeland Security can rot in Hell. Defying Court Orders is the way we will roll for the next 4 years I suppose.

I'm still reading it but already it's brought up the Rosneft sale, (which is fine as it does look odd) but then states that the deal for Trump was for 19% of the company; not what is in the report which is that Trump was offered the brokerage on a planned deal to a third party. And it annoys me that people can't be accurate.

[Hot Pepsi]

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Lang Spoon wrote: Let's hope so HP. The piece Geoffrey linked to yesterday had reassured me a bit, now I'm back to shiteing it. I doubt Trump has an endgame here outside of becoming stinking rich Mobuto style, but Bannon definitely does have a plan.

I feel guilty to say that I'm feeling oddly optimistic.
Yeah, this is terrible and this is wrecking a lot of people's lives who aren't me....

But it's so brazenly terrible that, even if he staves off impeachment, I don't think he'll be able to hold together support. Certainly not by 2020 and all of this will be a liability for Republicans in 2018. He's the least popular incoming president since such things were tracked.

My shred of optimism is because I remember how it was with Bush. Back then, even the NY Times and Washington Post were frequently drinking the Kool Aid on WMD, etc, even though invading Iraq was such an obviously stupid idea. Objecting felt like talking to a wall sometimes. Whereas Trump's only supporters in the media are from blatantly bullshit outfits like Fox and Breitbart and he really only has the support of dumbest 25% of the population, which is probably the floor for any well-known politician in this country. By contrast, Bush suckered a lot of people who should have known better.

The massive street response has been glorious and I suspect includes lots of people who didn't vote at all - which is really the key constituency that needs to be won over - plus a number of people who voted for him are starting to see that he meant everything he said and that it's awful. Certainly none of those absurd "give him a chance" people are thinking "oh, this is great. So glad I kept an open mind."

But I hate to be so smug about it. Because, probably the worst case, for me, it's a revolution and I'm living in WOM's backyard or perhaps some kind of refugee camp in St. Catherines. Most likely case, my life doesn't change much at all. But for a lot of people, this shit is life and death.

[anton pulisov]

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Where is citizen Obama? It's like he's fallen off the face of the Earth.

I guess he's biding his time.

[Hot Pepsi]

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Can't blame him.

The latest is that Trump has issued an order saying that for every "regulation" issued, two must be rescinded. This is, in many ways, the dumbest one yet. It assumes that "regulation" in general is what is holding back American business -which it isn't - and that reducing the sum total of pages of regulations is what business wants, which it isn't. What they want are regulations that hinder their competition but not them.

[Diable Rouge]

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I see he plans to announce his Supreme Court nominee tomorrow night, that'd mean a 5-4 conservative majority, if I'm not mistaken?

[Incandenza]

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More like 4-1-4, with Kennedy in the middle.

[WOM]

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[quote]Hot Pepsi wrote:

But I hate to be so smug about it. Because, probably the worst case, for me, it's a revolution and I'm living in WOM's backyard or perhaps some kind of refugee camp in St. Catherines. Most likely case, my life doesn't change much at all. But for a lot of people, this shit is life and death.

Please....we're practically family. There's a small room in the damp basement ready for you. That scratching in the walls? It's nothing....go to sleep.

[Ginger Yellow]

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The latest is that Trump has issued an order saying that for every "regulation" issued, two must be rescinded. This is, in many ways, the dumbest one yet. It assumes that "regulation" in general is what is holding back American business -which it isn't - and that reducing the sum total of pages of regulations is what business wants, which it isn't. What they want are regulations that hinder their competition but not them.

Also no budget for new regulations in FY2017. Presumably this applies, illegally, to statutorily mandated regulations.

[Sam]

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The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote: Erm, to be honest, the only thing that I took from that poll is that more than a third of UK people thought that trump's insane ban was appropriate.

Well, the poll said 25% of people said it was appropriate. An implied 11% were apparently scratching their heads and going, 'Oh, I just can't decide!'

Satchmo Distel wrote: Trump's approach to policy is the same as to he has been accused of regarding non-consensual sexual contact: dive straight in, don't ask questions

Not just accused; he was recorded boasting about it.

I signed the petition as a British citizen located in Argentina and put my postcode here. Nowhere on the page does it say you must put in a UK postcode in order to be counted.

[Hot Pepsi]

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[quote]WOM wrote:

But I hate to be so smug about it. Because, probably the worst case, for me, it's a revolution and I'm living in WOM's backyard or perhaps some kind of refugee camp in St. Catherines. Most likely case, my life doesn't change much at all. But for a lot of people, this shit is life and death.

Please....we're practically family. There's a small room in the damp basement ready for you. That scratching in the walls? It's nothing....go to sleep.

I thought you were allergic to dogs.

[WOM]

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Dang. Good memory.

[NHH]

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It's a stupid thing this remove 2 regulations for every new one. Trump must have got the idea from us.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/one-in-two-out-statement-of-new-regulation

Well done the Liberal Democrats. You should have seen them in there.

[caja-dglh]

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The fawned over Pinochet something rotten.

[Sean of the Shed]

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caja-dglh wrote: The fawned over Pinochet something rotten.

I did look for him, but he was never granted a state visit.
List of state visits during the reign of the current monarch.

[Tubby Isaacs]

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NHH wrote: It's a stupid thing this remove 2 regulations for every new one. Trump must have got the idea from us.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/one-in-two-out-statement-of-new-regulation

Well done the Liberal Democrats. You should have seen them in there.

Ha ha. Vince Cable's department, and all.

Gove's Department of Education is supposed to be in credit (ie a net reduce of red tape), despite "creating" thousands of stand alone academies and a completely new oversight system to duplicated LAs.

They're rather struggling for examples of cutting red tape. This is the second example.

Another significant saving, of £2.15 million, came from the revision of the statutory
guidance ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’, published in March 2013. The
revised guidance was only 93 pages long, replacing over 600 pages of the previous
guidance.

£2.15m million isn't all that significant really, is it?

[Sean of the Shed]

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[ursus arctos]

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Obama statement from holiday via a spokesman

President Obama is heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country. In his final official speech as president, he spoke about the important role of citizens and how all Americans have a responsibility to be the guardians of our democracy–not just during an election but every day.

Citizens exercising their constitutional right to assemble, organize, and have their voices heard by their elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake.

With regard to comparisons to President Obama's foreign policy decisions, as we've heard before, the president fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion.

[ursus arctos]

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This is the best piece that I have seen so far on the sale of 19.5 percent of Rosneft.

It seems clear that Glencore and the Qataris hold some of the stake, but it looks as if they don't hold all of it.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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An American friend of one of my daughters just posted the text below on FB. Could anyone comment on whether the stuff about legal authority for secret assassinations (which pre-dates the whole Trump thing of course if it's true) is indeed factually correct?

Yesterday, the President removed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence from the NSC. He replaced them with Steve Bannon. Bannon has no government, intelligence, or high-level military experience; his experience is leading a propaganda outlet (Breitbart News) that peddles nationalist and white nationalist viewpoints.
This would be deeply concerning in and of itself. But one of the jobs of the NSC is to oversee a secret panel that authorizes the assassination of “enemies of the United States Government” – including American citizens. These targeted killings are fully authorized by law under the Congressional military authorization act following 9/11. There is no trial, no due process, and no public record of the decision or the assassination itself.
Just to recap the absurdity: the President of the United States has appointed a known propagandist, nationalist, and white supremacist to replace the highest military adviser in the country on a council that authorizes secret, legal, targeted killings of American citizens (and others) without due process.
What You Can Do:
- Call your Senators and Congressperson this week and demand that they publicly and legislatively oppose Trump’s appointment of Steven Bannon to the NSC.
- Spread the word about this news to your networks, since this is not getting a lot of coverage right now.

[ursus arctos]

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It's a complex (and shameful) aspect of US policy in the "War on Terror", but I'm not aware of the NSC having played a central role (as opposed to the CIA, NSA and the White House counter-terrorism staff) in the current program (they have been involved in the past).

This Wiki outlines the history and many of the issues involved in what remains a black box to a large extent.

Needless to say, Bannon's central role in the Trump White House means that he will have input into such decisions whether or not he was a NSC principal.

[Hot Pepsi]

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Movies and TV suggest that the CIA, et al can and do kill whomever they want to, and there's nothing the law can really do about it. Worst case scenario, it becomes public and, if they can't smear the journalists/NGO that made it public, they'll be congress might have hearings. As in that one Bourne movie. But at most, it would be a case of "easier to ask forgiveness than permission" after the fact and nobody will ever really be held responsible.

[anton pulisov]

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18 of the 292 Republicans in congress came out against Trump's travel ban.

That means that 94% of them couldn't give a shit. Including Paul Ryan.