StrangeSox

DARK ESSAYS BY WHITE HOUSE STAFFER ARE THE INTELLECTUAL SOURCE CODE OF TRUMPISM On February 2, the guessing ended when the Weekly Standard revealed Anton as the author. More crucially, the magazine also revealed that Anton had just been hired as the senior director of strategic communications at the NSC and accurately described him as “the leading conservative intellectual to argue for the election of Donald Trump.” This cast Anton’s five-month-old essay, as well as other articles he has written, in a new light — they are virtually the only attempt by a Trump insider to present a holistic explanation of what his presidency stands for and seeks to accomplish. The outing of Anton has inadvertently exposed the intellectual source code of Trumpism. Of course, Trump and his senior aides have issued a steady outpouring of startling statements and tweets about the administration’s ideas and plans. There’s also been a flurry of radical executive orders and appointments of cabinet officers whose backgrounds — as billionaires or Christian warriors or civil rights opponents — provide alarming data points. A number of officials have written crude and inflammatory books in years past, such as Michael Flynn, the retired general who heads the NSC. And, yes, there’s the case of Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart executive who is Trump’s senior adviser. But nobody in the administration has drawn up a real-time ideological blueprint to explain the intentional chaos of what’s happening under Trump — except, as it now turns out, Michael Anton, whose radical theories have been compared to those of a German philosopher named Carl Schmitt, who helped lay the legal foundations of the Nazi Party.

Fun things that have happened in the last 24 days: -Started off day 2 of his Presidency melting down about crowd sizes -Appointed and got confirmed to a Cabinet-level secretaryship a key PAC donor who showed very little understanding of the department she's now running and had ethical and financial disclosure issues (DeVos) -Appointed and got confirmed to Attorney General a man who was racist enough for a 1980's Republican Senate to reject him and who made his first official action to rescind transgendered protections -Approved a badly botched raid that resulted in the death of a Navy SEAL, an 8 year old American girl, and over two dozen civilians and the loss of a multi-million dollar aircraft while failing to accomplish its main objective. It also led to Yemen refusing continued special operations actions. -Lost an entire department of senior international diplomacy personnel to mass resignations; State is now headed by a curiously Russian-friendly former oil company CEO who advocated against Russian sanctions in the past. -Crashed a wedding with the Prime Minister of Japan at his private golf club -Discussed military intelligence surrounding an emergent situation with North Korea in front of a crowd of unvetted civilians and foreign nationals -Allowed unsecured phones to be held over secret briefing documents -Continues to use an unsecured personal phone -Refused to divest himself in any meaningful way from his worldwide business holdings and is likely in direct violation of the terms of his lease for the DC hotel -Forgot to mention Jews in a holocaust remembrance -Kept on as National Security Advisor a man who illegally spoke to Russian diplomats about sanctions against Russia for tampering in the US election and lied about it, despite clear warnings weeks ago that Flynn had lied and was susceptible to blackmail. -Used the office of the President to advertise his daughter's failing clothing line -Repeats unsupported and unsupportable lies about millions of votes being illegally cast -Rushed out a poorly written and extremely poorly implemented ban on travel from seven majority Muslim nations which was halted by the courts after causing mass chaos Probably forgetting a bunch, too. Been an interesting first 24 days. e: -Appointed his white nationalist chief advisor to the National Security Council without realizing it and was pissed off about it later

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Feb 14, 2017 -> 08:38 AM) I just want to point out that while Flynn was getting s***canned, Mnunchin was confirmed. The guy who was busted for predatory loans and funneled 100 million through an offshore bank (and didn't mention that when being vetted, because that was an oversight) was just pushed through and congress the Republican Senate plus Manchin was all "cool nbd" fyp e: Mnuchin wants to appoint some other Goldman Sachs guys to the deputy level, too. Seems like handing over the Treasury department to the same investment bankers who tanked the world economy less than ten years ago is an extremely bad idea, but what do I know? Trump's the Greatest President in the Universe, so this must be a good thing.

If petraus is selected, he'll need to inform his parole officer.

WikiLeaks isn't even trying to not look like a Russian propaganda outlet at this point https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/831468...src=twsrc%5Etfw

The White House was notified last month by the Justice department that Flynn was lying about the nature of his calls to Russian contacts and that he was susceptible to bring blackmailed, and yet the Trump administration still had him in security briefings as recently as yesterday.

Couldn't even make it a month before a top level advisor had to resign in disgrace amid an international scandal that the president himself almost definitely knew about and was for sure warned about by multiple intelligence agencies and the interim attorney general he fired.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 13, 2017 -> 08:16 PM) Justice department warned White House that Flynn could be blackmailed by Russia. http://wapo.st/2lDKXzq The army has also been investigating Russian payments to Flynn. https://t.co/iFMhFj3YLS

Justice department warned White House that Flynn could be blackmailed by Russia. http://wapo.st/2lDKXzq

One thing Trump's managed to highlight in only three short weeks is that our oversight system is woefully inadequate if it doesn't function at all if Congress and the President are the same party, which appears to be the case. Really need some sort of permanent independent oversight system, or a way for the minority in the House to still be able to force legitimate investigations and committees to happen. If Clinton had done 1/10th of what Trump's already done, Republicans would (rightfully) be hounding her to the ends of the Earth with a never-ending series of House investigations.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Feb 13, 2017 -> 02:57 PM) Oops I could have put it in the Democrat thread I guess. But I started in here praising Brett. No, that is not the correct thread to post (again) about how much you don't like Clinton either!

QUOTE (greg775 @ Feb 13, 2017 -> 02:53 PM) But remember there's no reason to bring Trump into any discussions with me. I'm not a fan and I didn't vote for him either. Hi, please check the name of the thread you're posting in, if you want to whine about Clinton maybe try starting a new thread or something?

There was actual "fake news" and the widespread consumption of it during the election was and is an issue. That Trumpists took what is an actual thing and changed it to be a (crappy) deflection for anything they don't like doesn't make the original concept bad. Trump was whining about the "lying" and "unfair" media long before 'fake news' became a phrase, and the conservative media sphere as a whole has been trumpeting "DON'T TRUST THE LIBERAL MEDIA!" literally for decades. It's not the left's fault that there are a large number of Americans primed to immediately dismiss anything that doesn't bolster their own worldview.

QUOTE (brett05 @ Feb 13, 2017 -> 01:40 PM) Yes Gallop did such a great job at polling for President didn't they? oh wait. Gallup stopped polling the Presidential election after 2012. QUOTE (brett05 @ Feb 13, 2017 -> 01:41 PM) And hey look, Rasmussen was one of two polls (la) that had President Trump winning the election. Wow were they lucky on that one. The LA Times tracking poll had Trump winning the popular vote by a wide margin, which he did not. They did not do state-by-state polling so they were wrong by a big amount on the one thing they tried to evaluate. e: and Rasmussen called the election, both the popular vote and the EC, for Clinton. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_con...inal_2016_picks

hey brett what are your thoughts on the Greatest President Ever holding a national security conference with a bunch of random people including some foreign nationals in the room, and for having one of his golf club members identifying and posting photographs of the "nuclear football" guy?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 12, 2017 -> 08:30 PM) So, if you've never seen a dam collapse, California is on the verge of having one tonight after failure of the ground beneath the dam's main spillway. It's holding for now, but there's a bunch more rain on the way starting Wednesday night. They're rushing to shore up the spillways as much as they can ahead of that. The main dam itself, which is the tallest in the US, is not in danger of failing. It's the spillways on the sides that have already failed in a few ways, and the major risk right now is if the emergency spillway fails. That would release a large wall of water approximately 30' high. A diagram of the dam This is the main spillway. Water should not be flowing to the right around that big rock. This giant hole is why water is flowing around that rock This is water spilling over the auxiliary/emergency spillway, which hadn't been used once since the dam was constructed in 1968. It's basically just a long weir that runs off uncontrolled over a dirt slope and down to the river.

Right. So far, there's only been a TRO and then an appellate review of the TRO. They haven't ruled on the merits at all. We still have to question if a statement like Miller's is due to deliberate lying, ignorance, incompetence or a combination of the three, with each being just as likely.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 13, 2017 -> 11:17 AM) Stephen Miller did say yesterday Trump has accomplished more in 3 weeks that many Presidents have accomplished their entire term. They are nuts in the WH. Stephen Miller’s authoritarian declaration: Trump’s national security actions ‘will not be questioned’ "Will not be questioned." That is an incredible claim to executive authority -- and one we can expect to hear plenty more about. Trump has beaten around this bush plenty, yes. But Miller just came out and said it: that the White House doesn't recognize judges' authority to review things such as his travel ban.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 10, 2017 -> 08:48 PM) Here's his polling aggregate, slightly improved since the Muslim ban. This is who our country is. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fed...efe5_story.html .

Trump's EO on ethics cited a law that doesn't exist. https://twitter.com/JustinElliott/status/83...src=twsrc%5Etfw

We don't really have an Israel or Mid-East catch all thread and this didn't seem to warrant a whole new thread, but Police 'likely to recommend' indictment of Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption charges

Trump brings up vote fraud again, this time in meeting with senators He's now claiming that "thousands" of MA residents illegally voted in NH. Crazy people with a poor grasp on reality now run our country.

QUOTE (brett05 @ Feb 9, 2017 -> 02:31 PM) What was denied? Was he prevented from making a nomination? Nope. So it looks like his power was unaffected. They refused to even consider any nominee at all. He was effectively denied the ability to use his powers of appointment. Why is that okay? How long should it be acceptable to deny any and all appointments a President may make?

QUOTE (brett05 @ Feb 10, 2017 -> 02:03 PM) I know they are beyond what the Republicans have done in recent past lol forever at this level of delusion e: brett, honeslty, can you list what you the the Democrats have done in the past 3 weeks that you consider obstructionism? Can you list what you think the Republicans have done in the last several years, and explain how your Dem list is "beyond" the Rep list?