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What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

Started by FunkMonk, November 08, 2016, 11:02:57 PM

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jimmy olsen

You get to live on in the postapocalyptic, radioactive, cannibal crazed wasteland.
It is far better for the truth to tear my flesh to pieces, then for my soul to wander through darkness in eternal damnation.

Jet: So what kind of woman is she? What's Julia like?
Faye: Ordinary. The kind of beautiful, dangerous ordinary that you just can't leave alone.
Jet: I see.
Faye: Like an angel from the underworld. Or a devil from Paradise.
--------------------------------------------
1 Karma Chameleon point

Eddie Teach

Nah, we'll settle Mars after you're gone.
To sleep, perchance to dream. But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?

Razgovory

Quote from: jimmy olsen on February 09, 2017, 11:54:01 PM
You get to live on in the postapocalyptic, radioactive, cannibal crazed wasteland.

Why would we have to move to West Virginia?
I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017

viper37

Quote from: Razgovory on February 09, 2017, 07:14:48 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 09, 2017, 06:42:21 PM
Man is that must be some kind of record. Not even through a month and already a Supreme Court case.

Just because Trump wants it to go to the SCOTUS doesn't mean it will.
has the Supreme Court ever refused to hear a case brought for by the government?
I don't do meditation.  I drink alcohol to relax, like normal people.

If Microsoft Excel decided to stop working overnight, the world would practically end.

jimmy olsen

Quote from: viper37 on February 10, 2017, 12:22:00 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on February 09, 2017, 07:14:48 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 09, 2017, 06:42:21 PM
Man is that must be some kind of record. Not even through a month and already a Supreme Court case.

Just because Trump wants it to go to the SCOTUS doesn't mean it will.
has the Supreme Court ever refused to hear a case brought for by the government?
If they do it confirms the decision of the lower court IIRC.
It is far better for the truth to tear my flesh to pieces, then for my soul to wander through darkness in eternal damnation.

Jet: So what kind of woman is she? What's Julia like?
Faye: Ordinary. The kind of beautiful, dangerous ordinary that you just can't leave alone.
Jet: I see.
Faye: Like an angel from the underworld. Or a devil from Paradise.
--------------------------------------------
1 Karma Chameleon point

jimmy olsen

Every article paints a worse picture. :bleeding::bleeding::bleeding::bleeding:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2017/02/trump_has_nominated_no_second_tier_cabinet_officials_that_s_a_problem.html
Quote
It's Bad Enough Trump Has No Foreign Policy

It's worse that he has appointed no one to help his Cabinet secretaries clean up after him.

By Fred Kaplan

There are two things wrong with President Trump's claim that Senate Democrats are delaying confirmation of his Cabinet picks. First, it's not true; the pace of hearings, probes, and votes has been about the same as in previous administrations. Second, if Trump is suggesting that the delays are preventing his government from revving up, he's the one to blame.

Three weeks into his presidency, Trump has not nominated any second-tier officials—the deputy, under, and assistant secretaries—in a major department. Whatever the merits of his various Cabinet secretaries, they are heading empty shells.

Yes, Secretary of Defense James Mattis flew to Asia to assure his counterparts in South Korea and Japan that America's commitment to their defense is rock solid (despite some of Trump's remarks to the contrary). Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reinforced that message with phone calls himself.

But then what? Traditionally, the appropriate underlings—the undersecretary of state for political affairs, the assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs, and various others—would follow up, in phone calls and face-to-face meetings, to discuss specific issues, allay specific concerns, reshape imperfect accords, untangle some misunderstandings. Asian allies in particular require almost daily hand-holding.

But none of this can happen, because there are no officials who can do it. Nor can the Trump administration do much to form new policies, assess new trends, or address new threats. Usually, the National Security Council's Deputies Committee does the staff work—sometimes the initial analysis—on these sorts of issues. But it can't be done now, because there are no deputy or undersecretaries to fill a Deputies Committee. There are acting deputy and undersecretaries, but they're holdovers from the Obama administration, and so, they can't pretend—or be trusted—to speak for the new crowd. They tend to be junior hangovers, at that, since most of Obama's midlevel officials left on Inauguration Day, either by their own choice or at Team Trump's insistence.

Officials at this level are presidential appointees, and the slots are usually filled—at least tentatively (for they, too, require Senate confirmation)—in the transition between the election and the start of the term. Some presidents give Cabinet secretaries leeway to pick their own underlings or to reject the ones offered, but only to a degree and sometimes barely that. Presidents don't want a Cabinet that's too independent; putting their own people in key positions is one way to maintain control. In this administration, Mattis has pushed back on several of Trump's preferred undersecretaries, and he may be the only Cabinet secretary with the moxie and leverage to do so. The others are still waiting.

Ordinarily this delay in staffing wouldn't much matter. New administrations take some time to find their footing; crises rarely occur so early on. But Trump has been spawning mini-crises almost daily. With nearly every phone call to a foreign head-of-state comes a tantrum, a faux pas, or at very least a storm of confusion that heightens tensions or foments new uncertainties. Usually, before presidents call a head of state, they're briefed on the major issues concerning that country, the positions held by both sides, perhaps some personal peculiarities. For heads of particularly important countries, they're given briefing folders to read in advance. Trump reads no such folders and hears no such briefings, except sometimes an informal point or two, delivered not by a State Department official, but by his national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who, in some cases, has his own agenda and, in others, has little to say.

Several foreign leaders have shaken their heads in wonder at these phone calls, so hostile or, in any case, bewildering. French President François Hollande told aides that all Trump seemed to care about was the money that America spends on the rest of the world. Trump famously screamed at Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over a prior deal for the United States to receive 1,200 refugees—in part because Trump didn't know about the deal and, on a broader level, had no knowledge of the critical role that Australia plays in Asian security or in the global U.S. intelligence network. In another phone call, when Russian President Vladimir Putin asked about extending the Obama-era New START nuclear-arms-reduction treaty, Trump scoffed at the treaty as a bad deal that gives Moscow an advantage—in part because he was unfamiliar with the treaty, which in fact requires both sides to cut their nuclear arsenals to equal levels and which, meanwhile, gives the United States unprecedented rights of inspection.

It's not clear whether Trump would have wanted a State Department briefing on these subjects, had one of his own people been available to give it. But he had no such people, and there were no briefings.

Trump is right about one thing: The world is a mess. He doesn't seem to realize the extent to which his words and actions—his hostile messages, mixed messages, and sometimes the absence of a message where there needs to be one—are making it messier. He knows almost nothing about foreign policy. He has no foreign-policy apparatus, only a few Cabinet secretaries and some White House advisers, who have little experience running federal bureaucracies and who disagree on basic premises. In short, he has no foreign policy, but only a string of clichés about "America First" and "winning," which don't translate into substantive ideas or prescriptions for action. And he seems blithely unaware that he's spinning aimlessly.

It is far better for the truth to tear my flesh to pieces, then for my soul to wander through darkness in eternal damnation.

Jet: So what kind of woman is she? What's Julia like?
Faye: Ordinary. The kind of beautiful, dangerous ordinary that you just can't leave alone.
Jet: I see.
Faye: Like an angel from the underworld. Or a devil from Paradise.
--------------------------------------------
1 Karma Chameleon point

11B4V

Quote

Several foreign leaders have shaken their heads in wonder at these phone calls, so hostile or, in any case, bewildering. French President François Hollande told aides that all Trump seemed to care about was the money that America spends on the rest of the world.



Rantings from the asylum.
"there's a long tradition of insulting people we disagree with here, and I'll be damned if I listen to your entreaties otherwise."-OVB

"Obviously not a Berkut-commanded armored column.  They're not all brewing."- CdM

"We've reached one of our phase lines after the firefight and it smells bad—meaning it's a little bit suspicious... Could be an amb—".

MadImmortalMan

I thought the foreign leaders debunked those stories. Particularly the Aussie PM.
"Stability is destabilizing." --Hyman Minsky

"Complacency can be a self-denying prophecy."
"We have nothing to fear but lack of fear itself." --Larry Summers

bogh

Nope. Turnbull is trying to downplay (to not antagonise Trump), but everything suggests that reports were pretty accurate. At least that's the take from NZ news organisations...

CountDeMoney

He's a different kind of celebrity, but in the end, he's still a celebrity that's been living in his own bubble for decades, creating his own reality that is reinforced by a small group of family and clingers.  No different than, say, Elvis or Prince. 

Congratulations, America.  You elected Michael Jackson.

HisMajestyBOB

Quote from: CountDeMoney on February 10, 2017, 06:57:41 AM
He's a different kind of celebrity, but in the end, he's still a celebrity that's been living in his own bubble for decades, creating his own reality that is reinforced by a small group of family and clingers.  No different than, say, Elvis or Prince. 

Congratulations, America.  You elected Michael Jackson.

At least MJ could sing and dance.
Three lovely Prada points for HoI2 help

CountDeMoney


Kleves

My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.

grumbler

Quote from: viper37 on February 10, 2017, 12:22:00 AM

has the Supreme Court ever refused to hear a case brought for by the government?

All the time.  It refused last fall to hear a case brought by the Obama administration when the lower courts invalidated the EO giving immigrants not charged with any crimes effective immunity to deportation, for instance.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!

Razgovory

Quote from: viper37 on February 10, 2017, 12:22:00 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on February 09, 2017, 07:14:48 PM
Quote from: Valmy on February 09, 2017, 06:42:21 PM
Man is that must be some kind of record. Not even through a month and already a Supreme Court case.

Just because Trump wants it to go to the SCOTUS doesn't mean it will.
has the Supreme Court ever refused to hear a case brought for by the government?

I believe so, yes.
I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017