Trumpland U.S.A

[17 Moments of Spring]

Quote

Naturally, Senate Democrats are lining up to denounce Gorsuch. Within minutes of the president’s nomination, Senate minority leader Charles Schumer announced a filibuster. But even Schumer could not bring himself to make the standard allegation that Gorsuch is out of the “mainstream.” Instead, Schumer merely argued that “the burden is on Judge Neil Gorsuch to prove himself to be within the legal mainstream.” It may seem a little odd to filibuster preemptively a nominee who has not yet had a chance to satisfy that burden, but then Schumer probably had no choice. With a liberal mantra of “resistance” to all things Trump, anything less than a filibuster would antagonize the Democratic base.

...

Though there will be a filibuster, Gorsuch will likely be confirmed. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell may be able to peel away enough Democrats to reach 60 votes, but failing that, Republican Senators will be inclined to abolish the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, as the previous Democratic majority did for all lower-court appointments. Indeed, some Democrats are questioning the wisdom of a filibuster at this point, hoping to keep their powder dry for a future confirmation battle—a likely event, given the ages of liberal justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg (83) and Stephen Breyer (78), and swing vote Anthony Kennedy (80).

 

In the near term, the Court will simply revert to its previous balance, with justices evenly divided between liberal and conservative blocs and Kennedy casting the pivotal vote. The creation of a durable conservative coalition on the high court will depend on President Trump’s choice to fill the next vacancy. But the nomination of Neil Gorsuch is a great start.

 

https://www.city-journal.org/html/great-start-14995.html

[elfstone]

On 2/7/2017 at 4:58 AM, Cult Icon said:

On 2/2/2017 at 8:29 PM, Michael* said:

Bearing in mind what an inauspicious start Trump has made to his presidency in those two weeks, I don't know if you could consider the reaction to be entirely overblown. He may yet confound some of our expectations, but as things stand, it's pretty hard to say there’s nothing at all to be concerned about.

 

 

 He was not elected by 60 million americans or so to be a politically correct president with liberal and internationalist morals.

 

There is precious little about Bannon.  Bannon's political philosophy is basically a modernized version of the 1950s "next american century" sort of idealism.  It is not compelling or popular enough to be interesting, let alone "dangerous".

 

I see excessive hysteria and fantasy writing in the media and it's only been two weeks plus change.

However, the lines continue to blur between fantasy and reality

 

" The Department of Defense is seeking to rent space in President Trump’s New York skyscraper, Trump Tower, a move that could directly funnel government money into the president’s business interests."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/department-of-defense-looks-to-rent-space-in-trump-tower/2017/02/07/6dec7252-edb0-11e6-9662-6eedf1627882_story.html?utm_term=.ce46a8a574b9

 

 

[17 Moments of Spring]

Quote

The US administration has just proudly announced that it has hit its target of accepting 10,000 Syrian refugees during the current fiscal year (1^st October-30^th September). However, closer inspection of the Obama administration's figures tell a far more disturbing story. Although the US government accepts that approximately 10% of Syria’s population are Christians and that Christians have been specifically targeted, only 56 of 10,801 Syrian refugees accepted to the US this year have been Christians.

...

In fact virtually all of the Syrian refugees that have been accepted into the USA have been Sunni Muslims, with only 20 Shi’a and 17 Yazidis. This is despite the fact that it is the non-Sunni minorities who are being particularly targeted by groups such as IS and the public recognition by US Secretary of State John Kerry last March that genocide was happening against Christians and Yazidis in Syria.

 

https://barnabasfund.org/news/US-government-and-UN-guilty-of-massive-institutional-discrimination-against-Christian-refugees-fleeing-Syria

[elfstone]

4 hours ago, 17 Moments of Spring said:

 

Quote

The US administration has just proudly announced that it has hit its target of accepting 10,000 Syrian refugees during the current fiscal year (1^st October-30^th September). However, closer inspection of the Obama administration's figures tell a far more disturbing story. Although the US government accepts that approximately 10% of Syria’s population are Christians and that Christians have been specifically targeted, only 56 of 10,801 Syrian refugees accepted to the US this year have been Christians.

...

In fact virtually all of the Syrian refugees that have been accepted into the USA have been Sunni Muslims, with only 20 Shi’a and 17 Yazidis. This is despite the fact that it is the non-Sunni minorities who are being particularly targeted by groups such as IS and the public recognition by US Secretary of State John Kerry last March that genocide was happening against Christians and Yazidis in Syria.

 

https://barnabasfund.org/news/US-government-and-UN-guilty-of-massive-institutional-discrimination-against-Christian-refugees-fleeing-Syria

 

This article paints a misleading picture. As to whether it does so deliberately, I can only surmise.

From State Dept.

US admits Chritians but mostly from Iraq. That is because in Syria, Christian factions are more or less part of the Assad regime.

Contrary to what is ordinarily assumed, there are not that many Christians fleeing Syria since the ongoing war does not pose immediate threat to their lives as it does to the Sunni faction.  I dont know how to describe their status other than anxious observers as mass genocide takes place around them. Furthermore,  Syria is very different from Iraq, a distinction that the propaganda pieces like above do not make. Of the 2000-4000 Christian victims of isil,  vast majority were Iraqis. If a person with sound mind were reading this I would remind them that the overwhelming majority of 400000 civilians killed by the regime are Sunnis.

Now, factors underlying this contrasting situation:

 

1. Syrian Christians, like every non Sunni faction in Syria, mostly dwell in safe zones/enclaves made impenetrable by formidable militia comprised of their own community members.

2. As of now, Assad regime is fully committed to security of Assyrian neighborhoods, going as far as cleansing, massacring nearby Sunni populations.

3. I dont have to remind anyone that the original FSA (desginated as terrorist by Assad & Russia) did include a sizeable Christian militia,  who were later pardoned and eventually  reintegrated by Assad. That is in stark distinction to what eventually happened to the Sunni faction of FSA,  tens of thousands of whom were either tortured+executed by the regime, or died fighting isil.

 4. In an attempt to demonstrate his solidarity with Syria's Christians, Assad chose to set up the regime's primary extermination camp in the historic Assyrian city of Saynaya. You might have heard that name if you were familiar with the French model Elisa Sednaoui who traces her family's origins to that particular city. Nevertheless, that particular camp happens to be the site where anywhere between 30000-70000 of Sunni males, mostly unarmed civilians  were starved and tortured in a 'show of strengh' by the regime, eventually resulting in at least 13000 deaths, by all means a conservative estimates. Now this particular genocide was carried out by regime forces with the assistance of various para-military death squads which include Christians among their ranks.

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/human-slaughterhouse-mass-hangings-and-extermination-syrian-prison

https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/MDE2454152017ENGLISH.PDF

As to whether there were Christian soldiers  present on the site perpetrating these atrocities, the article below does not care to mention. It also does not deem it important to mention that the prisoners were predominantly, if not exclusively Sunnis. Personally, I approve of their approach if the full disclosure had explosive implications. Also I consider it abominable  to see victims of any conflict,  class conflict in Syria's case,  in purely sectarian terms. However, Assad, more so than his predecessor has inevitably put the Assyrians in a very tough position, insofar as whichever community  chose to remain silent while watching multiple genocide being carried out by the regime in front of their eyes would end up looking bad. So it is only natural that some leaders of various Christian communities have started to voiced their annoyance at the regime's excesses.

https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/most-syrian-christians-aren-t-backing-assad-or-rebels

It is Assad himself who has played the sectarian/communal card from the onset of uprisings. It worked in his favor that opposition to the regime be divided up, for his already deeply sectarian regime to have any chance of survival, like "sharpening the contradiction" as it were.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[17 Moments of Spring]

21 hours ago, elfstone said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/

 

 

 

washington posters tend to lie even when they ask a question

 

Quote

President Donald Trump on Friday thanked Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull for disputing details of a Washington Post report that described a contentious phone call between the two world leaders.

...

The report indicated that during Trump's call with Turnbull over the weekend, Trump called a refugee agreement between the US and Australia the "worst deal ever" and accused Turnbull of trying to send America the "next Boston bombers" under a deal to send refugees from an Australian detention center to the US.

 

Turnbull told a Sydney radio station that Trump pledged during the call to honor the deal.

 

"I had a call with President Trump on Sunday morning our time and the president committed to honor the refugee resettlement deal that had been made by his predecessor Barack Obama," Turnbull told the radio station.

 

But Trump tweeted Wednesday night: "Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!"

 

When he was asked about the tweet on the radio show, Turnbull reiterated that Trump had pledged to honor the deal in the call.

He then disputed a detail in the Washington Post report that the president hung up on him and characterized the call as "frank and forthright" rather than contentious.

 

"As far as the call is concerned, I'm very disappointed that there has been a leak of purported details of the call in Washington, but I want to make one observation about it," Turnbull said. "The report that the president hung up is not correct. The call ended courteously."

 

He continued: "As far as the nature of the discussion, it was very frank and forthright."

Turnbull also described the call as a whole as "courteous."

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-australia-prime-minister-phone-call-2017-2

 

[frenchkiki]

Yes, of course, that's the WP who lies.

Period.

 

 

 

[17 Moments of Spring]

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Welcome to week three of "This Week In Fake News!" Previous editions can be found here and here.

 

You will see one change in this week's list, with respect to the count. Rather than start the count over every week, this ongoing diary of Fake News will now use a cumulative number, an ongoing count. Put simply, last week's list contained 24 pieces of Fake News. The week prior was 12. That is a total of 36, so this week we will start with number 37.

 

This is not meant to be a gimmick. Rather, it is a way to more accurately understand and comprehend the breathtaking scope of the national media's rabid dishonesty.

 

The media told FORTY lies last week, for a total of SEVENTY-SEVEN separate incidents of Fake News in just three weeks.

Let's begin…

 

http://www.dailywire.com/news/13294/fake-news-rap-sheet-last-week-msm-was-caught-john-nolte

[elfstone]

Apparently POTUS isnt the only one  running low on Omega-3 acids

[frenchkiki]

[Cult Icon]

 

 

This week's mass media: The contents are as paranoid as the cover 

[frenchkiki]

They forgot to put a little black mustache on Steve Bannon

 

[Michael*]

After he basically threatened to silence them, Trump was never going to be given an easy ride by the mass media. Obviously, what he said doesn't necessarily mean that he's on some kind of mission to unpick the first amendment, but taken in isolation it’s a bit worrying. Not because I love CNN or the BBC, but because the President should always be answerable to the press, including the more hostile sections of it.

[17 Moments of Spring]

On 2017. 02. 10. at 0:56 AM, Cult Icon said:

 

 

 

 These scratches show zero talent / creativity. But this one seem to be influential.

 

 

 

 

Quote

The German edition of satirical magazine 'Charlie Hebdo' has published a message of solidarity with magazine 'Der Spiegel' over its recent controversial Trump cover.

 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is seen in the caricature holding a bloody knife in one hand and the separated head of the new leader of the Social Democrat Party (SPD) Martin Schulz in the other on the cover of this week's German edition of "Charlie Hebdo."

The tagline reads: "Spiegel readers out of control" (Spiegel-Leser ausser Rand und Band).

 

http://www.dw.com/en/charlie-hebdo-issues-cover-in-solidarity-with-spiegel-on-trump/a-37473352

[elfstone]

2 hours ago, Michael* said:

After he basically threatened to silence them, Trump was never going to be given an easy ride by the mass media. Obviously, what he said doesn't necessarily mean that he's on some kind of mission to unpick the first amendment, but taken in isolation it’s a bit worrying. Not because I love CNN or the BBC, but because the President should always be answerable to the press, including the more hostile sections of it.

Such expectations are likely to be disappointed, given he does not  shy away from  lashing out at even the judicial branch

The media consider him an abomination because they cannot account for the reality  of 'Presdient Trump' . To them, Trump represents an irreconciliable contradiction within their  liberal democratic, or conservative political framework. Some would go as far as to suggest that even traditional norms of morality and shame in politics cannot help us understand him. 

For instance, here is the opinion of the biggest champion of liberal democracy and free-market capitalism of our time. Nobody is obliged to agree with his conclusions though

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/america-the-failed-state-donald-trump

[Cult Icon]

3 hours ago, Michael* said:

After he basically threatened to silence them, Trump was never going to be given an easy ride by the mass media. Obviously, what he said doesn't necessarily mean that he's on some kind of mission to unpick the first amendment, but taken in isolation it’s a bit worrying. Not because I love CNN or the BBC, but because the President should always be answerable to the press, including the more hostile sections of it.

 

I don't think you understand politics in the US the way that a non-partisan American who understand the joke would.

 

I'll get back to this later.

[17 Moments of Spring]

Quote

The urban party has been getting beat up a lot, even before Trump’s surprising victory. Not only have the Democrats surrendered Congress; they now control just 13 state legislatures and 15 governorships—far below where they were pre–Barack Obama. Over the past decade, more than 1,000 elected Democratic state lawmakers have lost their jobs, with most of the hemorrhaging taking place outside the cities. As political analyst Ron Brownstein puts it, “Of all the overlapping generational, racial, and educational divides that explained Trump’s stunning upset over Hillary Clinton . . . none proved more powerful than the distance between the Democrats’ continued dominance of the largest metropolitan areas, and the stampede toward the GOP almost everywhere else.”

...

In the twenty-first century, though, the exploitation of natural resources and the manufacturing of products are more easily outsourced than are the arts of finance, insurance, investments, higher education, entertainment, popular culture, and high technology, immaterial sectors typically pursued within metropolitan contexts and supercharged by the demands of increasingly affluent global consumers. A vast government sector, mostly urban, is likewise largely impervious to the leveling effects of a globalized economy, even as its exorbitant cost and extended regulatory reach make the outsourcing of material production more likely. Asian steel may have devastated Youngstown, but Chinese dumping had no immediate effect on the flourishing government enclaves in Washington, Maryland, and Virginia, filled with well-paid knowledge workers. Globalization, big government, and metastasizing regulations have enriched the American coasts, in other words, while damaging much of the nation’s interior.

 

Few major political leaders before Trump seemed to care. He hammered home the point that elites rarely experienced the negative consequences of their own ideologies. New York Times columnists celebrating a “flat” world have yet to find themselves flattened by Chinese writers willing to write for a fraction of their per-word rate. Tenured Harvard professors hymning praise to global progressive culture don’t suddenly discover their positions drawn and quartered into four part-time lecturer positions. And senators and bureaucrats in Washington face no risk of having their roles usurped by low-wage Vietnamese politicians. Trump quickly discovered that millions of Americans were irate that the costs and benefits of our new economic reality were so unevenly distributed.

 

https://www.city-journal.org/html/trump-and-american-divide-14944.html

[Cult Icon]

[17 Moments of Spring]

[Cult Icon]

 

 

Kelly Anne conway should get a thread 

[elfstone]

26 minutes ago, Cult Icon said:

Kelly Anne conway should get a thread 

In the 'alternative females of interest' section?