__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
I'm reading a book called 'In the Garden Of Beasts', by Erik Larsen. It's about the US Ambassador to Germany and the lead up to the Second World War. Two nights ago, I happened upon this passage.
"Earlier in the year, for example, Göring had claimed with utter sobriety that 300 German Americans had been murdered in front of Independence Hall at the start of the past world war. Messersmith (George S Messersmith, head of the US Consulate in Berlin), in a dispatch, observed that even smart, well-traveled Germans will 'sit and calmly tell you the most extraordinary fairy tales'."
This is how it starts. We're living in a very dangerous time.
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to GreenLantern2814 For This Useful Post:
In a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper the electors -- nine Democrats and one Republican -- argue that they require the information ahead of Dec. 19, when the Electoral College is set to meet and select the next president.
“The Electors require to know from the intelligence community whether there are ongoing investigations into ties between Donald Trump, his campaign or associates, and Russian government interference in the election, the scope of those investigations, how far those investigations may have reached, and who was involved in those investigations,” they wrote. “We further require a briefing on all investigative findings, as these matters directly impact the core factors in our deliberations of whether Mr. Trump is fit to serve as President of the United States.”
I don't know if this would be a good idea or not. It's one thing to brief them on a concluded investigation where the facts and circumstances are known as much as can reasonably be know, but drawing conclusions while an investigation is in progress could easily give the false appearance of guilt or innocence (i.e. what Comney did).
I think the answer here is that you elect Trump, wait for the investigation to be completed then impeach him and however far down corruption goes if proven true. If the electors do not elect trump there will be a civil war.
In this scenario you could end up with a Paul Ryan presidency.
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to GGG For This Useful Post:
At least Mattis is a professional. I would not have been surprised if Trump tapped Chuck Norris for the gig.
It is a little concerning that a pal of Putin's is in line to be the Secretary of State. This Russian hacking stuff is obviously a leftie conspiracy theory being put forward by Mitch McConnell, John McCain, and the CIA, but this potential appointment does not look good.
Donald tweeted about the Russian hacking today, saying how hard it is to know who hacked what, so that should reassure us, because he knows computers, and has nothing to gain, and isn't a greedy person, and cares only for America's best interests, and isn't a crook.
__________________
The Following 7 Users Say Thank You to RougeUnderoos For This Useful Post:
At least Mattis is a professional. I would not have been surprised if Trump tapped Chuck Norris for the gig.
It is a little concerning that a pal of Putin's is in line to be the Secretary of State. This Russian hacking stuff is obviously a leftie conspiracy theory being put forward by Mitch McConnell, John McCain, and the CIA, but this potential appointment does not look good.
Donald tweeted about the Russian hacking today, saying how hard it is to know who hacked what, so that should reassure us, because he knows computers, and has nothing to gain, and isn't a greedy person, and cares only for America's best interests, and isn't a crook.
His son Baron did the investigation already he is the best at cyber.
I think the answer here is that you elect Trump, wait for the investigation to be completed then impeach him and however far down corruption goes if proven true. If the electors do not elect trump there will be a civil war.
In this scenario you could end up with a Paul Ryan presidency.
I would be too, because anything would be better than this (honestly a citizen chosen at random would be better)... but you would end up with a Mike Pence presidency, not Paul Ryan.
The electors voting for someone else would be more likely to produce a Ryan presidency - that is, if Trump doesn't get to 270, then Congress gets to pick from the top five. They're not picking Clinton, and so it'd be Trump vs whoever the Electors voted for instead of him (presumably, Ryan would be one of the people in question). I agree it won't happen though.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
I would be too, because anything would be better than this (honestly a citizen chosen at random would be better)... but you would end up with a Mike Pence presidency, not Paul Ryan.
The electors voting for someone else would be more likely to produce a Ryan presidency - that is, if Trump doesn't get to 270, then Congress gets to pick from the top five. They're not picking Clinton, and so it'd be Trump vs whoever the Electors voted for instead of him (presumably, Ryan would be one of the people in question). I agree it won't happen though.
My assumption was that there would be something discovered that implicated Pence as well to get to Ryan, Pence as actual president is still better than Trump internationally.
Doesn't the house and senate have to pick from those receiving electoral college votes if no one gets to 270? And can a voter abstain or are they forced to vote for one or the other?
I'm not aware - I was under the impression that they could vote for whoever they wanted to, but I could very well be wrong about that. I suppose it's possible that it would have to be someone on the ballot in their state.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
The most recent Off Message podcast from POLITICO is interesting, they have David Brock on and they talk about many different things from what he thinks the Clinton campaign did right and did wrong, to things that he wanted to do with the organizations he controlled but was told not to do, to more views on how the media did.
They briefly brought up a Harvard study which I hadn't seen which had some interesting observations about the media coverage. Over the course of the campaign, Clinton received quite a bit more negative coverage than did Trump. Trump got more negative coverage during the general election, but Trump was almost even positive/negative during the primaries while Clinton's coverage was almost the same mostly negative during both the primaries and the campaign. Both received equally negative coverage about fitness for office which is a false equivalence IMO. And Trump overall got more coverage.
Also raised an interesting point that when the message from the media about government is negative, that intentionally or unintentionally reinforces a campaign message about the government being negative (drain that swamp). If the negative media coverage creates anxiety, dissatisfaction and distrust that's something a populist (or fake-populist) can tap into, which Trump did with great success.
Anyway here's the study, I haven't read it all yet:
Which jives with the other tidbit I found interesting from the podcast, he said the internal polls from Clinton's campaign were saying that people were responding to the dark rhetoric and campaign ads from Trump. Typically politicians try to avoid that darkness and try to focus on the what we're going to do stuff because the dark stuff doesn't poll well.
EDIT: Negative vs positive news coverage over the years:
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to photon For This Useful Post:
NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—Donald Trump stirred controversy on Monday by revealing that he intends to spend only half his time as President at the Kremlin—and the remainder at Trump Tower in Manhattan.
His decision to limit his time at the Kremlin reportedly stemmed from his wife Melania’s desire not to uproot the Trump family by relocating full-time to Moscow.
“It was part of the deal when he ran for President that he would go to the Kremlin and she would stay behind in New York,” a source close to the Trumps said.
Appearing on Russian television, Trump surrogate Kellyanne Conway said that Trump’s decision to split his time between Moscow and New York would have “no impact whatsoever” on his ability to function as an integral part of the Kremlin team.
“Mr. Trump doesn’t need to be physically down the hall from President Putin,” she said. “When he’s at Trump Tower, they’re on the phone with each other all day. It’s all good.”
In a televised interview later in the day, however, the Russian President expressed displeasure at the amount of time that Trump plans to be away from the Kremlin. “This is not what Russian taxpayers paid for,” he said.
I imagine the Trump divesting press conference will happen the same day as the Melania immigration press conference she said she was going to have that either hasn't happened, or was done in front of no one.
__________________
"Think I'm gonna be the scapegoat for the whole damn machine? Sheeee......."
I imagine the Trump divesting press conference will happen the same day as the Melania immigration press conference she said she was going to have that either hasn't happened, or was done in front of no one.
Trump knows that he doesn't need to avoid conflicts of interest. He just needs to avoid the issue long enough. Just like he did with the tax returns.
__________________
"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
The Following User Says Thank You to FlamesAddiction For This Useful Post:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Even though I am not mandated by law to do so, I will be leaving my busineses before January 20th so that I can focus full time on the......
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Presidency. Two of my children, Don and Eric, plus executives, will manage them. No new deals will be done during my term(s) in office.
Individual Electors are, Constitutionally, free to vote for whomever they want for President. Some States have passed laws which either fine a "faithless" Elector or allow for the replacement of that Elector, or allow political parties to extract pledges from Electors to vote for that party's candidate should they win the popular vote.
The question of if these laws and pledges are Constitutional, however, is an open question which has never been tested at the Supreme Court. The question of pledges has been tested, but the Court has merely ruled they may be asked for, not if they are binding, nor if a party could replace an Elector who did not follow through with their pledge.
Given that the Supreme Court is a 4-4 split between Democrat and Republican aligned Justices, a case or group of cases regarding Faithless Electors would be particularly fascinating to see - especially as a tied Supreme Court ruling would leave a lower court decision in place and multiple, and conflicting, Circuit Court rulings could theoretically be involved.
In the event that no person amasses a majority of the EC votes, the election is turned over to the House, but each State delegation gets a single vote. Should that tie 25-25 then the Vice-President Elect (as chosen by the Senate, in the result of no one getting 270 Electoral College votes) shall choose the President.
The Following User Says Thank You to driveway For This Useful Post:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Presidency. Two of my children, Don and Eric, plus executives, will manage them. No new deals will be done during my term(s) in office.
That's something. Even better would be to appoint an impartial 3rd party to monitor the whole thing.
Still doesn't remove the conflict of interest.
Apparently there's a Newsweek article coming out tomorrow about Trump's business involvement with a family in Turkey with two towers with Trump's name on them. Turkish authorities have arrested a member of the family and the claim is it's on order from the president of Turkey on trumped up charges (hah) to threaten Trump's income. There's a imam that's in the US (and is a citizen) that Turkey wants returned to them.
Sounds like it's a stretch, I guess we'll see if this guy gets magically deported to Turkey in January.. But it's at least plausible and that's with a property Trump admitted to having a conflict of interest over. Without knowing about all the other stuff he's got going on it's impossible to know if this kid of influence is actually being tried or not.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
