We need to talk about Donald – the Nightmare continues

[Scot Dutchy]

Need to get better razors. Two shit bags.

[Hermit]

I volunteer to shave them and the rest of the gang if you supply a suitable razor.



Oops

[Scot Dutchy]

A nice thought. I wonder who shaves the orange baboon? Must be a great temptation.

[Animavore]

"Trump's 'America First' Infrastructure Plan: Let Saudi Arabia and Blackstone Take Care Of It"

Throughout the presidential campaign, Donald Trump blasted his rival for taking money from Saudi Arabia, which, he regularly charged, has a horrific human rights record and was behind the attack on September 11.

“You talk about women and women’s rights? So these are people that push gays off buildings. These are people that kill women and treat women horribly. And yet you take their money,” he complained.

Trump, of course, has never been married to anything he has said in the past. But even by Trumpian standards, a recent series of deals he struck with Saudi Arabia stand out.

The two that made the news — a $110 billion arms deal and a $100 million gift to an Ivanka Trump-inspired endowment — are remarkable in their own right.

But the third, which was rolled out much more quietly, is no less stunning: The Saudi kingdom joined forces with a top outside adviser to Trump to build a $40 billion war chest to privatize U.S. infrastructure.

The vehicle would employ the same kind of public-private partnerships, known as P3s, the Trump administration has endorsed for its trillion dollar infrastructure plan. The deal hands over control of projects to rebuild American roads and bridges to the private sector and a foreign country.

C'mon, apologists. Have at it.

[Scot Dutchy]

The Intercept? Never heard of it but who am I. If this is true then things are really bad for America.

[Forty Two]

Well, isn't the "Ivanka-inspired" endowment a World Bank run program for the benefit of female entrepreneurs and women in the middle east? It's not a "Clinton Foundation" style charitable organization run by the Trumps? It's outside of their control, run by the World Bank.

Democrats have been known to spout rhetoric about Saudi Arabia being the source of the 9/11 hijackers, the funders of terrorism and Wahabi sects, and such, yet, nobody complained about the Obama Administration's $115 billion deals with the Saudis. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-s ... SKCN11D2JQ

And, the relationship with Saudi Arabia has always been, let's say, complicated. http://www.smh.com.au/world/hillary-cli ... pikum.html

And the infrastructure deal does not hand over the infrastructure program to a foreign country. Blackstone is a private equity firm, meaning that the $40 billion is invested in private equity interests, which then determine what is done. The investor gets a return on investment, but does not manage the companies involved. It's called "raising capital."

[pErvinalia]

Nobody complained? I'm sure they didn't under your rock. Meanwhile, back in the real world..

[Forty Two]

Indeed, my words were an overstatement. The same level of objection was not raised. There were some muted cries about it.

Obama's final arms export tally more than doubled that under Bush. http://www.defenseone.com/business/2016 ... hs/133014/

I recall the media commentary on Bush's deals - Halliburton, Carlysle Group, and the "warmongering" arms deals.... to suggest that a media commentary commensurate to "doubling" arms sales took place under Obama would be rather silly.

Surely, there were some objections made - but, not much. It's interesting, that nowadays if Trump puts ketchup on his steak it makes news in the NY Times or WaPo. But, doubling of arms sales compared to Bush didn't even make a mention in mainstream sources.

Obama brokered more arms deals than any administration since World War II.

The reporting is almost always a bit wacky. Like, now the media reports that Trump is just way off base and nuts to think that we could have 3% GDP growth, which is part of his estimates for budgeting and taxation and revenue projections. However, while Trump is crazy to predict 3% growth, hardly a peep was heard in the mainstream when part of Obama's predictions including 4% and more growth. Then it was generally perfectly reasonable.

[Animavore]

‘There is only one snowflake’: Kimmel writer hilariously mocks Trump after he blocked her on Twitter.

omedy writer Bess Kalb was apparently so ruthless with her jokes aimed at President Donald Trump late Sunday night that he blocked her on Twitter.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/there-i ... n-twitter/

[pErvinalia]

Actual growth projections are something like 1.3%. That's why Trump's projections are so laughable.

[Animavore]

Three Republican EPA administrators: Trump is putting us on a dangerous path.

More than 30 years ago, the world was faced with a serious environmental threat, one that respected no boundaries. A hole in the ozone layer was linked to potential increases in skin cancer and blindness from cataracts. The ozone layer is a thin band of gas in the stratosphere that protects the Earth and humans from dangerous ultraviolet radiation from the sun, and it was slowly being destroyed by chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which are man-made gases used as aerosol propellants and in refrigeration and cooling.

Despite early skepticism, the risk of a thinning ozone layer was such that an international U.N. conference was convened in Vienna to address this problem. The participating countries and international bodies, including the United States, the European Union and other major producers and users of CFCs, afterward met in Montreal to negotiate an agreement setting out a specific program to reduce the production and use of CFCs.

The Environmental Protection Agency, with strong support from President Ronald Reagan, led the international effort that resulted in a treaty that contained an aggressive schedule of reductions known as the Montreal Protocol. It remains in effect today and has resulted in significant improvement in the ozone layer and greatly reduced the threat to human health. An element critical to the success of the effort was strong reliance on the shared science of the impact of CFCs and a willingness of the countries of the world to work together. They accepted that the risk of not acting was simply not acceptable.

Today, presented with the undeniable warming of the planet, we are faced with a global environmental threat whose potential harm to people and other living things exceeds any we have seen before. The Paris climate agreement is the international response to that threat.

In his April 22 Earth Day message, President Trump stated, “My administration is committed to advancing scientific research that leads to a better understanding of our environment and of environmental risks.”

Yet when confronted with broad-based evidence of planetary warming and the almost daily emerging evidence of the impacts of climate change, Trump’s March “skinny” budget and this week’s final 2018 budget plan say we should look the other way; he has chosen ignorance over knowledge. The need for extensive and accelerated scientific research about the nature of the problem and its possible policy solutions should be beyond question. Not to get more information is inexcusable.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... a4f136f426

[pErvinalia]

Bit much Republicans complaining about inaction on climate change. You belong to the wrong party. You belong to the wrong ideology (i.e. conservatism).

[Forty Two]

Actual growth projections are something like 1.3%. That's why Trump's projections are so laughable.

It is interesting. Obama in 2009 predicted 4.6% growth by 2012, and he never got above 3 ever, and in 2012 it was less than half that. I think it was 1.9% in 2012 or 2%.

Now, I've been trying to find the numbers, but people have said that the CBO projected about 4% growth, but I was on the CBO Website and the projections I'm seeing are in the 2% range when I click back to 2009, but it's difficult for me to be sure I'm seeing the numbers as they were in 2009. Maybe someone can link to the actual CBO data that shows that the CBO predictions in 2009 were around 4% or as the media reports have noted, at least "in line" with what Obama predicted. I'm not finding that. But, I certainly could be wrong.

What I find curious is, if we assume that the CBO did predict something on the order of 4% growth by 2012, then why would they have predicted more growth during the heart of and in the near term after the big crash of late 2008 and early 2009 -- was it because of the Stimulus money and quantitative easing? I would think that now, with all we hear about how obama stabilized the economy and pulled us out of the recession, wouldn't we now be poised to increase GDP because the economy is doing better?

But, if the CBO was projecting in the neighborhood of 4% at the time, then one has to wonder what Obama and the Democrats did to fuck that up? The CBO is known to be rather conservative in its estimates, no? It wasn't going out on a limb and stretching it, right? It was setting forth a rational prediction based on inputs and the legal/tax/regulatory environment in place, yes? So, what happened to that shouldabeen 4% growth?

[Animavore]

OMG. This is sad even by Trump's standards. Over 3 million followers suddenly appear on his Twitter account. A little digging reveals they are fake accounts. Trump is trying to boost his figures. He is absolutely pathetic.

http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-tw ... ake-617873

[Brian Peacock]

FAKE FOLLOWERS!!