"The butt of global jokes": who might this be? (Talk Trump)

[Scot Dutchy]

Steel mills are meant to be booming. Not in Trenton, Georgia.

'It hasn't benefited us a dime': Georgia steelworkers' verdict on Trump tariffs

US steel plants are meant to be booming in the wake of Trump’s tariffs – but tell that to production line workers in Trenton


Management of the firm welcome Trump’s tariffs. “We are doing well,” Jim Charmley, president and CEO of Caparo Bull Moose Industries told the Guardian by phone from the St Louis headquarters. They are adding a dozen jobs to their manufacturing operations in Arizona because of the limits on Korean imports, he said, though he was unable to give specifics on financials.

Strange that?

[Seabass]

Trump hires all the best people!

Trump's Acting Attorney General Was Part of Miami-Based Invention Scam Company
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/trum ... y-10893091

TRUMP’S NEW A.G. WORKED FOR SCAM FIRM THAT THREATENED VICTIMS WITH KRAV MAGA–STYLE BEATDOWNS
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11 ... -marketing

FBI Investigated Fraudulent Miami Company Connected to Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/acti ... g-10896679

[Animavore]

[Tero]

Trump tariffs not benefiting steel worker, even the employer did get something:
The odd non-payday will add up, the workers say. It comes just weeks after a company-enforced lockout where the union workers survived on unemployment pay for five weeks. It was the first lockout in Georgia for 30 years.

It was not meant to be this way. Steel plants are meant to be booming in America in the wake of tariffs introduced by Donald Trump to try to get heavy industry moving again. But here the benefits of the controversial policy are yet to filter down. And in this town of 2,200, tucked into the north-west corner of Georgia between Tennessee and Alabama, these steelworkers doubt the benefits ever will reach the workers.

In June, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on steel imported from the European Union, Canada and Mexico, with the tax applying to a range of steel and aluminium products including sheets, plates, bars, pipes and “semi-finished” products. By making it more expensive for the country’s manufacturers to buy foreign steel, Trump says he’s protecting American workers and businesses.

Ironically, Caparo Bull Moose Industries is a US-based unit of a privately owned UK company – so one could argue the benefits are ultimately going to a foreign firm.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... on-economy

[Tero]

Trump's new temp AG was Republican enforcer, making Trumped up charges (well, before Trump) to sew discord and MESS THINGS UP

At the time, David Yepsen of the Register wrote: “It appears the U.S. attorney, Matt Whitaker, is aggressively going after the city’s south-side Democratic organization and the way it does business.” You could call it due diligence, and, to be clear, the investigation and secret recording of my conversations was done in a fully legal manner. But if you consider Whitaker’s naked partisanship, as Yepsen did, and the fact that a study at the time showed that the Ashcroft and Gonzales Departments of Justice prosecuted Democrats to an extent grossly disproportionate to Republicans, you could refer to it as something very different. In Whitaker’s own recent words: a “witch hunt.”

I was eventually acquitted after the jury deliberated for less than 25 minutes, according to the foreman. Cranberg noted in the Register, “The case against McCoy was so anorexic that not one of the 12 jurors considered it worth protracted consideration.” One of my attorneys, Montgomery Brown, stated, “Ninety percent of federal court cases result in a conviction, and the swift ‘not guilty’ verdict indicates something was seriously wrong with Whitaker’s case.”

Whitaker has attempted to establish his own career in Iowa politics. He lost a run for state treasurer in 2002, lost a Republican primary bid for the U.S. Senate in 2014, and was not selected for a seat on the Iowa Supreme Court despite angling for the job. It’s hard to believe he could carry out the important job of United States attorney general with a sense of fealty to the law and to the Constitution, rather than to the Republican Party.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... unt-222408

[Animavore]

Half of white women continue to vote Republican. What's wrong with them?

But there is something else at play, something more complicated, in white women’s relationship to white patriarchy. White women’s identity places them in a curious position at the intersection of two vectors of privilege and oppression: they are granted structural power by their race, but excluded from it by their sex. In a political system where racism and sexism are both so deeply ingrained, white women must choose to be loyal to either the more powerful aspect of their identity, their race, or to the less powerful, their sex. Some Republican white women might lean into racism not only for racism’s sake, but also as a means of avoiding or denying the realities of how sexist oppression makes them vulnerable.

In her book Right Wing Women, the feminist Andrea Dworkin wrote that conservative women often conform to the dominant ideologies of the men around them as part of a subconscious survival strategy, hoping that their conservatism will spare them from male hatred and violence. It doesn’t work, she says. They suffer sexist oppression anyway. But the strategy continues. “Most women cannot afford, either materially or psychologically, to recognize that whatever burnt offerings of obedience they bring to beg protection will not appease the angry little gods around them.” Participating in racism does not exempt white women from sexism, as much as they might hope that it will. It merely corrodes their souls in the process.

Some of this persistent sexism can be seen in the Trump camp’s treatment of the white women who have interfered with their consolidation of power. It is there in the chants of “Lock her up” that still punctuate Trump’s rallies; it was seen in the mocking and hounding of Dr Christine Blasey Ford, and in the theatrical sexism that Brett Kavanaugh displayed at his confirmation hearing. It was there in Trump’s continued relationship with Rob Porter, the wife-beating White House aide whom the president continued to call even after pictures of his wife’s swollen, battered face were made public. White women who continue to vote Republican have thrown these other white women under the bus, along with the millions of non-white women who have been made to suffer under Republican administrations – those who have had their water poisoned, their right to vote eroded, their children confiscated and caged at the border, or killed by police with impunity. Writing of the immoral bargain struck by rightwing women, Dworkin says: “In effect, she ransoms the remains of a life … by promising indifference to the fate of other women.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... blican-why

[L'Emmerdeur]

In January 2018, Trump got an overall failing grade from a panel of 155 presidential scholars. Nearly a year later, a historian re-examines this evaluation. Despite the supposed accomplishments that some tout as evidence of an effective presidency, he remains un-convinced; the Trump White House and its sycophants generally ignore the high costs associated with those 'accomplishments.'

'Why and How Donald Trump Flunks the Presidential Leadership Test'

Now that the midterm elections are over there will be some reassessments of President Donald Trump. But whatever the verdict on his appeal to supporters or as a campaigner, he remains a failure as the leader of our country.

After he had completed almost a full year as president, 155 presidential scholars concluded that overall he had earned an “F” grade on their Presidential Greatness Survey. In addition to assigning him a general grade, the scholars also graded him on his legislative accomplishments, communicating with the public, foreign policy leadership, and embodying institutional norms. For the first two areas they gave him a “D”; for the last two, an “F.” A slightly larger group of scholars listed him as the worst and most polarizing of our 44 presidents.

...

Of course, many Trump supporters might reply, “What can you expect from a group of eggheads?” Actually, the survey group mentioned above was the “Presidents & Executive Politics Section” of the American Political Science Association, which is listed as “the foremost organization of social science experts in presidential politics.” But the anti-intellectualism of Trump and many of his followers is well known, and is often stoked by Fox News and its ilk. And railing against academics or scientists does not invalidate their expertise. “Maybe so,” a Trump supporter might respond, “but how about their biases?”

True, historians, political and other social scientists, and natural scientists (including many who emphasize that human-caused climate change is a major danger) all have their biases. But central to their disciplines is the goal of truth-seeking and objectivity—which cannot be said for ideologues or political extremists—and academics and other experts, especially those in the natural sciences, are not uniformly liberal or progressive. For example, among the 155 scholars who assigned Trump an “F,” 41 percent described themselves as moderate or conservative. The moderates gave Trump an “F,” while the conservatives were more generous, assigning him a “D.” In addition, the scholars who ranked the presidents also listed the conservative Ronald Reagan as our ninth best one.

[Brian Peacock]

"I think that the people of this country have had enough of experts from organisations with acronyms - saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong, because these people - these people - are the same ones who got things consistently wrong." -- Michael Gove

[Joe]

"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." Or a panel of experts.

[Tero]

Robert Reich (his FB) "The president is fabricating claims of voter fraud to interfere with a recount mandated by state law in order to ensure his loyalists are installed.

This is something straight out of a former Soviet republic, not the United States."

[Tero]

"Trump started Veteran's Day by saying he doesn't want ballots from overseas military voters to count in Florida's election...(They have until Nov 16 to be counted according to state law)"

[Seabass]

Surprise! Another Trump "accomplishment" turned out to be just another Trump lie.

Satellite Images Reveal North Korea’s Vast Network Of Secret Mountain Missile Bases
https://taskandpurpose.com/north-korea- ... te-images/

The revelation, reportedly long known to American intelligence agencies, is the latest in a string of reports indicating that North Korea is not living up to the expectations of the Trump administration, which demands the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

[JimC]

Well, dealing with North Korea is not something any US politician can do easily - it may actually be one of those unsolvable problems...

[Seabass]

True, but unlike other presidents, Trump boasts and brags about how his love affair with Lil' Kim solved the NK nuclear threat.

[DRSB]

Trump’s Interference With Science Is Unprecedented
Experts say that key EPA proposals would meddle with the research process and endanger decades of protective health rules.

The Trump administration is breaking with 75 years of precedent by attempting to interfere in how science is practiced by the U.S. government, according to three experts who issued a dire warning to their profession in the journal Science on Thursday. The administration is empowering political staff to meddle with the scientific process by pushing through reforms disguised to look as though they boost transparency and integrity, the experts say.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arc ... e=facebook