Could Sessions Be Next?

Discussion in 'Political Discussions' started by Kizmet, Jul 25, 2017.

Loading...
  1. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    I doubt it. Trump likes (and more importantly trusts) Bannon. (Even if Scaramucci doesn't like him and may see him as a rival for Trump's ear.) I think that trust is currently a very precious commodity in the White House right now, given all the leaks and not-so-covert attempts by the "deep state" to destroy his administration.

    Part of that is coming from the very powerful people, the entrenched bureaucrats and the penumbra of lawyers, professors, activists, lobbyists, journalists and pundits that has gradually formed around the government like a shell, all of whom feel threatened by and ideologically opposed to Trump's populist revolution. (DC voted 90% for Hillary. Illustrating at least two reasons why she lost.)

    And part of it may be coming from factional infighting inside Trump's own administration. That seems to reflect Trump's own personal background, as a rich-guy with populist instincts. There's a faction that identifies with regular Americans out in Middle America (I think that this probably includes Bannon), and a faction that identifies with certain NYC business elites. Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner seems to come from that latter world as does Scaramucci (a financier).

    Hard to say.

    I think that Trump is tired of his administration always being being on defense, facing non-stop "Resistance". Trump wants to go on the offensive and bust some heads.

    But it needs to be Democrats' heads, not heads in his own administration. Soldiers firing their weapons can be effective, but not when they are shooting each other.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 30, 2017
  2. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    Last November's election showed that much of the country has tuned out, just as you and I have. It's really kind of amazing, something that historians will be writing about for generations.

    Prior to the election, the mass-media was almost 100% for Hillary, or at least against Trump. As the election neared, it got more and more hysterical: Trump was Mussolini, he was Hitler in 1933. On and on it went. And Trump never really bought enough campaign advertising, to balance it out. (An impossible task.) Instead he 'rope-a-doped' them. He let all the attacks on him become by implication attacks on all the voters who were concerned about his issues. And the 'deplorables' (like me) turned out to be the majority of voters in 30 states, giving Trump more electoral votes than he needed.

    Right after the election a few journalists seemed to get it, and seemed to recognize what had happened. But sadly, that moment was fleeting. It was swept aside by Russia-hysteria and by "Resistance".

    Here's a rather good opinion piece from the guy in charge of CBS-digital.

    Commentary: The unbearable smugness of the press - CBS News

    "It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that, with a few exceptions, we were all tacitly or explicitly #WithHer, which has led to a certain anguish in the face of Donald Trump's victory. More than that and more importantly, we also missed the story, after having spent months mocking the people who had a better sense of what was going on...

    Had Hillary Clinton won, there'd be a winking "we did it" feeling in the press, a sense that we were brave and called Trump a liar and saved the republic.

    So much for that. The audience for our glib analysis and contempt for much of the electorate, it turned out was rather limited... Trump knew what he was doing when he invited his crowds to jeer and hiss the reporters covering him. They hate us and have for some time.

    And can you blame them? Journalists love mocking Trump supporters. We insult their appearances. We dismiss them as racists and sexists..."
     
  3. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Actually, that's a particularly bad definition of insanity, from either a psychological or a legal perspective. It is a pretty good definition of stupid, however. Beyond that, what news sources do you consider reliable, fair or otherwise accurate?
     
  4. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member


    Mussolini was quite popular until he wasn't. A salute from Cole Porter, a mash note from Sigmund Freud, a sigh from Winston Churchill...
     
  5. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    No, it's a pretty good one. If you (the general "you", not you specifically) tried to turn water into wine, and kept trying in spite of things never working out differently, then you've got some serious issues.

    There's no such thing as a totally unbiased news source, there's always going to be a bent, however slight, in reporting.

    However, Fox News is. in my mind, the most reliable and fair network out there.

    They haven't reported stories using forged military documents, or completely fabricated "water sports dossiers", nor do they run major stories on the basis of unidentified, anonymous sources who turn out to be wrong more often than not. If a Republican screws up, they report on it, with no attempt to conceal, minimize, or otherwise mitigate it.
     
  6. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    I don't think that there's any single news source that presents a clear and transparent window to truth and reality. (I'm not convinced that there ever has been.) All of them choose which news items to lead with, who to interview, and what spin to give those events through their own commentary. Those are all editorial choices.

    We cant watch/read any single media source and then on that basis alone conclude that 'now I know what's really happening'. Sadly, many people try to use the New York Times and the Washington Post that way.

    Like Bruce, I personally watch Fox quite a bit. (Though I prefer Fox Business.) The value of Fox isn't that they are unbiased (they are hugely pro-Republican), but rather that they provide a perspective that one often doesn't see elsewhere. I watch CNBC quite a bit and still watch CNN occasionally. (Less now than previously, since they have become such a major part of the anti-Trump "resistance".) I haven't watched the broadcast news in many years, since the 1980's I guess. (I was a CNN guy through the 1990's.) I avoid MSNBC and Al Jazeera. I'm less averse to RT, but don't watch them very much either. On cable TV it's usually Fox, Fox Business and CNBC.

    Plus, I glance at the newspaper headlines daily, whether physically (my local newspapers are all pro-Democrat and anti-Trump) or on someplace like Google News (which tilts heavily towards the left-media). I drop in on Drudge every day for a similar right-leaning news headline aggregator. I'll sometimes read the Wall Street Journal (the name says it all), for an establishment Republican view. I try not to ever purchase newspapers, since I don't want to subsidize an industry that I viscerally dislike, but often encounter them in libraries and cafes.

    I read many magazines. The only news magazine that I read regularly is the Economist which has tilted left dramatically over the last eight to ten years and strongly promotes a Soros-like agenda (as British 'liberal' has come to equate with American 'liberal' more and more in their editors' minds). They very much represent the views of the 'post-nationalist' London business elites. I find that even ostensibly non-political magazines like New Scientist and Scientific American can't seem to avoid placing an anti-Trump insult in many stories and filling their pages with articles on subjects like climate change, race and political psychology (often quasi-academic explanations of why Trump voters suck). So "science" and political opinion have started to blend together too. I can't imagine actually paying money to read many of these magazines. I rarely purchase an issue, but read them while I'm sipping my mocha at a bookstore cafe, then place them back on the shelf a little worse for wear. I only purchase non-political ones (like Archaeology, the astronomy magazines, and some avation related ones.) One title that I would recommend is the British-published 'Eye Spy' for reasonably well-informed commentary on the spooks, who are uncharacteristically in the news these says.

    Online I often read American Thinker and Daily Caller for right-wing pro-Trump opinion, and Breitbart naturally. (Breitbart is perhaps the most connected news outlet right now.) And Trump's tweets...

    In the past it was usually possible to separate the underlying facts from the subsequent spin. We could separate out 'Here's what actually happened' from 'This is what it all means', 'This is why it's so important' and 'Here's what the government (always the government) should do about it'. But today, even that's becoming difficult when the news media base so many of their stories on unnamed "sources". There's no way to judge stories' provenance, how the 'sources' knew what they supposedly knew, what their biases were and so on. So the credibility of the whole thing plummets.

    The best we can do is soak it all in from all directions, then make up our own minds.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 1, 2017
  7. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  8. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    What a stylish sentence! Reads like offbeat musical theatre lyrics!

    Fit for "The Producers - Part Deux" - "Springtime for Mussolini?" :smile:

    J.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 3, 2017
  9. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    OK, let's assume Trump is a great businessman. Which is mostly hype, but let's assume this for argument's sake. Why do you think it's a positive? Again, I'll bring up Ukraine: President Poroshenko is a great businessman. He is also multilingual and a skilled diplomat, and arguably the smartest leader we had since Independence. He is to be thanked for steering the country through tough early years of Russo-Ukrainian War. But it is precisely his business success that renders him fundamentally flawed as a leader of a country: he's terminally focused on his own bottom line, has no respect for legal and social norms, addicted to backroom deals, and, being a CEO, tends towards authoritarianism. In fact, he and Trump are remarkably similar in mentality (my take is that Poroshenko is smarter, but quite likely also more corrupt). I wish we had a qualified person who is not a businessman to take up this role (Like, hmmm, Hillary Rodham perhaps?), and pray we'll find someone soon. I often jokingly ask if we can have Joe Biden for the post - he acted a few times as sort of a co-President of Ukraine, helping push vital reform legislation through Rada. The closest thing we have is Mikheil Saakashvili (former President of Georgia who is, ironically, a fiscal Libertarian and close to many Republican politicians), and Poroshenko just stripped him of his citizenship. Businessmen in political power are bad news; US used to know this!
     
  10. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  11. Abner

    Abner Well-Known Member

  12. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member


    A continuation of the divide-and-conquer strategy. Focus one one at a time and try to pick that one off.
     
  13. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    You might be right. It's an interesting strategy considering that they all are going to get interviewed by Mueller. Fortunately, no one is at all upset with Trump and might be willing to tell tales out of school. Except maybe Spicer and Priebus and Dubke and any number of lower level functionaries.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/us/politics/mueller-trump-russia-priebus.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
     
  14. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  15. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

  16. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    I have a feeling that we're going to find out.
     
  17. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    This is from the article cited above, re Steinmetz family dealings with Kushner family company:

    "In April, The New York Times reported that a firm that claimed to invest money for Mr. Steinmetz’s brother and longtime business partner, Daniel, along with his son Raz, had partnered with Kushner Companies, the family real estate firm of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser, on dozens of apartment buildings around Manhattan and Jersey City.

    The Kushner Companies said its deals were with Beny Steinmetz’s nephew Raz, and not with Beny Steinmetz."


    I dunno if it has anything to do with Guinea. All depends where the Steinmetz's investment co. got the money it invested in Kushner company properties, I guess. I'm not a forensic accountant. Sometimes, I wish I was.

    J.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 17, 2017
  18. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member


    In other word, bupkis.
     
  19. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    זאל זיין -zal zeyn (Maybe).

    J.
     
  20. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

Share This Page