Xtra News Community 2
March 29, 2024, 08:35:11 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Welcome to Xtra News Community 2 — please also join our XNC2-BACKUP-GROUP.
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links BITEBACK! XNC2-BACKUP-GROUP Staff List Login Register  

Trump Derangement Syndrome. Treatment options.

Pages: 1 2 [3] 4   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Trump Derangement Syndrome. Treatment options.  (Read 2597 times)
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #50 on: November 10, 2017, 07:04:30 pm »


from the Los Angeles Times....

Trump is about to learn that China couldn't care less about America First

“In Xi's party address, he proclaimed a ‘new era’ for China. To put it in terms
the president might better understand, it may be the era of America Second.”


By DAVID ROTHKOPF | 4:00AM PDT - Friday, November 03, 2017

American President Donald J. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping walk together after their meetings at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida on April 7th, 2017. — Photograph: Alex Brandon/Associated Press.
American President Donald J. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping walk together after their meetings at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida on April 7th, 2017.
 — Photograph: Alex Brandon/Associated Press.


DONALD TRUMP is reinventing the kowtow for the Twitter age. Last week, in fawning tweets, he celebrated Chinese President Xi Jinping's “extraordinary elevation” at the 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress, and in a TV interview he bragged that he and Xi had the best “president-president” relationship ever. It was over the top — especially in light of the fact that Xi is an authoritarian leader.

Clearly, Trump, a man not known for his humility, wants something. China is the most important stop on his 12-day, five nation Asia tour, which begins on Friday. In Beijing, Trump will be hoping for not only progress on North Korea and trade issues, but for a little of Xi's momentum, power and prestige to rub off on him.

At the close of the party congress last month, Xi was affirmed as a Chinese leader unequaled in stature by any since Mao Tse-tung. At the same time, at Xi's urging, the country's ruling body agreed to break with its long-standing policy of denying China's designs on a global leadership role. Instead, in a 203-minute address to the forum, Xi asserted that the People's Republic was ready to become a “mighty force” on the world stage.

Xi's ascendance and China's aggressiveness stand in stark contrast to Trump's struggles, Washington's paralysis and America's retreat from the pre-eminent international role it has played since the end of World War II.

Despite the role reversal, the Chinese will appear to stroke American egos, especially Trump's. Expect them to ply him with pomp and ceremony, setting up colorful photo ops that will play well on social media, and giving the president the quasi-royal treatment he craves. They may even offer up some business deals and the promise of unspecified cooperation with U.S. attempts to combat the nuclear threat of North Korea. But if you read deference into the show, you will be wrong.

China is still a poor country in many respects, but this year has seen it open its first overseas military base, increase its blue-water naval capability and expand Xi's trademark “One Belt, One Road” infrastructure initiative (which extends China's influence from the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea). The People's Republic has been asserting its will on a wide range of issues, including trade and the question of who can claim the islands off its coast.

Xi and company know that Trump leads a country with greater military and economic resources than China, but they also know he has been able to get precious little accomplished as president. They understand the challenges he faces: special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, the threat of a stock market downturn and deep divisions within the Republican Party.

The Chinese have also discovered that Trump is as inconsistent as he is susceptible to flattery. Only a few months before his valentines to Xi, he was tweeting his displeasure at China — “They do NOTHING for us with North Korea” — and attacking past U.S. presidents as “foolish” for deals they did with Beijing. Xinhua, China's national news agency, responded to the outburst by urging Trump to stop his “emotional venting”.

However grand the welcome for Trump may be, the Chinese will be serving their own goals. Behind the scenes, they will flex their muscles in tough negotiations because they can, and they now believe they should. In the end, Trump is likely to make very little in the way of meaningful gains on any major issues during his stay.

As former Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and veteran China expert Robert Hormats said to me, “Xi sees China as leading the next phase of globalization and of the evolution of the global economic order. [He] believes the direction should be and will be guided more by Beijing than Washington.” This, Hormats believes, will change the dynamic in the U.S.-China relationship. In Xi's party address, he proclaimed a “new era” for China. To put it in terms the president might better understand, it may be the era of America Second.

The lasting message of Trump's trip could well be the one foretold by the obsequiousness of his tweets last week. If his visit is “historic”, as he predicted on social media, it will be because it is the first in which an American president discovers he has traveled all the way to Beijing to meet with the most powerful man in the world.


• David Rothkopf is a senior fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His latest book is The Great Questions of Tomorrow.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-rothkopf-trump-goes-to-china-20171103-story.html
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #51 on: November 10, 2017, 07:05:24 pm »


from the Los Angeles Times....

Trump's Asia trip shows U.S. at risk of being sidelined
in the region's economic future


By DON LEE | 10:10AM PST - Thursday, November 09, 2017

President Trump speaks at a business meeting on November 9th with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. — Photograph: Fred Dufour/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.
President Trump speaks at a business meeting on November 9th with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People
in Beijing. — Photograph: Fred Dufour/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.


FOR ALL of President Trump's efforts to build personal relations with leaders and to reassure allies during his first Asia trip, the most significant thing that has happened may have been what did not happen:

From Tokyo to Seoul to Beijing, the American president has been feted with maximum ceremonial honors — a “state visit-plus,” the Chinese called it. Asian leaders listened politely to his demands that they accept what he considers fairer trade terms and that they buy more American goods.

Nowhere in Trump's tour, however, have any of those leaders entered into serious negotiations or made significant concessions.

“Quite frankly, in the grand scheme of a $300- to $500-billion trade deficit, the things that have been achieved thus far are pretty small,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters in Beijing on Thursday, referring to the U.S. trade deficit with China. “In terms of really getting at some of the fundamental elements behind why this imbalance exists, there's still a lot more work to do.”

Instead of offering concessions, both the United States' historical allies, Japan and South Korea, as well as China, its most serious Pacific rival, signaled that they had taken Trump at his word: His “America First” policy means the United States will become less and less a player in the fastest-growing and most dynamic region in the world.

That reality was underscored on Thursday when trade ministers from the so-called TPP-11, the signatories to the Trans-Pacific Trade agreement minus the U.S., said at a meeting in Vietnam that they had agreed on how to revise the agreement to proceed without Washington. The Obama administration's effort to push the agreement through Congress failed last year, and Trump officially withdrew U.S. agreement to the pact shortly after he took office.

“When you sit out the game, the rest of the world moves on,” said Deborah Elms, executive director of Singapore-based Asian Trade Center, a research and consulting firm. Asian nations are enthusiastically cutting trade deals with each other and with European countries, she said.

With Washington abandoning the sweeping Asia-Pacific trade deal and more generally pulling back from the multilateral economic order that it established and nurtured for decades, China is pressing to become the dominant player in the region.

Its small neighbors, among them Malaysia and Singapore, are similarly proceeding to act alone, without the United States, their long-time big brother, at their side.

Japan has moved from its traditionally passive role and has exerted greater leadership on trade. It was Tokyo, for example, that took the lead in pushing forward on the TPP without the United States.

Analysts say Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who had spent considerable political capital to have TPP approved at home, hopes the U.S. will re-enter the agreement someday.

“Everyone talks about a vacuum in leadership and everyone talks about China filling that vacuum,” said Wendy Cutler, a top Obama administration trade negotiator who worked on the TPP. “In this instance, it's Japan filling that role.”

“You have these multiple paths to establishing the rules of trade and better integration of trade within Asia, and then you have the U.S., the outlier,” said Robert Holleyman, a Washington attorney and former deputy U.S. Trade Representative.

Holleyman was in Vietnam recently for meetings ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit on Friday in Da Nang, which Trump will be attending. What Holleyman said he kept hearing was a “consistent theme from other APEC economies that said, essentially, ‘Now that the U.S. has left Asia, we need to step forward and do this on our own’.”

“As an American, I hated to hear those comments. They were saying it as a matter of fact,” he said.

An economically sidelined U.S. in Asia would almost certainly weaken American companies and hurt exports, particularly of farm goods, as well as the prospects for returns on the massive investments U.S. firms have made throughout the region over the last 35 years, trade experts say. U.S. firms may face higher duties and other more onerous barriers than they would have if trade agreements that included America were in place.

To be sure, many in Asia as well as America still see the U.S. as an economic superpower in the region, and they may have found some encouragement in the way Trump has toned down his trade rhetoric during his trip thus far.

Asian leaders will be closely listening to the speech Trump is scheduled to give on Friday before American business leaders accompanying him on his tour. The president is expected to use the speech to outline U.S. involvement in the Indo-Pacific region, a reference that is meant to include India, the world's largest democracy.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has clashed with the Trump administration on the North American Free Trade Agreement, TPP and trade policy more generally, said it took heart from the fact that the president regarded Asia as important enough to make a visit lasting nearly two weeks — the longest of any American president in more than a quarter century.

But chamber officials also worry that Trump has yet to articulate a strategy for commercial engagement in the region. All that he has espoused is a consistent line that the U.S. wants fair and reciprocal trade to reduce America's large trade deficits with Asian countries and that he prefers negotiating bilateral deals rather than multilateral ones.

But no other country is lining up to sit down and bargain with the U.S. on trade.

Japan's Abe, for example, regaled Trump by taking him golfing at a swanky country club and treating him to hamburgers. He listened to Trump's expected criticisms of Japan's large trade deficit with the U.S. and his calls for Japan to make more cars in America and buy more U.S. military equipment. But Abe took no new actions.

“We had a lot of pronouncements, but there was not a move toward initiating formal bilateral trade negotiations. Prime Minister Abe again deflected, talking about a regional framework being best,” said Mireya Solis, a Japan expert and co-director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution.

There were a lot of symbolic gestures in China as well. President Xi welcomed Trump by shutting down the Forbidden City to give Trump a private tour and, for the first time for any American president, an official dinner inside the storied palace. As they've done in past presidential visits, the Chinese also announced billions of dollars in deals with American companies, including General Electric and Smithfield Foods, a Chinese-owned company based in Virginia.

But some of those deals were already in the pipeline, and Xi did not offer concessions on substantive issues on Trump's trade agenda, such as Chinese steel production or removal of barriers to U.S. imports to China. Tillerson, in his comments to reporters, said the “Chinese acknowledge much more has to be done.”

Xi, too, will be giving a speech in Vietnam, and could offer a stark competing vision in which the Chinese, not the Americans, will be portrayed as championing economic integration and engagement with the world, something considered unthinkable not long ago.

“I don't think the Chinese have to do very much. They're gaining strategic importance and geopolitical influence in the region by virtue of the fact that the United States is perceived, and, to some extent, is withdrawing from the region,” said Nicholas Lardy, a China economy specialist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Trump, he said, “can talk about Indo-Pacific, blah, blah, blah, but we're not engaged in trade, we're not negotiating any new trade agreements with any country in the region.”

The big worry for business leaders and trade analysts here and around the world is that Trump will eventually follow through on his threats to take punitive measures against trading partners he believes have acted unfairly.

That could include imposing broad tariffs on Chinese imports, if only to inflict some pain to win concessions.

To date, however, Trump has not matched his tough language with such tough actions.

“So far, although Trump's rhetoric makes it sound like he has a different kind of trade policy, in fact he's doing pretty much what his predecessors did,” said Clyde Prestowitz, an Asian economics specialist and former top trade negotiator in the Reagan administration.

Back in the 1980s, he said, the Reagan White House pressed the Japanese to open up markets in certain sectors, and subsequent administrations have followed a similar tack in China and elsewhere in Asia.

“I think it's more of the same old stuff,” Prestowitz said. “By now, the Asians have figured it out. They've realized his bark is worse than his bite.”


• Don Lee covers the U.S. and global economy out of Washington, D.C. Since joining the Los Angeles Times in 1992, he has served as the Shanghai bureau chief and in various editing and reporting roles in California. He is a native of Seoul, Korea, and graduated from the University of Chicago.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-trump-asia-trade-20171109-story.html
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Im2Sexy4MyPants
Absolutely Fabulously Incredibly Shit-Hot Member
*
Posts: 8271



WWW
« Reply #52 on: November 10, 2017, 07:20:57 pm »

haha

Report Spam   Logged

Are you sick of the bullshit from the sewer stream media spewed out from the usual Ken and Barby dickless talking point look a likes.

If you want to know what's going on in the real world...
And the many things that will personally effect you.
Go to
http://www.infowars.com/

AND WAKE THE F_ _K UP
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #53 on: November 10, 2017, 08:41:05 pm »


from The Washington Post....

Why the cheery Trump trip to China may not be so successful

President Trump is expecting big things from China’s Xi Jinping, but will the Chinese president deliver?

By EMILY RAUHALA and SIMON DENYER | 10:44AM EST - Thursday, November 09, 2017

From left, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan, President Trump and first lady Melania Trump visit the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. — Photograph: Andy Wong/Associated Press.
From left, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan, President Trump and first lady Melania Trump visit the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
 — Photograph: Andy Wong/Associated Press.


BEIJING — When President Trump landed in Beijing on Wednesday, he was whisked through quiet streets to the Forbidden City, where he got a history lesson from President Xi Jinping and caught an opera at the Pavilion of Pleasant Sounds.

It was an apt opener. After twice tweeting out his gratitude, Trump on Thursday met Xi at the tightly guarded Great Hall of the People, where, surrounded by corporate chief executives, he oversaw the signing of $250 billion in trade deals and continued to praise his authoritarian host.

The two-day trip was orchestrated to project the image of remote and absolute power that Xi enjoys and Trump admires. There were no protests, no questions from the press, no ordinary people — nothing but pleasantries and soothing tones.

Trump brought up North Korea but said Xi could solve it. He raised the trade deficit but said it was not China's fault. He said the Chinese people are very proud of Xi.

After all the sweet talk, the United States is expecting a lot in return from Beijing — but Xi, in the ascendant, may not budge. That could lead to disappointment in the United States and friction down the road in the relationship.

While both sides were pleased to see a high-stakes visit end without incident, there are questions about what was gained and what, perhaps, was lost.

“Talk about embracing the Leninist political system,” said Evan S. Medeiros, who heads the Eurasia Group's coverage of the Asia-Pacific region and was the National Security Council's Asia director in the Obama administration. “In Trump's effort to ingratiate himself with Xi, is he inadvertently ceding American primacy to China?”

The United States, Medeiros argued, is the anchor power in Asia because of the rules, institutions and values it represents. “Trump fundamentally calls that into question when he's praising the Chinese political system — and not getting much in exchange.”

Xi, said analysts, may have calculated that the really tough negotiations with the United States, on a range of issues, still lie ahead — and that China can play a strong hand. Until then, he can sit tight.

“My expectation is that not much will come from China,” said Max Baucus, until the beginning of this year the U.S. ambassador to China. “And that is going to put Trump in a bit of a box.”

William Zarit, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, applauded the trade deals but also wondered what comes next, whether the Trump administration would be able to use the momentum to tackle tougher issues in the U.S.-China economic relationship, such as market access for U.S. firms in China.

“The question remains: What is being done about these structural issues?” he asked. “We hope to see proactive measures by the Chinese to address the imbalances in the relationship, as pressure is building in the U.S. to take reactive reciprocal actions.”

As a candidate, Trump often lashed out at Beijing, blaming the Chinese economy for a host of U.S. ills.

But when Trump hosted Xi at the president's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, his tone changed.

In an apparent effort to secure Xi's help on North Korea, Trump has curtailed his criticism and shifted his focus to areas where he thinks he can win.

The focus on signing deals in front of the cameras — as opposed to, say, hammering out solutions to long-standing economic issues — makes some sense, experts said.

Trump lacks diplomatic experience and has been slow to make appointments to several key Asia roles.

“We haven't yet had the bandwidth in the U.S. administration or the time to have detailed conversations with the Chinese side on market access and other systemic issues,” said Timothy P. Stratford, managing partner of Covington and Burling's Beijing office and a former assistant U.S. trade representative.

“Unless you've had time to discuss these very difficult and complicated issues in some detail, you can't expect the two presidents to announce anything that is concrete and detailed and meaningful,” he said. “I fully expect these very tough discussions to begin in the next few months.”

Chen Dingding, a professor at Guangzhou's Jinan University, said the visit was a starting point — a first offer on the way to the next deal.

“What's the alternative? No trade deals? Often you can't get your best deal — you can get your second best, get your third and move from there.”

Both the Chinese and U.S. sides, of course, are casting Thursday's agreements as first rate. At a briefing after the meeting, Commerce Minister Zhong Shan said the deals were “a miracle”.

China's Communist Party-controlled press seems pleased, for now, with Trump's visit, for what he said and didn't say.

The Global Times, a newspaper known for its nationalist rhetoric, ran an editorial on Thursday headlined, “What do most Chinese people like about Trump?”

The piece noted Trump's “frank” character and “pragmatic” approach to U.S.-China ties, mentioning specifically that he does not bring up human rights.

One of the main reasons China likes Trump is that Trump likes Xi, the paper argued. “He respects our head of state and has repeatedly praised President Xi Jinping in public.”

The paper noted in particular that Trump had been quick to call Xi after the recent 19th Party Congress. “This is respect for the Chinese system.”

The question is what happens if the friendly rhetoric changes — if Trump, for whatever reason, stops being so positive about Xi. With the mood in the United States turning increasingly skeptical about China and the benefits of the bilateral relationship, that has to be a real possibility, experts said.

“President Xi and the Chinese leadership will think that they have done an awful lot to give President Trump face: They've done a ‘state visit plus’, they've rolled the red carpet out with all the pomp and ceremony, they did all these business deals, and they come away thinking the relationship is on a solid footing,” said Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing.

“But President Trump may go home to a domestic political environment where people are disappointed he hasn't achieved more progress on trade and economics and North Korea,” he said, “and you may see a shift towards a much harder line.”


Amber Ziye Wang and Yang Liu in Beijing contributed to this report.

• Emily Rauhala is a China Correspondent for The Washington Post. She was previously a Beijing-based correspondent for TIME, and an editor at the magazine's Hong Kong office.

• Simon Denyer is The Washington Post's bureau chief in China. He served previously as bureau chief in India and as a Reuters bureau chief in Washington, India and Pakistan.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • VIDEO: China rolls out red carpet to welcome Trump

 • VIDEO: Trump: ‘The entire civilized world must unite to confront the North Korean menace’

 • Trump's granddaughter gets praise and sympathy for singing for Chinese president

 • China's panda-shaped solar plant is part of a bigger challenge facing Trump

 • Taiwan worries about becoming a ‘bargaining chip’


https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/trump-thinks-his-china-trip-went-great-that-could-be-a-problem/2017/11/09/2aff59ea-c53d-11e7-a441-3a768c8586f1_story.html
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #54 on: November 10, 2017, 08:44:58 pm »


President Xi Jinping would have found Trump an easy idiot to amuse. He no doubt pandered to Trump's vanity by giving him plenty of pomp & ceremony (simple things amuse simple minds), while taking advantage of Trump's stupidity and short-attention span. It will probably take Trump a few months to realise he was played like a fiddle by the Chinese president. The twitter storm when Trump eventually wakes up will be highly amusing and entertaining.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are stepping right into the vacuum opened up by the idiot Trump's incompetency and narcissism.
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Im2Sexy4MyPants
Absolutely Fabulously Incredibly Shit-Hot Member
*
Posts: 8271



WWW
« Reply #55 on: November 10, 2017, 08:50:10 pm »

you're a wanktard with a trump derangement sickness get some help  Cheesy
Report Spam   Logged

Are you sick of the bullshit from the sewer stream media spewed out from the usual Ken and Barby dickless talking point look a likes.

If you want to know what's going on in the real world...
And the many things that will personally effect you.
Go to
http://www.infowars.com/

AND WAKE THE F_ _K UP
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #56 on: November 10, 2017, 08:56:08 pm »


This is what I posted to reader comments about a story regarding Trump's visit to China which was published by The Washington Post earlier today…


So as expected, President Xi stroked Trump's huge ego by giving him some pomp & ceremony; and chucking the idiot a few toys; but in reality will give him nothing except for a few platitudes and ambiguous promises. I wonder how long before the Orange Goblin manages to work it out that he has been played by somebody who is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more intelligent than him? Talk about ENTERTAINMENT PLUS!!!


…my comment has attracted a shitload of “likes” from intelligent Americans.
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #57 on: November 10, 2017, 09:00:25 pm »


from the Los Angeles Times....

In Trump, China sees a straight shooter, a successful
businessman — and a symptom of American decline


By MATT DeBUTTS | 6:15PM PST - Thursday, November 09, 2017

Beijing-based caricature artist Zheng Shenghui shows off his wares. — Photograph: Matt DeButts/Los Angeles Times.
Beijing-based caricature artist Zheng Shenghui shows off his wares. — Photograph: Matt DeButts/Los Angeles Times.

FOR YEARS, Zheng Shenghui sold grinning caricatures of President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping from his small booth in Beijing's Happy Valley Amusement Park. These days, his drawings aren't so cheerful. After Obama left office in January, an angry, grimacing President Trump replaced him.

“I drew a frown because he's upset,” said Zheng, 35. “Trump wants it be the 1970s again, when America was No.1. But things change. He needs to understand the world keeps turning.”

Trump spent two nights in Beijing this week on the third leg of a five-country Asia tour before departing for Vietnam on Friday. Chinese state media called it a “state visit-plus,” underscoring the lavishness of his welcome. He met with Xi, received a military honor, toured the Forbidden City and enjoyed an opulent state dinner.

For his part, Trump, who during his campaign vilified China as an “economic enemy,” was a relatively polite guest. “Who can blame a country for being able to take advantage of another country for the benefit of its citizens?” he told a crowd of Chinese and American business executives, as Xi looked on. He called his relationship with Xi “a great one.”

But there have been many reasons for ordinary Chinese to look beyond the frowning caricatures of the American president.

Many in the country's elite see Trump's “America First” isolationism as an opportunity for China to rise on the global stage.

And for ordinary Chinese, too, Trump can be an appealing figure. While opinions are dizzyingly diverse — in a country of 1.4 billion people, it is difficult to generalize — Trump seems to elicit a surprising level of goodwill when his name comes up.

In a country that venerates business acumen, many admire his financial success. Still others take their cues from Chinese internet forums, where Trump is praised for his honesty. To them, “America First” is just a frank, honest assessment of the U.S. presidency's age-old priorities.

“People always preferred Trump over Hillary Clinton,” says Manya Koetse, editor-in-chief of What's-on-Weibo, a website reporting social trends in China, though she notes neither was perceived as an ideal candidate. “They thought Hillary was hypocritical. They like the businessman in Trump and his pragmatic side.”

Unlike other U.S. presidents, Trump isn't prone to lecturing China on human rights. When Liu Xiaobo, China's imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner, died in July, the White House released a statement saying Trump was “deeply saddened” to hear of Liu's death, but it held back from direct condemnation.

Trump, with his background in real estate, his successful reality TV show, and his how-to business books, also fulfills many Chinese stereotypes of a powerful leader. Chinese politicians often project an air of no-nonsense governance, prioritizing economic growth over humanitarian concerns. Xi has made the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” a key goal of his leadership.

Trump fits well into that mold.

“About 15 years ago, I purchased ‘The Apprentice’ box set,” said Li Guang, 35, a former software engineer, referring to Trump's former TV show. “What stuck with me was the line, ‘You’re fired’. It was the spitting image of the overbearing CEO-type. Now at 70 years plus, he hasn't lost a step. I admire the strong leadership.

“Trump is completely different from slippery career politicians,” he added. “He tells it straight, just like me.”

Li, like many Chinese, especially those who talk about politics on the internet, admire Trump's professed disregard for political correctness. Internet users have even spawned a new term, baizuo, or “white left,” to criticize Western-style progressives. While the definition varies, it often refers to Western-educated people who adopt feel-good positions to satisfy a feeling of moral superiority. It is a damning term, implying that someone has been brainwashed by politicians. Many internet users apply it to describe Western elites. They support Trump for what they see as standing up to them.

“Free trade, immigration, refugees, these are things that baizuo support,” said Luo Xing, 23, a recent college graduate in Beijing. After reading social media posts that praised Trump for his positions on these issues, Luo decided she liked Trump. But after studying abroad in England, she changed her mind.

“He's anti-feminist, anti-globalization. He discriminates against minority groups,” Luo said. Then she laughed. “Now I dislike him for some of the same reasons baizuo don't like him.”

Trump also finds common ground with many here in his support for restricting immigration from Muslim countries. Islamophobia is rising in China, fueled by news of terrorist attacks and unrest among China's predominantly Muslim Uighur minority. In recent months, the country has been racked by controversies surrounding the designation of a halal-only food delivery truck, as well as a video of a girl reciting the Koran in school.

“Many people online applauded Brexit, applauded the rise of the right in Europe,” said Koetse, referring to Britain's vote to leave the European Union. “You have strong anti-Islamic sentiment. Anyone who goes against the left and political correctness is applauded on Chinese social media.”

Trump has also drawn his share of critics. As in the U.S., he is a frequent target of ridicule. One Chinese transliteration of his name, chuanpu, is the same as the Chinese word for Sichuanese Mandarin, a famously colorful dialect of Chinese.

“Many think he's some sort of joke,” said Koetse.

It's not hard to find young people who disapprove of Trump.

“He's an opportunist,” said Gigi Zheng, 20, a university student in Beijing who compared him to former President Reagan, noting that Reagan used the phrase “Make American great again” long before Trump popularized it.

“He copied Reagan's slogan to cater to the white working class whose interests had been overlooked before. But what did they gain from his policies?” Gigi said.

“He doesn't care about people,” said Lu Dandan, a 27-year-old in Beijing. “I used to think America was a forgiving place. Now I'm not so sure.”

Criticism of Trump may be offset by the widespread popularity of his daughter Ivanka. Many Chinese admire her beauty, business success and apparent affinity for China. While President Trump did not send a personal message to the Chinese community for Chinese New Year, breaking with tradition, Ivanka celebrated the holiday at the Chinese Embassy in Washington. Her daughter Arabella, who is studying Chinese, sang a song in Mandarin.

Chinese audiences may also be insulated from Trump's most controversial behavior. The 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape that became public during last year's campaign, for example — in which Trump boasted about predatory sexual assault — was not widely covered in Chinese media. In January, Chinese government censorship guidelines, leaked online, instructed Chinese media outlets to handle Trump carefully. “Unauthorized criticism of Trump's words or actions is not allowed.”

Still, videos filter through.

After Trump's visit to Japan on Monday, a video circulated on Chinese social media of a joint press conference between Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Trump noted that Japan's economy was smaller than that of the U.S., then said, “We're going to try and keep it that way.”

Chinese internet users reacted with disbelief, and even a hint of admiration for his directness. Hen chuanpu, said one. “That's so Trump.”


Staff writer Jonathan Kaiman and special correspondent Gaochao Zhang in the Los Angeles Times' Beijing bureau contributed to this report.

• Matt DeButts is a frelance journalist based in Beijing and who is a special correspondent to the Los Angeles Times.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • Trump, in Beijing, shifts blame for trade imbalance from China to his predecessors

 • Trump visits Vietnam after helping to reopen old war wounds at home


http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-trump-public-opinion-20171109-story.html
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #58 on: November 11, 2017, 08:53:16 pm »


Yep....the rest of the world doesn't need America and their idiot president Donald J. Trump.

The rest of the world is showing that they are prepared to chuck a few toys to Trump to amuse his simple, short-attention-span mind, while they carry on making deals as usual and ignoring the United States of America and their clown emperor with no clothes. Hilarious, really!!




from The Washington Post....

Trump says U.S. won't be ‘taken advantage of anymore’.
Hours later, Pacific Rim nations reach deal on trade without America.


The agreement represents a rebuke of the president,
coming near the end of his 12-day swing through Asia.


By ASHLEY PARKER | 10:36PM EST - Friday, November 10, 2017

President Trump arrives to speak at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' summit in Danang, Vietnam, on Friday. — Photograph: Associated Press.
President Trump arrives to speak at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' summit in Danang, Vietnam, on Friday. — Photograph: Associated Press.

DANANG, VIETNAM — President Trump delivered a fiery speech on trade here on Friday, declaring that he would not allow the United States to be “taken advantage of anymore” and planned to place “America first”.

And then, less than 24 hours later, 11 Pacific Rim countries collectively shrugged and moved on without the U.S.

On Saturday, the countries announced they had reached a deal to move ahead with the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade pact that Trump threw into question when he withdrew from it earlier this year.

The agreement represents something of a rebuke of Trump, coming near the end of his five-country, 12-day swing through Asia, and reflects the willingness of other nations to proceed without the buy-in of the United States.

A statement early on Saturday trumpeted a breakthrough on the “core elements” of the trade agreement. “Ministers are pleased to announce that they have agreed on the core elements of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership,” it read.

The deal was originally expected to be announced on Friday — the same day Trump addressed business leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit here, in a speech heavy on tough talk and protectionist rhetoric — but was delayed after Canada raised concerns.

The decision to move ahead with the TPP agreement, minus the United States, reflects how Trump's decision to withdraw from the deal created a vacuum other nations are now moving to fill, with or without the president.

In his speech on Friday, Trump struck an aggressive note, saying he believed the United States had for too long been the victim of poor trade deals.

“We are not going to let the United States be taken advantage of anymore,” he said. “I am always going to put America first, the same way that I expect all of you in this room to put your countries first.”

Instead, he said the U.S. was still a willing trade partner, but only for deals based on “mutual respect and mutual benefit.”

“I will make bilateral trade agreements with any Indo-Pacific nation that wants to be our partner and that will abide by the principles of fair and reciprocal trade,” he said.  “What we will no longer do is enter into large agreements that tie our hands, surrender our sovereignty, and make meaningful enforcement practically impossible.”

A senior administration official, asked if the new trade announcement foreshadowed the United States being left behind in the region, rejected the notion, pointing out that “the president is here visiting and is part of the dialogue, and has already spent a significant portion of time talking to his allies and like-minded partners in Japan and South Korea.”

“We'll continue that conversation with many parties here,” the official said. “So we absolutely are engaged on the economic side, and we'll continue to be so.”


• Ashley Parker is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2017, after 11 years at The New York Times, where she covered the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns and Congress, among other things.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/11/10/trump-says-u-s-wont-be-taken-advantage-of-anymore-and-hours-later-pacific-rim-nations-reach-deal-on-trade-without-u-s-buy-in
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Im2Sexy4MyPants
Absolutely Fabulously Incredibly Shit-Hot Member
*
Posts: 8271



WWW
« Reply #59 on: November 12, 2017, 01:27:43 am »

 sucker news
another nothing burger

antitrust should break up the amazon monopoly and probably will
Report Spam   Logged

Are you sick of the bullshit from the sewer stream media spewed out from the usual Ken and Barby dickless talking point look a likes.

If you want to know what's going on in the real world...
And the many things that will personally effect you.
Go to
http://www.infowars.com/

AND WAKE THE F_ _K UP
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #60 on: November 12, 2017, 10:57:29 am »


I could post a similar story by a different reporter published by the Los Angeles Times.

Ditto the Chicago Tribune.

Ditto The Boston Globe.

Ditto The Seattle Times.

Ditto The New York Times.

Ditto heaps of other mainstream (as opposed to the conspiracy theory bullshit such as Breithart, InfoWars.com, etc., run by stupid RETARDS) American newspapers.
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
aDjUsToR
Part-Of-The-Furniture Member
*
Posts: 882


« Reply #61 on: November 12, 2017, 11:57:43 am »

Yep all loony left rags staffed by people with degrees in lesbian dance theory and the like 😀
Report Spam   Logged
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #62 on: November 12, 2017, 01:17:52 pm »


I love it when America under Trump gets left out of trade deals.

Perhaps China should step right into the vacuum created by America's withdrawal from many things?

They're the new rising world superpower anyway, so they may as well claim the top-dog prize even sooner, eh?

The “Thucydides Trap” is edging ever closer, it's just that at the moment America's dumb president with the short-attention-span is too full of himself after being played by the Chinese to realise his country is rapidly becoming irrelevant on the world state. It's going to be hilarious when the idiot wakes up.
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
aDjUsToR
Part-Of-The-Furniture Member
*
Posts: 882


« Reply #63 on: November 16, 2017, 07:11:35 pm »

So, how many new spam threads on Trump or America this week? 😁
Report Spam   Logged
Im2Sexy4MyPants
Absolutely Fabulously Incredibly Shit-Hot Member
*
Posts: 8271



WWW
« Reply #64 on: November 17, 2017, 02:08:56 am »

Report Spam   Logged

Are you sick of the bullshit from the sewer stream media spewed out from the usual Ken and Barby dickless talking point look a likes.

If you want to know what's going on in the real world...
And the many things that will personally effect you.
Go to
http://www.infowars.com/

AND WAKE THE F_ _K UP
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #65 on: November 18, 2017, 12:25:40 pm »


from The Washington Post....

The Russia investigation's spectacular accumulation of lies

Politics, untethered from morality and religion, leaves widespread, infectious corruption.

By MICHAEL GERSON | 7:33PM EST - Thursday, November 16, 2017

Donald Trump Jr. attends the White House Easter Egg Roll on April 17th. — Photograph: Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.
Donald Trump Jr. attends the White House Easter Egg Roll on April 17th. — Photograph: Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.

I SPENT part of my convalescence from a recent illness reading some of the comprehensive timelines of the Russia investigation (which indicates, I suppose, a sickness of another sort). One, compiled by Politico, runs to nearly 12,000 words — an almost book-length account of stupidity, cynicism, hubris and corruption at the highest levels of American politics.

The cumulative effect on the reader is a kind of nausea no pill can cure. Most recently, we learned about Donald Trump Jr.'s direct communications with WikiLeaks — which CIA Director Mike Pompeo has called “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia” — during its efforts to produce incriminating material on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election. But this is one sentence in an epic of corruption. There is the narrative of a campaign in which high-level operatives believed that Russian espionage could help secure the American presidency, and acted on that belief. There is the narrative of deception to conceal the nature and extent of Russian ties. And there is the narrative of a president attempting to prevent or shut down the investigation of those ties and soliciting others for help in that task.

In all of this, there is a spectacular accumulation of lies. Lies on disclosure forms. Lies at confirmation hearings. Lies on Twitter. Lies in the White House briefing room. Lies to the FBI. Self-protective lies by the attorney general. Blocking and tackling lies by Vice President Pence. This is, with a few exceptions, a group of people for whom truth, political honor, ethics and integrity mean nothing.

What are the implications? President Trump and others in his administration are about to be hit by a legal tidal wave. We look at the Russia scandal and see lies. A skilled prosecutor sees leverage. People caught in criminal violations make more cooperative witnesses. Robert S. Mueller III and his A-team of investigators have plenty of stupidity and venality to work with. They are investigating an administration riven by internal hatreds — also the prosecutor's friend. And Trump has already alienated many potential allies in a public contest between himself and Mueller. A number of elected Republicans, particularly in the Senate, would watch this showdown with popcorn.

But the implications of all this are not only legal and political. We are witnessing what happens when right-wing politics becomes untethered from morality and religion.

What does public life look like without the constraining internal force of character — without the firm ethical commitments often (though not exclusively) rooted in faith? It looks like a presidential campaign unable to determine right from wrong and loyalty from disloyalty. It looks like an administration engaged in a daily assault on truth and convinced that might makes right. It looks like the residual scum left from retreating political principle — the worship of money, power and self-promoted fame. The Trumpian trinity.


Attorney General Jeff Sessions raises his hand to be sworn in before the House Judiciary Committee. — Photograph: Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions raises his hand to be sworn in before the House Judiciary Committee.
 — Photograph: Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post.


But also: Power without character looks like the environment for women at Fox News during the reigns of Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly — what former network host Andrea Tantaros called “a sex-fueled, Playboy Mansion-like cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency and misogyny.” It looks like Breitbart News's racial transgressiveness, providing permission and legitimacy to the alt-right. It looks like the cruelty and dehumanization practiced by Dinesh D'Souza, dismissing the tears and trauma of one Roy Moore accuser as a “performance.” And it looks like the Christian defense of Moore, which has ceased to be recognizably Christian.

This may be the greatest shame of a shameful time. What institution, of all institutions, should be providing the leaven of principle to political life? What institution is specifically called on to oppose the oppression of children, women and minorities, to engage the world with civility and kindness, to prepare its members for honorable service to the common good?

A hint: It is the institution that is currently — in some visible expressions — overlooking, for political reasons, credible accusations of child molestation. Some religious leaders are willing to call good evil, and evil good, in service to a different faith — a faith defined by their political identity. This is heresy at best; idolatry at worst.

Most Christians, of course, are not actively supporting Moore. But how many Americans would identify evangelical Christianity as a prophetic voice for human dignity and moral character on the political right? Very few. And they would be wrong.

Many of the people who should be supplying the moral values required by self-government have corrupted themselves. The Trump administration will be remembered for many things. The widespread, infectious corruption of institutions and individuals may be its most damning legacy.


• Michael Gerson is a nationally syndicated columnist who appears twice weekly in The Washington Post.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • VIDEO: Inside the Twitter messages between Donald Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks

 • VIDEO: What we learned, and didn't, from Sessions's latest Russia testimony

 • VIDEO: Does Trump believe that Russia interfered with the election?


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-russia-investigations-spectacular-accumulation-of-lies/2017/11/16/741024bc-cb0e-11e7-8321-481fd63f174d_story.html
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #66 on: November 18, 2017, 02:06:59 pm »


from The Washington Post....

Forget alternative facts. We're now in an alternate reality.

In the age of Trump, rules are ignored and standards of integrity are disqualified.

By DANA MILBANK | 2:48PM EST - Friday, November 17, 2017

Senator Orrin G. Hatch (Republican-Utah) mediates a contentious markup of the Senate tax bill on Capitol Hill on November 15th. — Photograph: Melina Mara/The Washington Post.
Senator Orrin G. Hatch (Republican-Utah) mediates a contentious markup of the Senate tax bill on Capitol Hill on November 15th.
 — Photograph: Melina Mara/The Washington Post.


IN THE BEGINNING, there were alternative facts. Now we are being governed in an alternate reality.

Heading toward approval of their tax bill this week, House Republicans had a teensy problem: Their vaunted tax “cut” actually was a tax hike for millions of Americans. It lowered taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars on the wealthiest, but it raised the lowest tax rate and, official congressional arbiters determined, raised taxes on a good chunk of the middle class, as well.

Awkward! Particularly because a long-standing House rule, put in place by Republicans after Newt Gingrich's 1994 takeover, requires that any “income tax rate increase may not be considered as passed … unless so determined by a vote of not less than three-fifths of the members voting.”

So Republicans did the honorable thing: They snuck in a provision that allowed them, with a simple majority vote, to declare that the three-fifths requirement “shall not apply”. Problem solved.

This is but one example of an unnerving trend in the Trump era: Ignore the rules and disqualify the referees who were put in place to enforce standards of integrity.

Just two months ago, President Trump promised that “the rich will not be gaining at all” under the tax bill and “it'll be the largest tax decrease in the history of our country for the middle class.”

It is exactly the opposite. The bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation found that the rich would get a handsome tax break under the House bill, but those earning $20,000 to $40,000 and $200,000 to $500,0000 would get an increase. On Thursday, the JCT, the official congressional arbiter of tax legislation, determined that the Senate version of the bill would give large tax cuts to millionaires but raise taxes on families earning between $10,000 and $75,000.

And so Orrin G. Hatch (Republican-Utah), author of the Senate tax bill, attempted to discredit the bicameral, bipartisan JCT. “Anyone who says we're hiking taxes on low-income families is mis-stating the facts,” he said.

And Hatch is the vice chairman of the JCT! The chairman is also Republican, as are a majority of the members.

Leaving aside Hatch's particular dispute (about whether to count a loss of Obamacare subsidies as a tax increase for those who opt out), there is no denying the larger point in the JCT's calculation: Whether you technically classify certain things as taxes or not, this “tax cut” would have the effect of making the rich richer and a large swath of the middle class poorer. Instead of acknowledging that, Republicans are attempting to disqualify the umpire they put in place.

Something similar is happening now with the nominations of judges. In all administrations since Dwight Eisenhower's (except George W. Bush's) the American Bar Association (ABA) has vetted prospective judicial nominees' legal qualifications before they are nominated. Now the Trump administration is ignoring the ABA pre-screening, and the Senate Judiciary Committee is no longer waiting to have nominees' professional qualifications vetted before confirmation hearings. The New York Times reports that the White House is “weighing” telling future nominees not to cooperate with ABA evaluators. And this week, the White House issued a news release highlighting an editorial saying “the Senate continues to give the lawyers' guild too much sway.”

When the Trump administration and congressional allies aren't attacking the JCT and the ABA, they're attacking the CBO — the Congressional Budget Office, the bipartisan arbiter of how much legislation costs, now led by a Republican appointee. When White House budget director Mick Mulvaney earlier this year didn't like the CBO's “score” of health-care legislation, he asked: “Has the day of the CBO come and gone?” Trump ally Newt Gingrich wanted to “abolish” the “totally dishonest” umpire.

The White House did its utmost, as well, to undermine the Office of Government Ethics, blocking its access to ethics waivers granted to former lobbyists in the administration. The director of the office ultimately resigned.

Now, some Republicans are attempting to do the same to the special counsel. After Robert S. Mueller III's recent indictments of Trump campaign advisers, three House members introduced a resolution calling for Mueller's resignation.

And of course, there is Roy Moore, who has responded to voluminous accusations of impropriety with children by attempting to discredit the press — dovetailing with Trump's “fake-news” attacks.

Should Moore make it to the Senate, we can expect worse. He openly defied the U.S. Supreme Court when he was a state judge, and he has made clear he believes the Constitution is subordinate to his interpretation of God's law.

As Trump and his allies lay waste to their own rules, the media, the CBO, the ABA, the JTC and the courts, let's ask ourselves: After they've disqualified all arbiters of truth, what will we have left?


• Dana Milbank writes about political theater in the nation's capital for The Washington Post. He joined The Post as a political reporter in 2000.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • VIDEO: Tense exchange between Hatch and Brown over tax cuts

 • Catherine Rampell: And the biggest loser in the GOP's tax plan is … humans

 • The Washington Post's View: This little-discussed part of the GOP tax bill proves what it's really about


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/forget-alternative-facts-were-now-in-an-alternate-reality/2017/11/17/52e53a56-cba0-11e7-8321-481fd63f174d_story.html
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
aDjUsToR
Part-Of-The-Furniture Member
*
Posts: 882


« Reply #67 on: November 18, 2017, 02:09:52 pm »

Forget left wing media spam. We are now in the age where utopian neo-marxist twits simply make shit up for propaganda purposes 😁
Report Spam   Logged
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #68 on: November 18, 2017, 02:39:30 pm »


The only problem with your bullshit is that if you click on those links with that story, a large proportion of them take you to US Government websites and documents which verify that what is written in the article is absolutely 100% correct.

Hahaha.....I guess this shows that YOU are as dumb as dogshit, eh?
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #69 on: November 18, 2017, 03:06:35 pm »


from The Washington Post....

Law clerk by day, ghost hunter by night, now Trump's judiciary nominee

Brett Talley, a political speechwriter and horror author, has never tried a case in court.

By ROBERT O'HARROW Jr. | 2:52PM EST - Frday, November 17, 2017

Brett Talley poses for a portrait at the District's Holy Rood Cemetery in December 2014. — Photograph: Matt McClain/The Washington Post.
Brett Talley poses for a portrait at the District's Holy Rood Cemetery in December 2014. — Photograph: Matt McClain/The Washington Post.

BY DAY, he was a clerk to a federal judge, a Harvard Law School graduate at the start of his career. By night, he was a ghost hunter and a devotee of the macabre.

Brett Joseph Talley is now President Trump's nominee for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench as a U.S. District Court judge in Alabama.

Few in memory have been nominated with credentials quite like those of Talley, 36, an Alabama native, a political speechwriter, an author of horror books and a fledgling lawyer who has never tried a case.

In 2009 and 2010, he was a member of the Tuscaloosa Paranormal Research Group, a volunteer operation that since the early 2000s has held all-night vigils and used infrared cameras, handheld sensors and other devices to search for spectral entities in plantation mansions, abandoned hospitals and other buildings.

“He was a real help…. He was quiet and real smart,” David Higdon, the group's founder and leader, told The Washington Post. “We try to do everything scientific.”

Talley did not respond to requests for an interview.

In 2014, when he was a speechwriter on Capitol Hill, Talley took a Washington Post reporter ghost hunting in a District cemetery. As he paused at graves, Talley said he always maintained a level of skepticism during the paranormal outings.

“I tend to believe there's a good scientific explanation for the weird things people see and hear,” Talley said at the time. “But I'm open to the idea, and it's fun.”

Talley's nomination has been received with some skepticism.

In recent days, he has drawn heat from multiple Democrats in Congress for failing to disclose in a Senate questionnaire that his wife, Ann Donaldson, is chief of staff to the White House counsel. Critics said her position could present a conflict if issues related to the White House were to go before the district court.

Last week, an American Bar Association review committee gave him a rare “not qualified” rating because of his lack of legal experience. He is one of four Trump nominees to receive “not qualified” ratings this year, the first such ratings to be disclosed by the association in more than a decade.

In October, during a nomination hearing, some Democratic lawmakers questioned whether he could be an impartial judge, citing posts he made as a conservative blogger several years ago. One blog post he wrote after the Newtown, Connecticut, massacre was titled, A Call to Arms: It's Time to Join the National Rifle Association.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (Democrat-California) said at the hearing: “I have never seen anyone in 24 years before this committee with the strong statements that you have made on weapons. And when I think of what just happened in Las Vegas, it makes it very difficult for me.”

Talley responded that he wrote the blog to stimulate discussion. “If I am fortunate enough to be confirmed, I will take an oath to set aside my own views and to do justice,” Talley testified.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (Republican-Iowa) recently praised Talley as a good choice, saying in a statement he “has a wide breadth of various legal experience that has helped to expose him to different aspects of federal law and the issues that would come before him.”

Largely overlooked in the controversy is perhaps the most remarkable detail in the professional history he gave the committee — that he was a member of the Tuscaloosa Paranormal Research Group for two years.

Talley was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1981. He attended the University of Alabama, where he earned top marks, and then went to Harvard Law, serving as an editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.

He graduated in 2007 and, while clerking for U.S. District Judge L. Scott Coogler in Tuscaloosa two years later, asked Higdon whether he could join the paranormal group.

Higdon recalled Talley as a bright and charming guy with a budding interest in the supernatural.

For all that, Higdon said he was a little wary with Talley, as he is with other volunteers. Higdon wanted to be sure Talley was joining in earnest. The group had about 15 members.

Many people believe in ghosts or supernatural events, which Higdon said accounts for the interest in groups like his across the country.

“I wouldn't have someone as a joke in my group. We do go out and have fun. But there's a time to get down to business,” Higdon said. “The whole time, I don't think he was doing it as a joke.”

The group went out once or twice a month to investigate old plantation mansions, abandoned prisons and other buildings they had heard might be haunted. Higdon said Talley joined them at least a dozen times.

The group does not try to banish ghosts, Higdon said, only to identify them.

“All we can do is say yea or nay — you have something, but we can't get rid of it,” he said.

He said Talley helped carry and unpack cases filled with thermal sensors, infrared cameras, tripods and K2 meters, handheld electromagnetic field devices favored by paranormal investigators. Talley helped monitor the all-night investigations, Higdon said.

Just as Talley's interest in the horrific was blossoming, he left the paranormal group behind. He went to work for Judge Joel F. Dubina of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, headquartered in Atlanta.

About the same time, Talley was writing horror fiction, including novels. In 2011 his novel That Which Should Not Be was published by JournalStone and was semifinalist for the Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Award.

In a Q&A with Talley at the Unlocked Diary website, an interviewer wrote that the book has “awesomestastic gooeyness oozing from every page to where you will be licking it off your fingers and savoring it for days to come.”

The interviewer asked Talley for his advice about the best way to get into trouble on a Friday night.

“I love old, abandoned buildings. Factories, insane asylums, that sort of thing,” Talley wrote in the exchange. “I am always trying to get people to go with me, but no one ever does. You have to watch out or you'll get arrested for trespassing.”

In 2012, Talley and Higdon co-authored Haunted Tuscaloosa, a short book of stories about ghostly doings in Alabama. At the time, Talley was working as a speechwriter for Republican Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.

Higdon said Talley wrote the book using Higdon's recollections and ideas. In the introduction, Talley raises questions about the line between personal experience and verifiable fact.

“In this book, there are children who died too early, professors who never left the classroom and even the spirit of a collie that still serves its master, long after his death,” Talley wrote in the introduction.

 “Some will criticize these stories, saying they are not real history,” he wrote. “But that raises a question. What is real history? Sure, we know the dates and the major players, but the color, the heart of the matter — that we see through eyewitnesses.”

Talley describes himself as a Christian in his Twitter profile.

“I personally believe in good and evil,” he said in an online video interview about his books. “Sometimes good and evil are sort of shades of gray and they're all matters of perspective. And sometimes things that seem evil may be good.”

From 2013 to 2015, Talley worked as a speechwriter for Senator Rob Portman (Republican-Ohio). In a statement to The Washington Post, Portman said, “Brett Talley is one of the smartest, most talented lawyers that I know, and I have no doubt he will be a terrific district court judge for Alabama.”

Talley then took a job as deputy solicitor general in the office of the Alabama attorney general.

He and his wife, Ann, were married in 2015 in Tuscaloosa, where they met as undergraduates at the University of Alabama. She also attended Harvard Law School.

Talley came to Washington with the Trump administration in January, and he was named deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy.

In the recent hearing held by the Judiciary Committee, Senator Jeff Flake (Republican-Arizona) asked Talley about his background as a horror fiction writer.

“How does that come in?” Flake said, according to a video of the hearing. “That's an interesting background for a judge.”

Talley grinned broadly and said he would try to draw on his horror background when writing legal opinions.

“Well, Senator, I would hope that would at least make for some interesting opinions,” Talley said. “And I will try to sneak in some horror references if I am fortunate enough to be confirmed.”

Not everyone is amused.

A scientist and a historian of science told The Post that Talley's activities and writing raise subtle but powerful questions about his views on science and the value of verifiable facts. Robert N. Proctor, a historian at Stanford University, studies science and technology, and the cultural production of ignorance, which he has termed agnotology.

“I don't think it's a good sign that a judge would embrace the reality of ghosts. What other parts of modern science would he be willing to reject? Climate change? Darwin's theory of evolution?” Proctor said in an email. “The judge will presumably be ruling on 21st-century disputes, not questions from the Middle Ages.”

Higdon said he understands the skepticism about Talley's interest in the supernatural. He said that no one can prove ghosts exist.

But he recalled the intensity he felt on a night not long ago when he had an “oh-my-gosh moment” in an old hospital, when a “full-blown shadow person” crossed his path in a basement corridor.

He said that many respectable people have believed in ghosts and that people like him across the country remain hopeful.

“We hope one day we can prove it,” Higdon said. “It's faith.”


• Robert O'Harrow Jr. is a reporter on the investigative unit of The Washington Post. He writes about law enforcement, national security, federal contracting and the financial world.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • Meet the ghost hunter and horror novelist who writes Senator Rob Portman's speeches


https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/law-clerk-by-day-ghost-hunter-by-night-now-trumps-judiciary-nominee/2017/11/17/518b66a8-ca51-11e7-b244-2d22ac912500_story.html
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #70 on: November 19, 2017, 06:01:09 pm »

Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #71 on: November 21, 2017, 07:07:29 pm »


Faaaaaaark.....talk about a “historic” idiot, eh?



from The Washington Post....

There is something truly historic about Trump

That is, his histrionics.

By DANA MILBANK | 6:41PM EST — Monday, November 20, 2017

President Donald J. Trump speaks during a meeting with his Cabinet on Monday. — Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters.
President Donald J. Trump speaks during a meeting with his Cabinet on Monday. — Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters.

PRESIDENT TRUMP is making history at a historic level. He tells us this himself.

“Good morning,” he said at the start of his Cabinet meeting on Monday. “We just returned from a historic, 12-day trip to Asia.”

We knew the trip would be historic because the White House announced in advance that it would be “very historic”. And the day after the president returned, he himself affirmed that it had indeed been “historic”.

This is not surprising, because, in Trump's telling, his first trip was historic, too. He said so before the trip (“a trip with historic significance”), during the trip (“historic and unprecedented … very historic … a truly historic week for our country”) and after (“full of historic and unprecedented achievements … it was truly historic”).

Technically, either trip could be categorized as historical, in the sense that both occurred in the past. But in the sense of being moments of great and lasting importance? Well, consider that on his latest voyage, the president arguably got the most attention when he called the nuclear-armed leader of North Korea short and fat. Nixon-goes-to-China it wasn't.

Yet there is something truly historic about Trump — his histrionics. He surely has no rival in trying to assert the historic nature of everything he does. A search of the White House website finds that the president and his team have declared their actions historic nearly 400 times in their first 10 months in office.

Trump has always asserted that he is the best and the greatest, but his attempts to write himself into the history books have truly been history-making.

Among the things Trump has called “historic”: His initiative on women's entrepreneurship. Pulling out of the Paris climate-change agreement. Executive orders on whistleblowers, financial services and the Antiquities Act. His apprenticeship initiative. The Clemson football team's 2016 season. And the launch of a ship named for Gerald Ford.

In his inaugural address, Trump declared his election the work “of a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before”. In his first address to Congress, he announced “a historic effort” to deregulate and said he would introduce “historic tax reform”. After 11 weeks on the job, Trump reported that he had “achieved historic progress”. At the 100-day mark, his “historic progress” included “historic steps to secure our border”.

He predicted that his first Cabinet meeting would be “a historic Cabinet meeting” — and it was, as measured by the volume of praise heaped on him by his subordinates. He boasted in June that he had secured “historic increases in military spending”. (He hadn't.) At his last Cabinet meeting before Monday's, he declared that his “historic tax plan” would have a “historic cut”. (It didn't.) He announced “a historic immigration bill”. (We're still waiting.)

Some things are more historic than others. When Congress missed its “historic” chance to repeal Obamacare, Trump's executive order to undermine Obamacare was “truly historic”.

His approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and his executive action on energy were just plain historic, as were his historic actions on trade and his historic tax overhaul, and both the nomination and swearing in of Neil Gorsuch. But his executive orders on trade and his work for veterans were both “very historic”. Also “very historic” was his effort to “modernize critical IT systems”. But “there's never been anything so historic” as the recent hurricanes, the handling of which earned Trump high grades — from himself.

Vice President Pence is making even more historic strides to see historic occasions everywhere. He labeled a roundtable discussion on health care “historic”. So was the swearing in of the labor secretary, the confirmation of the education secretary, the swearing in of the ambassador to Israel, Trump's meetings with the Indian prime minister and the pope, Trump's air traffic control proposals and events such as the National Summit on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, the “Northern Triangle Conference” and the “Adriatic Charter Summit”. Pence even knows that Trump's yet-to-be-announced infrastructure spending “will be historic”.

Other White House officials have given “historic” designations to things such as the Congressional Picnic; HR 1004, the Regulatory Integrity Act of 2017; and HR 1009, the OIRA Insight, Reform and Accountability Act.

“Historic pace”. “Historic accomplishments”. “Historic visit”. “Historic gathering”. “Historic day”. “Historic act”. “Historic event”. “Historic speech”.

What actually is historic about this first year of the Trump presidency will be left to the historians. But so far, Trump's actual achievements have been few. What seems most historic about this moment:

Trump's hysterics.


• Dana Milbank writes about political theater in the nation's capital for The Washington Post. He joined The Post as a political reporter in 2000.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • VIDEO: Trump on Asia trip: ‘I am very proud of it’


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/there-is-something-truly-historic-about-trump/2017/11/20/dae6e70c-ce47-11e7-81bc-c55a220c8cbe_story.html




Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
aDjUsToR
Part-Of-The-Furniture Member
*
Posts: 882


« Reply #72 on: November 22, 2017, 04:49:01 pm »

It's an not a.
You were saying about idiots?
Report Spam   Logged
Im2Sexy4MyPants
Absolutely Fabulously Incredibly Shit-Hot Member
*
Posts: 8271



WWW
« Reply #73 on: November 23, 2017, 08:32:20 am »

Report Spam   Logged

Are you sick of the bullshit from the sewer stream media spewed out from the usual Ken and Barby dickless talking point look a likes.

If you want to know what's going on in the real world...
And the many things that will personally effect you.
Go to
http://www.infowars.com/

AND WAKE THE F_ _K UP
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #74 on: November 23, 2017, 03:01:37 pm »


Donald Trump supports a paedophile....



from The Washington Post....

Trump boosts Moore in Alabama Senate race
despite sexual misconduct allegations


“We don't need a liberal person in there, a Democrat,” the president said about the seat.

By MICHAEL SCHERER, ASHLEY PARKER and DAVID WEIGEL | 9:53PM EST - Tuesday, November 21, 2017

President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departed with his family to his Mar-a-Lago resort Tuesday. — Photograph: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post.
President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departed with his family to his Mar-a-Lago resort on Tuesday.
 — Photograph: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post.


PRESIDENT TRUMP gave a boost on Tuesday to embattled Republican candidate Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate race, warning against a Democratic victory and emphasizing that the former judge “totally denies” allegations of inappropriate relationships with teenage girls.

“We don't need a liberal person in there, a Democrat,” Trump said about Moore's opponent, former federal prosecutor Doug Jones, who has led in some recent polls in the state. “I've looked at his record. It's terrible on crime. It's terrible on the border. It's terrible on military.”

The comments came after a week in which other Republican leaders in Washington, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), had cut ties with Moore and called on him to exit the race. They also stood in contrast to Trump's own support for the Republican National Committee's decision last week to pull resources from the state, including 14 paid staffers and expertise in using party data to target voters and model the election result.

There were no signs on Tuesday that the RNC would reverse course, but a senior administration official said the president's comments could prompt a larger effort to close ranks behind Moore.

“Normally there would be an outside group dumping $2 or $3 million attacking Doug Jones's record,” the official said after the president spoke. “And now that the president has warned against having a liberal Democrat in that seat, that could be taken as signal to the outside groups.”

Trump spoke as sexual harassment and abuse scandals continued to roil the nation's political landscape. In Congress, new allegations of harassment emerged on Tuesday against Representative John Conyers Jr. (Democrat-Michigan), and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Democrat-California) released a statement calling for an ethics investigation of the matter. Senator Al Franken (Democrat-Minnesota) also faces an ethics probe after admitting to grabbing at the chest of a woman for a photograph while she slept before he was in Congress.

Trump — who during the presidential campaign was accused by 11 women of unwanted touching or kissing and was caught on tape boasting of grabbing women's genitals without their consent — declined to comment directly on the allegations against Conyers or Franken but said he was happy that the misbehavior was becoming public.

“A lot of things are coming out, and I think that's good for our society, and I think it's very, very good for women, and I'm very happy a lot of these things are coming out, and I'm very happy it's being exposed,” he said on the South Lawn of the White House before leaving for Florida, where he will spend the Thanksgiving holiday.

As an aside, he noted that Moore's accusers had supported his campaign. “The women are Trump voters,” he said. “Most of them are Trump voters.”

Just before the president spoke, Moore campaign surrogates issued a statement in Montgomery, saying they had evidence that cast doubt on the allegations of Leigh Corfman, who says she was touched sexually by Moore when she was 14 and he was in his 30s. The evidence they presented did not contradict Corfman's story.

Ben DuPré, a longtime aide to Moore, displayed documents he said were from the Corfman family's divorce file. The Washington Post had obtained and reviewed a copy of the divorce file before publishing Corfman's story. He noted that her parents had concerns at the time, following a divorce, regarding Leigh's behavioral problems, a fact that is not contested.

DuPré also claimed that Corfman lived nearly a mile away from the intersection of Alcott Road and Riley Street in Gadsden, Alabama, where she says Moore picked her up. It was not clear what address DuPré was referring to. Corfman and her mother told The Post they lived at the time on Whittier Street, which is just around the corner from the alleged pickup point.

DuPré also pointed to a Breitbart article in which Corfman's mother is quoted saying that there was no phone in her daughter's room at the time. Both Corfman and her mother have said they had a phone on a long cord in the hallway that could be brought into Leigh Corfman's room.

The RNC broke ties with Moore on November 14th as the president was returning from Asia. There was, however, some disagreement inside the administration at the time about the best path forward. “All the right political people were not read into that decision,” said the senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly knew about the decision and was part of the discussion. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders later said the president supported the decision.

But over the past week, the White House position began to change. In a “Fox & Friends” interview on Monday morning, presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway tacitly supported Moore by talking about the importance of keeping Jones, whom she cast as a “doctrinaire liberal,” from winning Alabama's Senate seat — a message that was deliberate, one White House official said.

Conway alerted Trump in advance that she planned to make the argument against Jones, and the president agreed with the strategy, saying he was eager to see what the response was, the official said.

White House aides also realized that Trump had come around to that approach — stressing the importance of keeping the seat in Republican control — when he began making the argument privately.

Although his comments to the news media on Tuesday afternoon were unplanned, aides were not surprised when Trump made them.

In recent days, Trump had also begun expressing skepticism in private about the allegations against Moore. The president pointed to the presence of Gloria Allred — a well-known lawyer for sexual misconduct cases, who is representing one of Moore's accusers — as well as the timing of the accusations, so close to the election, as indicators of a political attack on Moore.

Democrats have dominated the broadcast airwaves in Alabama for weeks, spending more than seven times as much as Moore on television and radio ads, according to a Democrat and a Republican tracking the ad data.

The latest ad by Jones plays back criticism of Moore that Ivanka Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Senator Richard C. Shelby (Republican-Alabama) gave in the aftermath of allegations that Moore made unwanted advances on teenage girls.

Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter, is quoted as saying of the Moore allegations: “There's a special place in hell for people who prey on children.” Sessions is quoted from a congressional hearing where he was asked about the Moore story: “I have no reason to doubt these young women.” And Shelby, who has been critical of Moore, is quoted about his plan to write in another name on the ballot.

The ad targets Republicans and Republican-leaning voters who make up a majority of the state. The goal is to give them permission to vote for a Democrat in the December 12th special election.

“Most Alabamians haven't voted for a Democrat for U.S. Senate in a generation,” said Zac McCrary, an Alabama-based pollster for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “You are butting up against a generation of Republican muscle memory,”

At a short Tuesday afternoon news conference, Jones smiled faintly as a reporter read back Trump's criticism of him as a “soft on crime” liberal. As a federal prosecutor, Jones obtained convictions in the early 2000s of two members of the Ku Klux Klan for their role in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four young African American girls.

“I feel like my record speaks for itself,” Jones said. “I know my record on crime and criminal justice issues. I know my record on everything else. We've got three weeks to go, and people are going to make that judgment.”

Asked if he considered Moore to be a sexual predator, Jones said he was less interested in characterizing his opponent than in listening to the accusers.

“I believe the women. I think that answers the question,” he said. “I'm not going to call names.”

With three weeks to go until the vote, it is unclear if a Republican-leaning outside group will invest in the race to attack Jones.

Ed Rollins, chairman of the pro-Trump Great America PAC, said that while his group has not made any decisions about what money to invest in Alabama going forward, any future ads probably would be attacking Jones rather than overtly supporting Moore.

“We think it's always important that you get someone who is going to be a pro-Trump supporter,” Rollins said. “Obviously Alabamians are going to make up their mind. The only advertising we've done to date has been anti-Jones. We've not made any decisions, but if we did anything else, it would be along the same lines.”


David Weigel reported from Huntsville, Alabama. Sean Sullivan and David Nakamura in Washington contributed to this report.

• Michael Scherer is a national political reporter at The Washington Post. Michael previously reported for TIME since December 2007 and became their Washington Bureau Chief in 1913. He moved to The Post in August 2017.

• Ashley Parker is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2017, after 11 years at The New York Times, where she covered the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns and Congress, among other things.

• David Weigel is a national political correspondent covering Congress and grassroots political movements. He's the author of "The Show That Never Ends," a history of progressive rock music.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • VIDEO: Trump discusses allegations against Moore

 • VIDEO: Trump says he doesn't want Democrat to win in Alabama

 • Jennifer Rubin: If Charlie Rose and Roy Moore deserve banishment, why not Donald Trump?

 • A new poll makes it crystal clear: Sexual harassment is not a dealbreaker in today's Republican Party

 • President Trump just endorsed Roy Moore, for all intents and purposes

 • What Trump has said about assault allegations against Franken, Moore, Clinton — and himself


https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-boosts-moore-in-ala-senate-race-despite-sexual-misconduct-allegations/2017/11/21/91fe5bf2-cf04-11e7-a1a3-0d1e45a6de3d_story.html



Mind you, it's not really surprising that Donald Trump supports a paedophile (otherwise known as a kid-fucker), 'cause he is a self-confest sexual deviant/sicko himself, as recorded on the tapes which were exposed to the public prior to the election. In fact, one almost has to wonder if it takes a paedophile to support a paedophile. I wonder what else is hidden in Donald Trump's sexual-perversion past that hasn't yet seen the light of day? Kid-fucking perhaps?
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 

Pages: 1 2 [3] 4   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Open XNC2 Smileys
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum


Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy
Page created in 0.072 seconds with 17 queries.