The Trump Presidency VII

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Minoosh said:
Trump could easily change his mind again. He seems to have the executive power to announce any tariff against anybody, but also the power to waive whatever tariff he wants at will. I don't know if he'll stick to this one or just use the announcement to keep even our allies in some state of uncertainty. He'll use them to get headlines and punish countries that he thinks are out of line. Now I wonder where the tariff money goes.

I need to learn more about the economics of it but it seems at a glance to be a shakedown of countries that have crossed him.

Domestic companies know they can just shift the cost of tariffs to customers.

Over the past 200 years an authority that clearly rests with Congress has migrated to the executive branch.

For a little history I checked out a National Review for conservative point of view:

Congress Handed the President the Power to Level Tariffs


They may be a bunch of RINOs over there, I don't know but essentially Trump is making policy by the seat of his pants because he doesn't know how to do it properly and because Congress has rolled over and played dead on this whole issue.
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I look forward to when congress retakes this power - as I've noted for years (including during the Obama Era) that they've conceded entirely too much power to the presidency, to the point where they often just look like idiots (eg. demanding that Obama attack Syria, then insisting that he get congressional approval to do so, and then refusing to approve any such thing - also another case of republicans being against themselves just to spite Obama).

I mean, this flock of jellyfish, or whatever the word is, aren't going to do it...
 
Segnosaur said:
Didn't really know that much about Dinesh D'Souza so I looked up his Wikipeda page.

So, this guy:
- Plead guilty to making illegal campaign contributions (which kind of limits the chance to argue "I'm innocent"
- His "penalty" was 1) a fine that was less than the amount of the contribution, 2) a few months in a halfway house (not even what people would consider "hard time") and probation. So, he didn't even really serve 'hard time'

Lets take a look at some of his other "actions"...

- Spoke out against same sex marriage (hey, didn't Trump make the claim that he supported gay people?)
- Believes in Intelligent Design
- Blamed Abu Gharib on the "sexual immodesty of Liberal America"
- Mocked survivors of the Stonebridge school shooting. Even the Conservative Political Action Conference condemned him for that.

Yup, an individual definitely worthy of a presidential pardon.
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He also said slavery wasn't so bad because slave owners would obviously treat their property well and bizarrely claimed Hitler didn't execute homosexuals. There's also his odd campaign against Rosa Parks:

picture.php
 
So Samantha Bee is apologizing for calling Ivanka a bitch. I wonder if Howard Stern will apologize for calling Ivanka a piece of ass. Which Trump affirmed.

Tariffs, tweets and pardons - treaties - and whatever unchecked power Trump cam exert, he's exerting. Top Kim Jong-un aide is in New York City which I think is a good move - us running over there all the time looked subservient. Trump had his little show of walking away from the Kim summit and as far as I can tell almost immediately started trying really, really hard to make it happen. He's salivating over it. Whatever deal is worked out with Kim, *Trump will lie about it*. He'll say North Korea has made all kind of concessions. He'll sign something and will laud it as probably the most important treaty ever in the world. But he will lie - he can't help himself.

There have been some peeps from the conservative media pushing back a little, saying pursuing North Korea might be a mistake, and as someone posted here, even Judge Napolitano said the whole "spygate" thing was blown way out of proportion.

Reporters (and commentators) don't like don't like being lied to. It begins to grate on even the most oleaginous minions. Sooner or later Trump betrays everyone.

BTW, from a few days ago, it really bothers me that Lesley Stahl waited more than a year to make public Trump's statement about a strategy of attacking the press. He said it during some downtime in a "60 Minutes" taping session. Now, I understand the necessity to sometimes butter up sources; you don't want to alienate the new president during an important interview. But she should have said something sooner. In a way the mainstream media enable Trump - he loves the headlines and they keep delivering. They need to find a way to inform people but otherwise ignore Trump. It would drive him crazy. He LOVES the mainstream media.
 
I do think that's pretty extreme, not black person and monkey level but bad. Think that's something that should receive a fine from the FCC.
 
Ted Nugent called Hillary Clinton a **** and never apologised, but was invited to the Oval Office for a photo op with Trump.
 
ShadowSot said:
I do think that's pretty extreme, not black person and monkey level but bad. Think that's something that should receive a fine from the FCC.
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First, it's a cable channel, so it isn't under the purview of the FCC.

Second, I'm pretty sure that Bee's show uses bleeps.
 
Here is an interview of David Cay Johnston about a book he wrote about Dump. It's about an hour long but that hour when by very quickly when I watched it. Highly recommended.

As a small spoiler, at one point Johnston says (mildly paraphrasing): If Trump gets elected he will surround himself with people who are loyal to Trump and not to the Constitution. Bingo!
 
I didn't know who Bee was before today. I think people should be free to call other people whatever they want, although I don't think they should be protected from the consequences of their statements (like, for example, sponsors pulling out of their programme).

The reason I think it's notable is that Roseanne Barr made a racist tweet and Trump's reaction was to tweet that he didn't think it was fair that he'd not got an apology from ABC for them saying mean things about her. Samantha Bee calls Ivanka Trump the c-word and the White House issues an official statement that she should be fired.
 
logger said:
Trump is saying countries who we levy tariffs against can avoid those tariffs by trading through Mexico and Canada. You’re saying that isn’t true?
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It is 100% pure nonsense. One of my jobs was as a load broker. That is to say, I bought and sold freight shipments across the Canada - US border, in both directions. Part of my responsibilities was to ensure the freight cleared customs so that the trucks would not be delayed at the border.

One of the required documents is a commercial invoice. This is not an invoice that a customer would receive. This is an invoice that only the customs clearance broker would see. It does not list the purchase price of products. It lists the sellers cost per item shipped. And it also includes a field for each item indicating "Country of Origin".

That field is not filled with Canada or USA, because that is where it is crossing from. This field is filled with the country where the item was made. You cannot hide the fact that an item originated in China just because you ship it to Canada first, and then drive it over the border.
 
There have been so many opinion pieces, or reporting that relied on unnamed sources, saying this time Trump had *really* done it, he'd gone beyond the pale, even for him, and the White House was in shambles. That loses impact the 15th time you write about it. I know it's true, I know news outlets feel a responsibility to report this stuff, but just in a day Trump can throw out so many distractions that people lose the plot - when he is under pressure he lashes out and then meets with a celebrity or issues a pardon guaranteed to get his name in the news.

A standing fixture on "Trump: News you need to know today," that throws out links when clicked on, would still generate traffic for the site. It doesn't have to be a separate home-page story when Trump says he might pardon Martha Stewart. It's a trial balloon, Trump pushing people's buttons. And the media plays right into Trump's hand. You would think nothing else was going on in the world. Remember when the upstart news organization was actually in Baghdad when bombs started falling, and became a 24-7 outlet for important developments around the world? CNN needs to start being that again. It's now simply a 24-7 outlet for Trump headlines. The man is important, I get it, he must be called out on lies, I get it. But subtly move away from wall-to-wall Trump-centric coverage. Give him enough rope, stop trying to create the buzz, let some things simmer (too many metaphors, I know).

After the election I kept looking at CNN multiple times a day, thinking today he'll really do it, he'll really manage to hang himself any second now. Basically I had to stop looking - I got numb from the Russian drumbeat, desensitized to new developments. And Trump knows how to make this work against CNN, WaPo or whoever he's trolling at the moment.

This man spends all day watching TV and tweeting. There's probably people in charge of making sure Trump leads the news every day, and trolling gets a reaction. But can a news outlet be vigilant without being hyper-vigilant? Yes, Trump is going to do and say atrocious things every single day. He's going to insult people, sign executive orders, suck up to dictators, issue pardons and fill news pages with obvious lies and innuendo (anyone remember the "sex tape" of Miss Universe? Telling Comey he "better hope there aren't tapes")? His 3-4 a.m. tweets are perfect for the morning news cycle; the day starts on his terms and the rest of the day is filled with reaction to whatever Trump says or does.
 
Molinaro said:
It is 100% pure nonsense. One of my jobs was as a load broker. That is to say, I bought and sold freight shipments across the Canada - US border, in both directions. Part of my responsibilities was to ensure the freight cleared customs so that the trucks would not be delayed at the border.
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I love it when people on this board actually know something about how trade is conducted. It's fun to learn about logistics, shipping and supply chains. My idea of fun, anyway.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
She didn't call her a bitch. The word she called her starts with the next letter of the alphabet.
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Well, she shouldn't have. In the U.S. that is a very bad word. It's counterproductive, IMO. Too much ammo for right-wing outrage and "whataboutism."

I'm confused about something. Roseanne tweets and her show is canceled, dozens of people put out of work etc. Victims come forward and say Harvey Weinstein (or Kevin Spacey, or even Al Franken) raped or abused them, and these men are driven from polite society. But meanwhile Trump seems impervious. He doesn't lack for chutzpah, that's for sure.
 
Molinaro said:
It is 100% pure nonsense. One of my jobs was as a load broker. That is to say, I bought and sold freight shipments across the Canada - US border, in both directions. Part of my responsibilities was to ensure the freight cleared customs so that the trucks would not be delayed at the border.

One of the required documents is a commercial invoice. This is not an invoice that a customer would receive. This is an invoice that only the customs clearance broker would see. It does not list the purchase price of products. It lists the sellers cost per item shipped. And it also includes a field for each item indicating "Country of Origin".

That field is not filled with Canada or USA, because that is where it is crossing from. This field is filled with the country where the item was made. You cannot hide the fact that an item originated in China just because you ship it to Canada first, and then drive it over the border.
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Don’t think we’re talking about hidden products. They’re able to add in a certain amount that isn’t subject to tariffs.
 
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