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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

Journeyman Overlording the Underworld from On a throne in a vault overlooking the Wasteland Since: Nov, 2010
Overlording the Underworld
#172701: Feb 5th 2017 at 5:19:12 PM

So I just checked my email. Three days ago one of my senators, Shelley Moore Capito, who is Republican, responded to my email about Net Neutrality. She basically outlined what goes into confirming a President's cabinet picks and told me straight up she was probably going to okay every one of them because it's tradition. Honestly, I only care about that where the picks can do things unilaterally. If Ajit Pai needs approval to cut regulations and destroy the freedom of the net, I will keep slamming emails and maybe phone calls calling for my representatives and senators to nix any move he makes to destabilize the internet.

I haven't been keeping up with this thread, but I figured I'd give y'all the update and say that I'm back because I've already done most of what was keeping me away before and I have the time now.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#172702: Feb 5th 2017 at 5:23:30 PM

[up][up][up], [up][up]

It's kind of fucked up that the POTUS is threatening a state. So much for being a President for all Americans.

Disgusted, but not surprised
IFwanderer use political terms to describe, not insult from Earth Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
use political terms to describe, not insult
#172703: Feb 5th 2017 at 5:31:12 PM

[up][up]Great job.

[up][up][up][up] If Trump does that can't California just go on tax strike and use the money that would go to the federal government to pay for whatever wholes Trump's defunding leaves in the budget? I mean, they're a state that gives more than they receive if I'm not mistaken.

1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV
RAlexa21th Zettai Ryouiki Enjoyer from California (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: I <3 love!
Zettai Ryouiki Enjoyer
#172704: Feb 5th 2017 at 5:40:45 PM

Looks like Gold is having some beef with Orange.

Strangely, Inlive in Orange County.

Continue writing our story of peace.
DingoWalley1 Asgore Adopts Noelle Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
Asgore Adopts Noelle
#172705: Feb 5th 2017 at 5:56:12 PM

I don't think Trump can cut the funds from California, at least not alone. Congress would have to do it, as it is Congress's sole responsible to give and deny funding of anything within the Federal Government. And if Congress sets that precedent, then the next Congress, which will be Democrat held, will do the exact same thing to several Republican states. With Congress also being so spineless, I could maybe see such an absurd proposal moving past the House, but not through the Senate.

(I hope) This is just Trump blustering (which he does constantly) and that he won't go through with it. If he tries, then the Union itself is in very danger.

RBluefish Since: Nov, 2013
#172706: Feb 5th 2017 at 5:59:51 PM

Who in the Republican Senate would stand against it? They've proven themselves time and time again to be spineless party-over-country cowards, and their base would surely back them up if they saw them trying to screw over those damn immigrant-loving liberal coastal elites.

And don't be so sure about the next Congress being blue. I've said it a thousand times, but the GOP have no intention of ever relinquishing power, and they have the tools to make that happen. Why risk another fair election if you don't have to?

"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#172707: Feb 5th 2017 at 6:00:59 PM

If Trump cuts funding, California should stop giving taxes to the Feds. And they give more than they take.

I doubt the GOP is going to let him piss off a state that big, I would assume that creating a West Coast independence movement with actual teeth behind it isn't on their agenda.

edited 5th Feb '17 6:15:01 PM by Rationalinsanity

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Gilphon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#172708: Feb 5th 2017 at 6:01:05 PM

Oy, why are we assuming that Democrats will be petty and vengeful about it if they take congress back?

Also I doubt he has the votes to get defunding California through congress. After all, a number of the GOP reps are from California.

Zendervai Since: Oct, 2009
#172709: Feb 5th 2017 at 6:16:24 PM

While I don't think the Democrats are that petty...the Republicans absolutely are and they appear to assume everyone is like them.

Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#172710: Feb 5th 2017 at 6:17:26 PM

The Democrats do have a history of coddling their opponents, and I don't see any signs it will change anytime soon.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#172712: Feb 5th 2017 at 6:20:03 PM

Defunding California won't work, California will just defund the federal government in response and then the Fed is short a bunch of money. Hell I could see other states that give more than they get following suit in such a case.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
AceofSpades Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
#172713: Feb 5th 2017 at 6:24:46 PM

Regarding the future Democratic party defunding red states as revenge: You do realize that defunding doesn't actually hurt elected officials and does hurt the common people and that as such, not engaging in petty revenge in this case isn't fucking coddling the enemy? How deciding to not hurt the general public comes across as codding I don't fucking know, Jesus Christ, Rational.

Anyway, Trump can't just defund California, though I think there are E Os he could order. But Congress, aware of the fact that California does in fact contribute more in tax dollars than it takes, are unlikely to just totally defund everything.

sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#172714: Feb 5th 2017 at 6:43:34 PM

[up]I think Rational just meant that the Dems won't do to the Republicans what they tried on the Dems just cause they can, even if justified or if it'd be effective. That's how I took it anyway.

edited 5th Feb '17 6:44:00 PM by sgamer82

storyyeller More like giant cherries from Appleloosa Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: RelationshipOutOfBoundsException: 1
More like giant cherries
#172715: Feb 5th 2017 at 6:54:09 PM

Didn't the Supreme Court say that you can't threaten to withhold funding from states when they struck down the Obamacare Medicaid expansion? If the court has any integrity at all, they'd squash this in a heart beat.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play
DingoWalley1 Asgore Adopts Noelle Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
Asgore Adopts Noelle
#172716: Feb 5th 2017 at 7:20:58 PM

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump (supposedly) stopped Trump from going through with the EO about 'Religious Rights' trumping LGBT and Women Protections.

Wow! Big win for Civil Liberties (if True)! Thank you Kushners!

I don't even know if it's fair to criticize any Trump that doesn't have the name "Donald J." in front of it anymore.

Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#172717: Feb 5th 2017 at 7:26:15 PM

There are conditions. You can withhold federal funding for, say, widget manufacture if a state is refusing to comply with a widget manufacture law that ties funding into compliance, but you can't withhold funding unrelated to the thing the law is about. Or that's the gist I got.

Meanwhile, scenes from the NYC subway

edited 5th Feb '17 7:27:25 PM by Elle

kkhohoho (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#172718: Feb 5th 2017 at 7:30:49 PM

[up][up]Now I've got this image of my head of Trump having 'good' and 'bad' angels on each shoulder, with Kushner and Ivanka being the 'good' ones and Banon being the bad one. Only rather than either side particularly dominating, Trump mostly ignores the both of them and just does whatever the hell he wants, with either side occasionally getting a word in. And as it turns, he can occasionally put the bad angel to fucking shame.tongue

edited 5th Feb '17 7:31:27 PM by kkhohoho

MadSkillz Destroyer of Worlds Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: I only want you gone
Destroyer of Worlds
#172719: Feb 5th 2017 at 7:33:46 PM

I'm pretty sure that Kushner is the one that got Bannon on-board.

tclittle Professional Forum Ninja from Somewhere Down in Texas Since: Apr, 2010
Professional Forum Ninja
#172720: Feb 5th 2017 at 7:44:08 PM

This article and the last EO Trump did where he didn't know what he was signing makes me think of the unnamed president from The Simpsons Movie with Bannon as the Big Bad EPA secretary.

"I was elected to lead, not to read."

This part pops out immensely (emphasis mine):

Mr. Priebus bristles at the perception that he occupies a diminished perch in the West Wing pecking order compared with previous chiefs. But for the moment, Mr. Bannon remains the president’s dominant adviser, despite Mr. Trump’s anger that he was not fully briefed on details of the executive order he signed giving his chief strategist a seat on the National Security Council, a greater source of frustration to the president than the fallout from the travel ban.

    Full Article 
President Trump loves to set the day’s narrative at dawn, but the deeper story of his White House is best told at night.

Aides confer in the dark because they cannot figure out how to operate the light switches in the cabinet room. Visitors conclude their meetings and then wander around, testing doorknobs until finding one that leads to an exit. In a darkened, mostly empty West Wing, Mr. Trump’s provocative chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, finishes another 16-hour day planning new lines of attack.

Usually around 6:30 p.m., or sometimes later, Mr. Trump retires upstairs to the residence to recharge, vent and intermittently use Twitter. With his wife, Melania, and young son, Barron, staying in New York, he is almost always by himself, sometimes in the protective presence of his imposing longtime aide and former security chief, Keith Schiller. When Mr. Trump is not watching television in his bathrobe or on his phone reaching out to old campaign hands and advisers, he will sometimes set off to explore the unfamiliar surroundings of his new home.

During his first two dizzying weeks in office, Mr. Trump, an outsider president working with a surprisingly small crew of no more than a half-dozen empowered aides with virtually no familiarity with the workings of the White House or federal government, sent shock waves at home and overseas with a succession of executive orders designed to fulfill campaign promises and taunt foreign leaders.

“We are moving big and we are moving fast,” Mr. Bannon said, when asked about the upheaval of the first two weeks. “We didn’t come here to do small things.”

But one thing has become apparent to both his allies and his opponents: When it comes to governing, speed does not always guarantee success.

The bungled rollout of his executive order barring immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries, a flurry of other miscues and embarrassments, and an approval rating lower than that of any comparable first-term president in the history of polling have Mr. Trump and his top staff rethinking an improvisational approach to governing that mirrors his chaotic presidential campaign, administration officials and Trump insiders said.

This account of the early days of the Trump White House is based on interviews with dozens of government officials, congressional aides, former staff members and other observers of the new administration, many of whom requested anonymity. At the center of the story, according to these sources, is a president determined to go big but increasingly frustrated by the efforts of his small team to contain the backlash.

“What are we going to do about this?” Mr. Trump pointedly asked an aide last week, a period of turmoil briefly interrupted by the successful rollout of his Supreme Court selection, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch.

Chris Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax Media and an old friend of the president’s, said: “I think, in his mind, the success of this is going to be the poll numbers. If they continue to be weak or go lower, then somebody’s going to have to bear some responsibility for that.”

“I personally think that they’re missing the big picture here,” Mr. Ruddy said of Mr. Trump’s staff. “Now he’s so caught up, the administration is so caught up in turmoil, perceived chaos, that the Democrats smell blood, the protesters, the media smell blood.”

One former staff member likened the aggressive approach of the first two weeks to D-Day, but said the president’s team had stormed the beaches without any plan for a longer war.

Clashes among staff are common in the opening days of every administration, but they have seldom been so public and so pronounced this early. “This is a president who came to Washington vowing to shake up the establishment, and this is what it looks like. It’s going to be a little sloppy, there are going to be conflicts,” said Ari Fleischer, President George W. Bush’s first press secretary.

All this is happening as Mr. Trump, a man of flexible ideology but fixed habits, adjusts to a new job, life and city.

Cloistered in the White House, he now has little access to his fans and supporters — an important source of feedback and validation — and feels increasingly pinched by the pressures of the job and the constant presence of protests, one of the reasons he was forced to scrap a planned trip to Milwaukee last week. For a sense of what is happening outside, he watches cable, both at night and during the day — too much in the eyes of some aides — often offering a bitter play-by-play of critics like CNN’s Don Lemon.

Until the past few days, Mr. Trump was telling his friends and advisers that he believed the opening stages of his presidency were going well. “Did you hear that, this guy thinks it’s been terrible!” Mr. Trump said mockingly to other aides when one dissenting view was voiced last week during a West Wing meeting.

But his opinion has begun to change with a relentless parade of bad headlines.

Mr. Trump got away from the White House this weekend for the first time since his inauguration, spending it in Palm Beach, Fla., at his private club, Mar-a-Lago, posting Twitter messages angrily — and in personal terms — about the federal judge who put a nationwide halt on the travel ban. Mr. Bannon and Reince Priebus, the two clashing power centers, traveled with him.

By then, the president, for whom chains of command and policy minutiae rarely meant much, was demanding that Mr. Priebus begin to put in effect a much more conventional White House protocol that had been taken for granted in previous administrations: From now on, Mr. Trump would be looped in on the drafting of executive orders much earlier in the process.

Another change will be a new set of checks on the previously unfettered power enjoyed by Mr. Bannon and the White House policy director, Stephen Miller, who oversees the implementation of the orders and who received the brunt of the internal and public criticism for the rollout of the travel ban.

Mr. Priebus has told Mr. Trump and Mr. Bannon that the administration needs to rethink its policy and communications operation in the wake of embarrassing revelations that key details of the orders were withheld from agencies, White House staff and Republican congressional leaders like Speaker Paul D. Ryan.

Also, Mr. Priebus has created a 10-point checklist for the release of any new initiatives that includes signoff from the communications department and the White House staff secretary, Robert Porter, according to several aides familiar with the process.

Mr. Priebus bristles at the perception that he occupies a diminished perch in the West Wing pecking order compared with previous chiefs. But for the moment, Mr. Bannon remains the president’s dominant adviser, despite Mr. Trump’s anger that he was not fully briefed on details of the executive order he signed giving his chief strategist a seat on the National Security Council, a greater source of frustration to the president than the fallout from the travel ban.

It is partly because he is seen as having a clear vision on policy. But it is also because others who had been expected to fill major roles have been less confident in asserting their power.

Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, occupies a central role in the administration and has been present at most major decisions and photo ops, but he is a father of young children who has taken to life in Washington, and, along with his wife, Ivanka Trump, has already been spotted at events around town.

Mr. Bannon has rushed into the vacuum, telling allies that he and Mr. Miller have a brief window in which to push through their vision of Mr. Trump’s economic nationalism.

Mr. Bannon, whose website, Breitbart, was a magnet for white nationalists and xenophobic speech, has also tried to reassure official Washington. He has been careful to build bridges with the Republican establishment, especially Mr. Ryan — whom he once described as “the enemy” and vowed to force out. He now talks regularly with Mr. Ryan to coordinate strategy or plot their planned overhaul of the tax code.

Before he was ousted in November as transition chief, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, the Trump adviser with the most government experience, helped prepare a detailed staffing and implementation plan in line with the kickoff strategies of previous Republican presidents. Photo Mr. Bannon, the chief strategist, and Mr. Priebus, the chief of staff, are the two clashing power centers of Mr. Trump’s White House. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times

It was discarded — a senior Trump aide made a show of tossing it into a garbage can — for a strategy that prioritized the daily release of dramatic executive orders to put opponents on the defensive.

Mr. Christie, who agrees in principle with the broad strokes of Mr. Trump’s immigration policy, says the president has been let down by his staff.

“The president deserves better than the rollout he got on the immigration executive order,” Mr. Christie said. “The fact is that he’s put forward a policy that, in my opinion, is significantly more effective than what he had proposed during the campaign, yet because of the botched implementation, they allowed his opponents to attack him by calling it a Muslim ban.”

In the past few days, Mr. Trump’s team has stressed its cohesion and the challenges of jump-starting an administration that few outside its group ever thought would exist.

“This team spent months in the foxhole together during the campaign,” said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary. “We moved into the White House as a unified team committed to enacting the president’s agenda.”

As part of Mr. Trump’s Oval Office renovation, he ordered that four hardback chairs be placed in a semicircle around his Resolute Desk now heaped, in Trump Tower fashion, with memos and newspapers. They are an emblem of Mr. Trump’s in-your-face management style, but also a reminder that in the White House, the seats always outlast the people seated in them.

But finding enough skilled players to fill key slots has not been easy: Mr. Spicer is serving double duty as communications director, a key planning position, in addition to engaging in day-to-day combat with the news media. Mr. Trump, several aides said, is used to quarterbacking his own media strategy, and did not see the value of hiring an outsider.

An early plan was to give the communications job to Kellyanne Conway, his former campaign manager and top TV surrogate, but the demands of the job would have conflicted with Ms. Conway’s other duties as a free-range adviser to Mr. Trump with Oval Office walk-in privileges, according to one aide.

Mr. Trump remains intensely focused on his brand, but the demands of the job mean he spends less time monitoring the news media — although he recently upgraded the flat-screen TV in his private dining room so he can watch the news while eating lunch.

He often has to wait until the end of the workday before grinding through news clips with Mr. Spicer, marking the ones he does not like with a big arrow in black Sharpie — though he almost always makes time to monitor Mr. Spicer’s performance at the daily briefings, summoning him to offer praise or criticism, a West Wing aide said.

Visitors to the Oval Office say Mr. Trump is obsessed with the décor — it is both a totem of a victory that validates him as a serious person and an image-burnishing backdrop — so he has told his staff to schedule as many televised events in the room as possible.

To pass the time between meetings, Mr. Trump gives quick tours to visitors, highlighting little tweaks he has made after initially expecting he would have to pay for them himself.

Flanking his desk are portraits of Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. He will linger on the opulence of the newly hung golden drapes, which he told a recent visitor were once used by Franklin D. Roosevelt but in fact were patterned for Bill Clinton. For a man who sometimes has trouble concentrating on policy memos, Mr. Trump was delighted to page through a book that offered him 17 window covering options.

Ultimately, this is very much the White House that Mr. Trump wanted to build. But while the world reckons with the effect he is having on the presidency, he is adjusting to the effect of the presidency on him. He is now a public employee. And the only boss Mr. Trump ever had in his life was his father, a hard-driving developer the president still treats with deep reverence.

With most of his belongings in New York, the only family picture on the shelf behind Mr. Trump’s desk is a small black-and-white photograph of that boss, Frederick Christ Trump.

edited 5th Feb '17 7:44:34 PM by tclittle

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#172721: Feb 5th 2017 at 8:27:34 PM

Pats won.

Darkest timeline confirmed.

New Survey coming this weekend!
AceofSpades Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
#172722: Feb 5th 2017 at 8:36:50 PM

@Dingo: I very much don't think Ivanka and her husband are good people, but they have proven to be a lot more aware of public sentiment and politically savvy. And in general just a lot smarter than Trump and able to keep their egos in check. So yeah, not totally surprised they did this.

AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#172723: Feb 5th 2017 at 9:16:34 PM

[up][up] As a Bostonian and someone who likes clutch comebacks in their sports games I can't say I'm too upset about it. Fuck Tom Brady as a person though.

LinkToTheFuture A real bad hombre from somewhere completely different Since: Apr, 2015 Relationship Status: What's love got to do with it?
A real bad hombre
#172724: Feb 5th 2017 at 9:21:14 PM

[up]I was about to come here and say the exact same thing

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -Thomas Edison
TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#172725: Feb 5th 2017 at 9:54:23 PM

Tom Brady is a good quarterback, but man personally? Fuck him. He was already a shitty dude, but to be an open Trump supporter, he can pretty much get fucked. Him, his racist coach, and owner.

New Survey coming this weekend!

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