The General US Politics Thread

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@TerminusEst: It's hardly surprising that the social media giants are trying to have it both ways in regards to the Russia investigation; the sort of stunt the Internet Research Agency and others pulled is more or less what they pitch to prospective advertisers, and along with the sale of personal data is the real business model of such companies. While admitting to fault on allowing foreign nationals to use those avenues in order to (illegally) campaign on behalf of candidates in an American presidential election would be a PR nightmare, implying that the central tenant of their business model wasn't effective by claiming Russian interference wasn't effective would be a disaster of an even higher order.

edited 3rd Mar '18 8:43:59 AM by CaptainCapsase

and would also be a flat out lie. We know it was effective, considering that they managed to organize several protests from a chair in Russia.

They're stuck between a rock and a hard place it seems.

edited 3rd Mar '18 8:18:39 AM by megaeliz

Indeed.

Regarding your earlier post about what the inner workings of the Russian botnet and troll farm operation, Putin's dodges about "rogue" patriots might not even be that far from the truth;* those sort of shenanigans on the part of middle-managers in the bureaucracy are a deeply seeded element of the collective decisionmaking style practiced in Russia, where you have one strongman with an exclusive but heavily monitored inner circle at the top with a bunch of poorly supervised middlemen and their cronies trying to one-up each other and curry favor in the hopes of getting into the inner circle.

It's an incredibly dysfunctional and sloppy way of running an organization, but it's very good at two things; curbing the ambitions of potential threats to the central leader's power and providing rapid and decisive responses to crises as the middle-managers see an opportunity to shine and leap into action without bothering to ask for permission. This almost always results in a chaotic and largely improvised dogpile which frequently ends in disaster, but it's all but guaranteed that there is a response in this system rather than the paralysis that can occur in many other collective decision making models when faced with a black swan. From the Russian perspective is an acceptable tradeoff, or at least something so deeply ingrained in their institutions that they believe it's impossible to excise, and simply accept it with archetypal fatalism.

It's why, beyond it feeding into his desired image as an Omniscient Mastermind, I argue it's a serious mistake to focus exclusively or even mostly on Putin and his inner circle when trying to understand Russia's internal and external politics except in places they are directly involved. They aren't nearly as in control as they try to appear, and in fact I'd wager in a western style system they'd be no more odious than the likes of Nixon and Kissinger**, the rotten institutions are what allow for the gross abuses of power we see both historically and presently in Russia more than any particular "Great Man" at the wheel.

*: It's also a deflection from the DNC hacks where it's already established he was personally involved. **: Considering we're talking a prototype for Trump on many levels and one of America's worst mass murderers, that's not particularly praiseworthy, though in many ways Bush (senior) and Cheney were cut from the same mold with less competence and a more functional institution check on abuse.

edited 3rd Mar '18 11:23:38 AM by CaptainCapsase

Breaking: Someone shot himself outside the White House.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/03/politics/white-house-shots-fired/index.html

That's also how Nazi Germany worked, no? "It doesn't matter which agency does this particular job, so long as it's done! We only care about results! Young ambitious brilliant minds, come forth with practical results and you'll be rewarded with power and more work!" [incompetent dogpile ensues]

If only.

edited 3rd Mar '18 9:47:43 AM by TheHandle

Do not worry.

He's been briefed and is currently mocking the press pack for listening to the Secret Service's advice to take cover.

Trump's worrying about other things at the moment it seems.

Note: Junior is quoting LevinTV. Not exactly 'all over the world'. It's not even outside America.

edited 3rd Mar '18 11:02:30 AM by Wyldchyld

In another tragic case, advertisers are fleeing Alex Jones You Tube channel, due to fall out from the crisis actor BS he spread in the wake of the Florida shooting.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/03/technology/youtube-ads-infowars-alex-jones/index.html

Didn't he think Sandy Hook was a falseflag op? And even had an entire Last Week Tonight episode dedicated to his shadiness?

Yes to both. Plus all the other conspiracies you can think of (chemtrails, 9/11 being an inside job, vaccines, food tainting, you name it).

edited 3rd Mar '18 11:19:18 AM by Rationalinsanity

He certainly "thought" it was, but Jones is according to some sources not necessarily crazy* as much as he is an utterly ammoral snake oil salesman.

*: Though I and others suspect it's more "not that crazy."

edited 3rd Mar '18 11:27:29 AM by CaptainCapsase

He claimed that he was a performance artist but given the context it's more than possible that instead of being sane pretending to be crazy he was probably crazy pretending to be sane pretending to be crazy.

edited 3rd Mar '18 11:34:13 AM by Fourthspartan56

Does it really matter whether or not he's legitimately crazy? It doesn't change what he does.

Not in the slightest, he's vile either way.

@Handle: Slightly different there. A significant portion of Nazi Germany's problems came from one guy who issued five contradictory orders a day, never wrote them down, and was oblivious to the concept of "chain of command." And correspondingly, the most effective sectors had or developed independent strong leaders and rigid chains of command and areas of responsibility that kept Hitler as far away from any power as possible. (Operation Barbarossa, for example, had very specific areas of responsibility assigned to each general to prevent "initiative!" dogpiles and arguments over kill-stealing - though that still didn't stop Hitler from directly sending orders to the panzergruppen.)

Putin may be a bit overrated, but he is not an idiot. Giving broad discretionary authority to the middle-management apparatchiks is nothing like the chaos Hitler fostered for the sake of glorious character-building Social Darwinism.

So, at least the answer of the EU seems to have reached Trump, as he seems to double down on his tariffs by proclaiming to escalate further, if there is retaliation against his steel and aluminium ones:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/969994273121820672

"If the E.U. wants to further increase their already massive tariffs and barriers on U.S. companies doing business there, we will simply apply a Tax on their Cars which freely pour into the U.S. They make it impossible for our cars (and more) to sell there. Big trade imbalance!"

/Edit:

edited 3rd Mar '18 11:54:10 AM by SlavetoTropes

I've ninja'd you.

I think that if he follows up with continuing and escalating his trade war for all intents and purposes he might be guaranteeing a Democratic Wave. This is the kind of action that will cause harm that people will feel and thus doing it at-all but especially before a midterm is rather insane.

The world is basically going Bring It on Trump right now. Sow the wind...

It could shore him up in a select few areas (steel producers, steel users are fucked though and more people are employed in the latter area). And is it just me, or are the Democrats being awfully quiet on this tariff issue, compared to the GOP?

edited 3rd Mar '18 11:52:51 AM by Rationalinsanity

The DOW dropped 500 points in two hours when he announced them, have they taken another dip after this statement?

Well, going up against the whole world at once is a dumb idea under any circumstance. It's even dumber if you do it in a win-win-scenario (like most international trade).

On the other hand, "the world" is made up of many small actors, who will react individually to this challenge and probably won't coordinate their answers (in the short term at least). So the number of actors who can give an answer that will hurt is not that big.

I guess the main ones would be the EU and China (The trading blocks that play in the same weight-class as the US) as well as Canada and Mexico (having borders with the US and disproportional amounts of trade with them.

So there responses have a certain weight.

/edit: The markets are not open at the moment, so we will not see an immedite reaction. You could look at futures, but that is not to precise a measurement.

Also, for completion of the Argument, here are the Comments of the president of the European Comission that most likely provoked Trumps tweets:

"So now we will also impose import tariffs. This is basically a stupid process, the fact that we have to do this. But we have to do it. We will now impose tariffs on motorcycles, Harley Davidson, on blue jeans, Levis, on Bourbon. We can also do stupid. We also have to be this stupid," he said in Hamburg on Friday evening.

(Source: http://www.euronews.com/2018/03/03/juncker-responds-to-trump-s-trade-tariffs-we-can-also-do-stupid- )

edited 3rd Mar '18 12:03:15 PM by SlavetoTropes

I already posted it over in the discussion about Europe (after having a good laugh about the notion of putting tariffs on cars), but it bears repeating here:

So, how long until someone explains to him that the so called "German cars" which are sold in the US are actually build IN the US at construction sites which have created numerous manufacturing jobs in the community they are situated, including some really great and successful German style programs for vocational training? How often will they have to explain it to him that what the EU exports to the US aren't cars but car parts, and that putting tariffs on them will only lead to those US build cars becoming more expensive and hence non-competitive, especially on the Asian market, to which a lot of them are exported? My bet is around 18 times......