The 45th POTUS - Donald J. Trump

[wease]

He's reaching a new low of whining and narcissism.

wasn't someone going to prosecute her when he/she got elected?

You can bet your ass Sessions is getting that ready, now.

[McParadigm]

What the fuck is this Rosenstein statement?

[Strat]

What the fuck is this Rosenstein statement?

You tell us!

Fake news!

[Bi_3]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/rage-is-al ... 1497571401

Rage Is All the Rage, and It’s Dangerous
A generation of media figures are cratering under the historical pressure of Donald Trump.
By Peggy Noonan
June 15, 2017 8:03 p.m. ET


What we are living through in America is not only a division but a great estrangement. It is between those who support Donald Trump and those who despise him, between left and right, between the two parties, and even to some degree between the bases of those parties and their leaders in Washington. It is between the religious and those who laugh at Your Make Believe Friend, between cultural progressives and those who wish not to have progressive ways imposed upon them. It is between the coasts and the center, between those in flyover country and those who decide what flyover will watch on television next season. It is between “I accept the court’s decision” and “Bake my cake.” We look down on each other, fear each other, increasingly hate each other.

Oh, to have a unifying figure, program or party.

But we don’t, nor is there any immediate prospect. So, as Ben Franklin said, we’ll have to hang together or we’ll surely hang separately. To hang together—to continue as a country—at the very least we have to lower the political temperature. It’s on all of us more than ever to assume good faith, put our views forward with respect, even charity, and refuse to incite.

We’ve been failing. Here is a reason the failure is so dangerous.

In the early 1990s Roger Ailes had a talk show on the America’s Talking network and invited me to talk about a concern I’d been writing about, which was old-fashioned even then: violence on TV and in the movies. Grim and graphic images, repeated depictions of murder and beatings, are bad for our kids and our culture, I argued. Depictions of violence unknowingly encourage it.

But look, Roger said, there’s comedy all over TV and I don’t see people running through the streets breaking into laughter. True, I said, but the problem is that, for a confluence of reasons, our country is increasingly populated by the not fully stable. They aren’t excited by wit, they’re excited by violence—especially unstable young men. They don’t have the built-in barriers and prohibitions that those more firmly planted in the world do. That’s what makes violent images dangerous and destructive. Art is art and censorship is an admission of defeat. Good judgment and a sense of responsibility are the answer.

That’s what we’re doing now, exciting the unstable—not only with images but with words, and on every platform. It’s all too hot and revved up. This week we had a tragedy. If we don’t cool things down, we’ll have more.

And was anyone surprised? Tuesday I talked with an old friend, a figure in journalism who’s a pretty cool character, about the political anger all around us. He spoke of “horrible polarization.” He said there’s “too much hate in D.C.” He mentioned “the beheading, the play in the park” and described them as “dog whistles to any nut who wants to take action.”

“Someone is going to get killed,” he said.

That was 20 hours before the shootings in Alexandria, Va.

The gunman did the crime, he is responsible, it’s fatuous to put the blame on anyone or anything else.

But we all operate within a climate and a culture. The media climate now, in both news and entertainment, is too often of a goading, insinuating resentment, a grinding, agitating antipathy. You don’t need another recitation of the events of just the past month or so. A comic posed with a gruesome bloody facsimile of President Trump’s head. New York’s rightly revered Shakespeare in the Park put on a “Julius Caesar” in which the assassinated leader is made to look like the president. A CNN host—amazingly, of a show on religion—sent out a tweet calling the president a “piece of s—” who is “a stain on the presidency.” An MSNBC anchor wondered, on the air, whether the president wishes to “provoke” a terrorist attack for political gain. Earlier Stephen Colbert, well known as a good man, a gentleman, said of the president, in a rant: “The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c— holster.” Those are but five dots in a larger, darker pointillist painting. You can think of more.

Too many in the mainstream media—not all, but too many—don’t even bother to fake fairness and lack of bias anymore, which is bad: Even faked balance is better than none.

Yes, they have reasons. They find Mr. Trump to be a unique danger to the republic, an incipient fascist; they believe it is their patriotic duty to show opposition. They don’t like his policies. A friend suggested recently that they hate him also because he’s in their business, show business. Who is he to be president? He’s not more talented. And yet as soon as his presidency is over he’ll get another reality show.

And there’s something else. Here I want to note the words spoken by Kathy Griffin, the holder of the severed head. In a tearful news conference she said of the president, “He broke me.” She was roundly mocked for this. Oh, the big bad president’s supporters were mean to you after you held up his bloody effigy. But she was exactly right. He did break her. He robbed her of her sense of restraint and limits, of her judgment. He broke her, but not in the way she thinks, and he is breaking more than her.

We have been seeing a generation of media figures cratering under the historical pressure of Donald Trump. He really is powerful.

They’re losing their heads. Now would be a good time to regain them.

They have been making the whole political scene lower, grubbier. They are showing the young what otherwise estimable adults do under pressure, which is lose their equilibrium, their knowledge of themselves as public figures, as therefore examples—tone setters. They’re paid a lot of money and have famous faces and get the best seat, and the big thing they’re supposed to do in return is not be a slob. Not make it worse.

By indulging their and their audience’s rage, they spread the rage. They celebrate themselves as brave for this. They stood up to the man, they spoke truth to power. But what courage, really, does that take? Their audiences love it. Their base loves it, their demo loves it, their bosses love it. Their numbers go up. They get a better contract. This isn’t brave.

If these were only one-offs, they’d hardly be worth comment, but these things build on each other. Rage and sanctimony always spread like a virus, and become stronger with each iteration.

And it’s no good, no excuse, to say Trump did it first, he lowered the tone, it’s his fault. Your response to his low character is to lower your own character? He talks bad so you do? You let him destabilize you like this? You are making a testimony to his power.

So many of our media figures need at this point to be reminded: You belong to something. It’s called: us.

Do your part, take it down a some notches, cool it. We have responsibilities to each other.

[malice]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/rage-is-all-the-rage-and-its-dangerous-1497571401

Rage Is All the Rage, and It’s Dangerous
A generation of media figures are cratering under the historical pressure of Donald Trump.
By Peggy Noonan
June 15, 2017 8:03 p.m. ET


What we are living through in America is not only a division but a great estrangement. It is between those who support Donald Trump and those who despise him, between left and right, between the two parties, and even to some degree between the bases of those parties and their leaders in Washington. It is between the religious and those who laugh at Your Make Believe Friend, between cultural progressives and those who wish not to have progressive ways imposed upon them. It is between the coasts and the center, between those in flyover country and those who decide what flyover will watch on television next season. It is between “I accept the court’s decision” and “Bake my cake.” We look down on each other, fear each other, increasingly hate each other.

Oh, to have a unifying figure, program or party.

But we don’t, nor is there any immediate prospect. So, as Ben Franklin said, we’ll have to hang together or we’ll surely hang separately. To hang together—to continue as a country—at the very least we have to lower the political temperature. It’s on all of us more than ever to assume good faith, put our views forward with respect, even charity, and refuse to incite.

We’ve been failing. Here is a reason the failure is so dangerous.

In the early 1990s Roger Ailes had a talk show on the America’s Talking network and invited me to talk about a concern I’d been writing about, which was old-fashioned even then: violence on TV and in the movies. Grim and graphic images, repeated depictions of murder and beatings, are bad for our kids and our culture, I argued. Depictions of violence unknowingly encourage it.

But look, Roger said, there’s comedy all over TV and I don’t see people running through the streets breaking into laughter. True, I said, but the problem is that, for a confluence of reasons, our country is increasingly populated by the not fully stable. They aren’t excited by wit, they’re excited by violence—especially unstable young men. They don’t have the built-in barriers and prohibitions that those more firmly planted in the world do. That’s what makes violent images dangerous and destructive. Art is art and censorship is an admission of defeat. Good judgment and a sense of responsibility are the answer.

That’s what we’re doing now, exciting the unstable—not only with images but with words, and on every platform. It’s all too hot and revved up. This week we had a tragedy. If we don’t cool things down, we’ll have more.

And was anyone surprised? Tuesday I talked with an old friend, a figure in journalism who’s a pretty cool character, about the political anger all around us. He spoke of “horrible polarization.” He said there’s “too much hate in D.C.” He mentioned “the beheading, the play in the park” and described them as “dog whistles to any nut who wants to take action.”

“Someone is going to get killed,” he said.

That was 20 hours before the shootings in Alexandria, Va.

The gunman did the crime, he is responsible, it’s fatuous to put the blame on anyone or anything else.

But we all operate within a climate and a culture. The media climate now, in both news and entertainment, is too often of a goading, insinuating resentment, a grinding, agitating antipathy. You don’t need another recitation of the events of just the past month or so. A comic posed with a gruesome bloody facsimile of President Trump’s head. New York’s rightly revered Shakespeare in the Park put on a “Julius Caesar” in which the assassinated leader is made to look like the president. A CNN host—amazingly, of a show on religion—sent out a tweet calling the president a “piece of s—” who is “a stain on the presidency.” An MSNBC anchor wondered, on the air, whether the president wishes to “provoke” a terrorist attack for political gain. Earlier Stephen Colbert, well known as a good man, a gentleman, said of the president, in a rant: “The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c— holster.” Those are but five dots in a larger, darker pointillist painting. You can think of more.

Too many in the mainstream media—not all, but too many—don’t even bother to fake fairness and lack of bias anymore, which is bad: Even faked balance is better than none.

Yes, they have reasons. They find Mr. Trump to be a unique danger to the republic, an incipient fascist; they believe it is their patriotic duty to show opposition. They don’t like his policies. A friend suggested recently that they hate him also because he’s in their business, show business. Who is he to be president? He’s not more talented. And yet as soon as his presidency is over he’ll get another reality show.

And there’s something else. Here I want to note the words spoken by Kathy Griffin, the holder of the severed head. In a tearful news conference she said of the president, “He broke me.” She was roundly mocked for this. Oh, the big bad president’s supporters were mean to you after you held up his bloody effigy. But she was exactly right. He did break her. He robbed her of her sense of restraint and limits, of her judgment. He broke her, but not in the way she thinks, and he is breaking more than her.

We have been seeing a generation of media figures cratering under the historical pressure of Donald Trump. He really is powerful.

They’re losing their heads. Now would be a good time to regain them.

They have been making the whole political scene lower, grubbier. They are showing the young what otherwise estimable adults do under pressure, which is lose their equilibrium, their knowledge of themselves as public figures, as therefore examples—tone setters. They’re paid a lot of money and have famous faces and get the best seat, and the big thing they’re supposed to do in return is not be a slob. Not make it worse.

By indulging their and their audience’s rage, they spread the rage. They celebrate themselves as brave for this. They stood up to the man, they spoke truth to power. But what courage, really, does that take? Their audiences love it. Their base loves it, their demo loves it, their bosses love it. Their numbers go up. They get a better contract. This isn’t brave.

If these were only one-offs, they’d hardly be worth comment, but these things build on each other. Rage and sanctimony always spread like a virus, and become stronger with each iteration.

And it’s no good, no excuse, to say Trump did it first, he lowered the tone, it’s his fault. Your response to his low character is to lower your own character? He talks bad so you do? You let him destabilize you like this? You are making a testimony to his power.

So many of our media figures need at this point to be reminded: You belong to something. It’s called: us.

Do your part, take it down a some notches, cool it. We have responsibilities to each other.

thanks Obama!

[Superblood Wolfmoon]

Eh, the media tends to overblow everything. There's always going to be a nutjob or two who take abhorrent action out of a sense of desperation or just good ol' fashioned mental illness. But it's not like these things are rampant in everyday society.

I own a sandwich shop where I live and I see cars with Bernie 2016 stickers parked next to cars with Make America Great Again stickers pretty much every day, yet everyone seems able to enjoy their lunches in peace.

[McParadigm]

There's actually quite a lot I find problematic about that article.

[McParadigm]

Good luck with that spin Donnie.

[digster]

There's actually quite a lot I find problematic about that article.

I was worried we were going to have to forge through this hour of darkness without the mandated Peggy Noonan lecture.

[McParadigm]

This is how you know things are about to change drastically:

Republicans satisfied with the direction the US is headed in:

May: 58%
June: 41%

Also:

Overall, 64 percent disapprove and just 35 percent approve of his job performance.

Trump was unpopular among Americans overall even as he was elected president, but the poll shows that even many Republicans have doubts. Nearly a third of Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican party think Trump has little to no respect for the country’s democratic institutions, and a quarter disapprove of the job he’s doing as president.

Nine in 10 Democrats and 6 in 10 independents say the same.

Finally:

GOP sirens blare over Georgia special election

The GOP is bracing for the prospect of a loss in Tuesday’s Georgia’s special election that could have far-reaching implications for President Donald Trump and his party’s fortunes in 2018.

As grim confidential polling data circulates among GOP strategists, interviews with nearly two dozen Republican operatives and officials reveal that they are preparing for the possibility of an unnerving defeat that could spur lawmakers to distance themselves from Trump and his already-troubled legislative agenda, and potentially encourage a wave of retirements.

“If Ossoff wins, you’re going to see the floodgates open, with Democrats recruiting candidates in races from governor to county commission,” said Randy Evans, an influential Republican National Committeeman from Georgia.

[Green Habit]

Someone needs to make fun of Trump using the Monty Python witch scene.

[McParadigm]

Holy diver these people are lost.

Jeff Stein
How do you think the bill will fix that problem?

Chuck Grassley
Well, by bringing certainty to the insurance market. They don't have that certainty now.

Jeff Stein
By bringing certainty to the insurance market. What certainty?

Chuck Grassley
What?

Jeff Stein
What do you mean by certainty?

Chuck Grassley
Well, they can't even file. They have to check the rates real high if they don't know what the government policy is. And so the certainty is that passing a bill gives the health insurance companies certainty.

Jeff Stein
Wouldn't not passing a bill also do that?

Chuck Grassley
No, it. Well, yeah

Tara Golshan, Vox
Generally, what are the big problems this bill is trying to solve?

John McCain
Almost all of them. They’re trying to get to 51 votes.

Jeff Stein
But I’m curious why you believe this bill will fix that problem? What’s the mechanism for fixing it?

John Boozman
It’s working together and coming up with a bill that does do that.

Jeff Stein
Why is cutting Medicaid necessary?

John Boozman
I’m not going to argue with you. Who do you represent?

Jeff Stein
Vox-dot-com. It’s a website. I’m just trying to understand how the bill works. That’s it.

John Boozman
Well, we don’t have a bill. That’s what we’re working on. The reason we’re working really hard to come up with a bill is to solve some of the problems of Obamacare.

[Simple Torture]

Good luck with that spin Donnie.

Mueller? Rosenstein? This is one of his most bizarre tweets.

[Fuzzy_Dunlop]

Good luck with that spin Donnie.

Mueller? Rosenstein? This is one of his most bizarre tweets.

I think this means he is investigating himself no? "I said to myself, you know this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story..."

[Strat]

Good luck with that spin Donnie.

Mueller? Rosenstein? This is one of his most bizarre tweets.

I think this means he is investigating himself no? "I said to myself, you know this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story..."

Is he talking about Sessions/DOJ because....? I dont know.

Good lord.

[McParadigm]

Clearly meant to refer to Rosenstein.

[Bi_3]

There's actually quite a lot I find problematic about that article.

I was worried we were going to have to forge through this hour of darkness without the mandated Peggy Noonan lecture.

Thing is, she's not really wrong. The constant bombardment of sometimes violent anti-Trump messages is having an a profoundly negative effect on discourse in general and isn't likely to suddenly become polite. People talking about each other instead of to each other, as one commentator put it. That is not say criticism is wrong, all ideas are open to critique, but it's drifted into something else. Something darker. And many don't see it because they tend to agree with the backing sentiment behind it: that Trump must go.

[McParadigm]

There's actually quite a lot I find problematic about that article.

I was worried we were going to have to forge through this hour of darkness without the mandated Peggy Noonan lecture.

Thing is, she's not really wrong. The constant bombardment of sometimes violent anti-Trump messages is having an a profoundly negative effect on discourse in general and isn't likely to suddenly become polite. People talking about each other instead of to each other, as one commentator put it. That is not say criticism is wrong, all ideas are open to critique, but it's drifted into something else. Something darker. And many don't see it because they tend to agree with the backing sentiment behind it: that Trump must go.

Her premise might not be wrong, but nearly every statement she offers up as evidence is. So it becomes a futile gesture to even discuss, because all we're left with is feeling. You feel her argument is correct, I feel it is not. We're trapped in a subjective landscape because we've been offered no meat on the bone.

An argument built on statistically demonstrative evidence that rhetorical change is occurring, and that it has a specific (left?) direction and a measurably violent or aggressive tone, would help a lot more than "my friend told me people hate him because he is a star."

[McParadigm]

I also think it's brutally telling that she is reduced to only describing this supposed phenomenon in abstract terms, without a single concrete example. Just like she claims our society is more populated by unstable people, but can't offer any reason why or evidence that that's true.

She probably actually referring to the savage reductions to our mental health supports that happened under Reagan, and which produced massive increases in the number of untreated incapacitated people living homeless, right before the 1990's...but it doesn't serve her point to say so, so we're left with a "doesn't it feel like" moment that is then treated as an assumed known.

[BurtReynolds]

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN197156

Germany threatens retaliation if U.S. sanctions against Russia harm its firms

I have no idea what's going on in the world any more, but it sounds like we're building to something.