Strange change of track on gun control from him yesterday, although likely all bluff as he knows no bi-partisan agreement will ever be reached so he can claim he tried whilst not actually achieving anything or properly alienating the NRA

It does make me a bit queazy saying this and yes he might have an agenda but quite impressed with his most recent stance on gun control. By standards anywhere else its still batshit mental but for an American it’s almost reformist stuff.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43235969

Strange change of track on gun control

Pretty standard, he just says what pops into his head at any given moment, there’s no though or strategy behind it.

He is just saying what people want to hear, give it a month when the heat has gone out of the argument and he will deny his current stance.

I just hope the American youth don’t let the heat go out of the argument. Their response this time I think, has been different to the past tragedies, and effective, it is just if they can keep it up. Modern society is very effective in quelling dissent just by people having to live a certain way to keep up, the rat race is very effective system of control.

He’s a chameleon who changes his mind to match what people want to hear. Before he ran for Pres. he was advocating banning assault rifles, so this latest statement is still a watering down of that.

I think he’s trying to play the good guy, despite knowing he, and other Reps, won’t actually do much to force it through. At least it looks as if he’s tried.

What amazes me now is that politics is so locked up that business leaders are having to take the moral lead,  I could never have imagined that.  Weird times

It is business leaders funnelling funds into politics that is **** it up, paying politicians to act against the benefit of broader society for the benefit of the greedy. Just because a few are speaking out and/or doing the right thing doesn’t mean that business in general has discovered a new morality. Just follow the money.

Business in general, no, but we’ll well done to those who are.

Just follow the money.

The NRA reportedly spent over $5 million on lobbying in 2017.

Just because a few are speaking out and/or doing the right thing doesn’t mean that business in general has discovered a new morality. Just follow the money

Except the leaders who come out of the tech side and new businesses that didn’t exist are not from the old mould. Gates and Jobbs were early on there, now Google, Amazon etc wield more power and influence but don’t come from the same production line of corporate men.

Except the leaders who come out of the tech side and new businesses that didn’t exist are not from the old mould. Gates and Jobbs were early on there, now Google, Amazon etc wield more power and influence but don’t come from the same production line of corporate men.

really, if that was the case they would only too gladly pay their fair share of tax and not maximize profits for the benefit of shareholders.

Comment from the Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/never-have-we-seen-such-chaos-and-corruption/2018/03/01/f64c5c2e-1d8f-11e8-9de1-147dd2df3829_story.html?utm_term=.06942359c195

Deary me…

nice summary

I spent years as a foreign correspondent in Latin America. To say we are being governed like a banana republic is an insult to banana republics. It’s that bad, and no one should pretend otherwise.

It isn’t the fact that America is being run like a banana republic that really bothers me, it is the fact that not one single European leader is willing to stand up and call it like it is. Bunch of worthless suck ups.

<p class=”tweet-body” dir=”ltr” lang=”en”>@JunckerEU to reporters in Hamburg on #Trump #steeltariffs: “We will not sit idly when European industry and jobs are threatened. #EUpreparing import duties for US products including Harley-Davidson, Bourbon and Levi’s jeans.” pic.twitter.com/iFiZJEgBTi</p>
March 2, 2018

Think macron and Merkel stood up to him more than May- even she rebuked him over the whatever the UK racist tweets and his false flag Muslim BS

Reality is most leaders tolerate the leaders of countries they dont like and ignore personalities for the greater good of the country. Heck if i was PM even i would try to be nice to him [ or insult him less]…i suspect I would fail.

Saw a lovely stat today… Total number of people employed in the US steel industry, 140000. Total number of people employed in steel-using industries- 6.5 million. Trade wars are good, and easy to win!

Hands up everyone else who thinks steel products will get more expensive, executives and shareholders in US steel will trouser a quick bonus as they smash their prices up overnight by 25%, everyone else pays the price.

One of his ex advisers sold  his holdings in steel using companies in a few days BEFORE the tariff announcement.

As tjagain says:

Trump pal Carl Icahn dumped $30 million of stock in a steel-dependent company right before tariff announcement

Now there seems to be Russian connections to the NRA and to Trump…

http://uk.businessinsider.com/nra-russia-ties-scrutiny-alexander-torshin-butina-trump-2018-3?r=US&IR=T

Tramp has tweeted that Xi Jinpings’ grab for lifelong power is something he thinks might be good for the USA…

Just a thought: we tend to assume that a mature democracy is the end point of political evolution, a la Francis Fukuyama and his “End of History” thesis.

Taking the long view however, gives a different, more fluid perspective.  Russia and China, both of them political dictatorships are burgeoning, whilst Western democracies seem to be on the decline and Nationalism seems on the rise everywhere.

The Roman Empire started off as a Republican democracy of the aristocratic class representing the needs of it’s people, but collapsed relatively quickly into  Dictatorship under the Cæsers. I see no reason why the cycle cannot repeat itself today.

Russia is ‘burgeoning’?

Rome was a democracy? Who new?

Tramp has tweeted…

It was part of a speech and he was joking…

Russia is ‘burgeoning’?

Rome was a democracy? Who new?

1: Militarily. You hadn’t noticed?

2: Read my previous qualification and try to remember it.

It was part of a speech and he was joking…

He was? It’s so difficult to tell, sometimes.

You have to admit, some of his lines in that speech were quite funny, although some of them have you wondering if he’s joking or not.

“My staff was concerned that I couldn’t do self-deprecating humor, and I told them not to worry, nobody does self deprecating humor better than me,”

“Before I get started, I wanted to apologize for arriving a little bit late. You know, we’re late tonight because Jared could not get through the security,”

GrahamS

Just follow the money.

The NRA reportedly spent over $5 million on lobbying in 2017.

I’ve heard it said before (and a quick google seems to confirm it) that $5 million doesn’t represent a lot in terms of money spent in the states on political lobbying. For context “Big Pharma” spends $240 million lobbying politicians each year, according to google. It’s likely that the NRA’s $5 million doesn’t really buy much, and that the reality is that gun ownership is just a core issue for a certain cross section of voters that it’s toxic to meddle with on some level.

“My staff was concerned that I couldn’t do self-deprecating humor, and I told them not to worry, nobody does self deprecating humor better than me,”

If only Americans could understand the concept of irony.

I’ve heard it said before (and a quick google seems to confirm it) that $5 million doesn’t represent a lot in terms of money spent in the states on political lobbying. For context “Big Pharma” spends $240 million lobbying politicians each year, according to google. It’s likely that the NRA’s $5 million doesn’t really buy much, and that the reality is that gun ownership is just a core issue for a certain cross section of voters that it’s toxic to meddle with on some level.

Nope! The NRA are definitely a big part of maintaining the status quo, although the archaic and misguided views of many gun-toting Americans don’t help.

The NRA donated $21m to Trump’s campaign and $7m to McCain before that. Not to mention the fact that many Republican Senators have received donations from the NRA in the millions over the years.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/23/politics/nra-political-money-clout/index.html

Why is everyone so afraid of the NRA? Planet America explains

Why is everyone so afraid of the NRA? ABC Planet America explains where the group gets its money from, how it spends it, and how it first began

Posted by ABC News on Friday, March 2, 2018

Some of the figures are a little different to those I’ve read previously, but you get the gist.

Junkyard wrote:

Heck if i was PM even i would try to be nice to him [ or insult him less]…i suspect I would fail.

Nah – I bet you’d have fun insulting him in ways which made him think you were being nice.

well it worked on you – wink goes here no idea how to do them.

Watched ‘The Final Year’ – fly on the wall documentary about Obama’s administration on it’s way out.

It’s clear why (under their peculiar system) there were enough Americans pissed off enough to vote in the Orange Nightmare.

Obama and his team come across as a bunch of well-meaning naifs, all good intentions but without any nouse about how the world shakes, clearly played for suckers by the likes of Putin and Xi through the ridiculous John Kelly.

The whole thing is about what they obviously saw as their overriding motivations – their foreign policy evangelism on the one hand and shock at why nobody “was talking about it but were talking about Trump’s tweets” on the other…

They forgot Clinton’s dictum – “it’s the economy, stupid”.

• Michael Flynn

• Katie Walsh
• K.T. McFarland
• Michael Dubke
• Sean Spicer

• Michael Short

• Tera Dahl
• Mark Corallo

• Reince Priebus
• Anthony Scaramucci
• Derek Harvey

• George Sifakis

• Ezra Cohen-Watnick
• Carl Icahn
• Steve Bannon
• Sebastian Gorka

• Rich Higgins

• William Bradford

• Keith Schiller
• Tom Price
• Jamie Johnson
• John Feeley
• Rick Dearborn
• Jeremy Katz
• Carl Higbie
• Dina Powell
• Omarosa Manigault Newman
• Taylor Weyeneth
• Rob Porter

• David Sorensen

• Brenda Fitzgerald
• Rachel Brand
• Hope Hicks

• Josh Raffel

• Gary Cohn

Gotta be pretty bad in there with that sort of turnover.

Anyway I still don’t think he’s implemented the Russian sanctions the house agreed and the new other Steele memo doesn’t bode well if its the real deal.

Its amazing how so far hes got away with it TBH.

if the Bawbag is a russian agent, in Smiley parlance, who’s his russian contact/runner ? has Putin  had him start a three way  china-US-EU trade war under the US first cover ?

Russian agent is a bit too much there, in place because of the chaos he is creating which is helping Russia is way more plausible.

Nah he’s the textbook definition of a useful idiot for Putin.

Hope Hicks admitted to senate hearing that she told white lies for trump, also claimed 2 of her email accounts hacked, presumably absolving herself of anything dodgy she definitely didn’t send/receive 😉

The Stormy Daniels thing keeps getting better.

Are we going to have a Clinton (bill) moment here where we have to define what constitutes putting it in a porn star

I always had Kushner down as the most likely foreign agent.