Donald Trump Presidency discussion thread II

Rex looks to have the first foot out the door already. Basically he seems to be trying to engage with the North Koreans, whereas the Trump administration absolutely does not want that at all. As pointed out with the Lindsey Graham reference a few posts up, it's pretty blatant war is going to be the last desperate act of Trump in terms of approval ratings and trying to halt the Russia investigation, with North Korea seeming like the favourite one to go for.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/365048-official-tillerson-not-really-speaking-for-white-house-anymore

A White House official sharply rebuked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Thursday, telling The Washington Post that President Trump's Cabinet member no longer speaks for the administration.

“I think our allies know at this point he’s not really speaking for the administration,” the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the newspaper. The same person described Tillerson as "irrelevant" due to the influence of other diplomats and Cabinet officials.

Tillerson's continued willingness to engage North Korean officials in conversation put him at odds with the White House again this week, which emphasized that Trump's position on the issue had not changed.

One official told the Post that Tillerson “had not learned his lesson from the last time" when Trump rebuked him on Twitter about trying to talk to North Korea.

ThisRegard

Billy86 wrote: »

How absurdly stupid can one single family be?

https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/941467519222771713
Trump Jr Twitter: I would pay good money to see all those people complaining about Obama’s FCC chairman voting to repeal #NetNeutality actually explain it in detail. I’d also bet most hadn’t heard of it before this week. #outrage

Ajit Pai - Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission - Incumbent
Assumed office - January 23, 2017 - President Donald Trump

Jesus Christ, there's been massive campaigns all over the US for months on this. If there's one thing the American public, of a certain age group anyway, are well aware of and that's Net Neutrality.

Manic Moran wrote: »

I am older than most on here, as my white hair will indicate, and I remember a time before net neutrality. Back in, oh, 2015 it was. Now, I seem to recall that the Internet generally seemed to work well enough for most of my net-using life.

Back in your day gramps the internet was only used to send ASCII characters.

In all seriousness though, you can't use the internet of a decade/half ago as an example of how well it worked without neutrality rules to how it is today.

Blowfish

ThisRegard wrote: »

Jesus Christ, there's been massive campaigns all over the US for months on this. If there's one thing the American public, of a certain age group anyway, are well aware of and that's Net Neutrality.

Nevermind months, it's being going on for years. It's pretty clear Jr is pretty clueless given that Internet Slowdown Day was over 3 years ago at this point.

Manic Moran wrote: »

I am older than most on here, as my white hair will indicate, and I remember a time before net neutrality. Back in, oh, 2015 it was. Now, I seem to recall that the Internet generally seemed to work well enough for most of my net-using life.

Our local radio station here in San Francisco is a little biased, but usually tries well enough. What was amusing though, was when they had one of their invited expert professors on, and he was of the opinion that not much was going to change. They seemed to keep pushing for him to predict doom, but he observed that all that as happening was a rollback of the regulations to what they were two years ago, and that things seemed to do OK under the extant anti-trust regulations, which remain in place today.

Well he's wrong. In 2014, the FCC were about to allow a rule where ISP's could allow content providers access to faster connection speeds if they paid more. It was pressure by both companies and ordinary users that eventually prompted Obama to step in and tell them to go for net neutrality instead.

C14N

Manic Moran wrote: »

I am older than most on here, as my white hair will indicate, and I remember a time before net neutrality. Back in, oh, 2015 it was. Now, I seem to recall that the Internet generally seemed to work well enough for most of my net-using life.

Our local radio station here in San Francisco is a little biased, but usually tries well enough. What was amusing though, was when they had one of their invited expert professors on, and he was of the opinion that not much was going to change. They seemed to keep pushing for him to predict doom, but he observed that all that as happening was a rollback of the regulations to what they were two years ago, and that things seemed to do OK under the extant anti-trust regulations, which remain in place today.

Did this "expert professor" by any chance explain why the ISPs have spent so much time and money lobbying for the repeal of Net Neutrality if their goal is not change anything? Because that one is pretty baffling to me, personally.

Because the way I understand it, without Net Neutrality, a major ISP like Comcast could now decide that any online service that wants full speed on their broadband network would need to pay them for the privilege. Obviously websites like Google or Facebook circa 2018 could afford to pay this kind of a fee (although they'd rather not), but whatever the next startup is may not be able to do so, and it tips power strongly in favour of sites like these that are already established.

It also gives them a lot of power to control the behaviour on the consumer end. By using different pricing schemes, data caps and bandwidths, they can push consumers into using certain services, regardless of the service's inherent quality. If Verizon want to partner with Microsoft, they can give Bing a fast lane and allow unlimited data for the website, while capping how much users can use Google for free. In this scenario, if Verizon is the only provider in your area, you're going to find yourself using Bing a lot more, whether you wanted to or not.

This is an incredible amount of power for them to have, and it's hard to see why they would be disincentivised to use it, especially given how badly they wanted it.

BabyCheeses

Manic Moran wrote: »

I am older than most on here, as my white hair will indicate, and I remember a time before net neutrality. Back in, oh, 2015 it was. Now, I seem to recall that the Internet generally seemed to work well enough for most of my net-using life.

Our local radio station here in San Francisco is a little biased, but usually tries well enough. What was amusing though, was when they had one of their invited expert professors on, and he was of the opinion that not much was going to change. They seemed to keep pushing for him to predict doom, but he observed that all that as happening was a rollback of the regulations to what they were two years ago, and that things seemed to do OK under the extant anti-trust regulations, which remain in place today.

You're memory must not be what it used to be. I'm sure you'll turn down any medical treatments, your body was fine for the past decades, why would I need something now?

You hardly think that in 2015 some random people just randomly decided to declare net neutrality a thing for no apparent reason?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_States

listermint

Await Manics reasoning rather than more of the same strange propagana 'bigger' 'better' 'regulation stifles innovation'

BabyCheeses

listermint wrote: »

Await Manics reasoning rather than more of the same strange propagana 'bigger' 'better' 'regulation stifles innovation'

The problem with regurgitating the same talking points over and over is that eventually everyone else sees multiple arguments against them and fact checking.

It really doesn't help when the arguments are what you would expect to hear from a MLM.

C14N wrote: »

Did this "expert professor" by any chance explain why the ISPs have spent so much time and money lobbying for the repeal of Net Neutrality if their goal is not change anything? Because that one is pretty baffling to me, personally.

It might be worthwhile to check who the 'expert' was too, just to be sure he wasn't actually Verizon/Comcast/etc lawyer, or one of the countless fakes that mysteriously popped up on the FCC debate, or you know... literally already dead.

Such strange lengths to go to for something that's not going to lead to any changes, eh?

Zascar

Billy86 wrote: »

So if nothing is going to change, why exactly are the providers and Ajit Pai so determined to get rid of net neutrality despite how clearly unpopular it would be to do so?

robinph

...but we might prioritise things that pay us money more than some other things that won't get the same priority... but we are not discriminating, throttling or blocking those other things, they just are not paying the right amount of money for the priority access.

Manic Moran

False logic, isn’t it? If one side wants it it must be bad? Are you telling me you have never encountered regulations which cause more hassle than benefit, no matter how well intentioned they may be?

Again, was any of this doom and gloom in position three years ago without these regulations? I certainly don’t recall being locked behind any paywalls other than newspapers, and I don’t think the ISPs had anything to do with that.

Manic Moran

Blowfish

Manic Moran wrote: »

Again, was any of this doom and gloom in position three years ago without these regulations? I certainly don’t recall being locked behind any paywalls other than newspapers, and I don’t think the ISPs had anything to do with that.

I literally gave you an example of this from a content provider point of view a few posts back.

If you want more though, how about Comcast injecting javascript ads into web traffic in 2014 or them throttling Bittorrent in 2007?

Manic Moran

Apologies. After posting from what I had thought was the last post, I noticed more. I’ll get back to you in a bit.

Christy42

Manic Moran wrote: »

False logic, isn’t it? If one side wants it it must be bad? Are you telling me you have never encountered regulations which cause more hassle than benefit, no matter how well intentioned they may be?

Again, was any of this doom and gloom in position three years ago without these regulations? I certainly don’t recall being locked behind any paywalls other than newspapers, and I don’t think the ISPs had anything to do with that.

No the logic is that if one side wants it they must want it for a reason. That reason has not really gone into aside from government interference bad near as I can see. That is not an actual reason without being fleshed out. I mean they are effectively promising to follow the rules so why get rid of it and it can't be that hard to show either.

So.... why bother getting rid of it? I mean I don't think cos Comcast want it it is bad but I would expect a serious reason given what they have invested in this. I can absolutely see massive potential for abuse without it but I don't see a benefit to getting rid of it so it seems clear cut to me.

Manic Moran wrote: »

False logic, isn’t it? If one side wants it it must be bad? Are you telling me you have never encountered regulations which cause more hassle than benefit, no matter how well intentioned they may be?

Again, was any of this doom and gloom in position three years ago without these regulations? I certainly don’t recall being locked behind any paywalls other than newspapers, and I don’t think the ISPs had anything to do with that.

To be honest your second paragraph has already been covered (these regulations were put in place precisely because ISPs were looking into attempting this) while your second one doesn't actually say anything at all because "if one bad regulation exists they should get rid of all regulations for everything" is not an argument.

C14N

Manic Moran wrote: »

False logic, isn’t it? If one side wants it it must be bad? Are you telling me you have never encountered regulations which cause more hassle than benefit, no matter how well intentioned they may be?

But that's not the logic anyone here is employing. It's not just "ISPs = bad, therefore this = bad". Honestly, the fact that other tech giants like Google and Microsoft oppose the repeal should give some pause, although closer inspection reveals a pretty basic reason that they and consumers have a mutual interest.

The point is that this repeal allows a specific thing, and that one thing is bad. Even if it was a very reputably and popular company or person pushing for it, if the thing they were pushing for was to hurt consumers, it would be bad.

And I don't understand your logic on the second part. Nobody here is making blanket statements that all regulations are great. We're talking about just one. The fact that we could think of some other one that's a bit annoying is completely irrelevant.

Manic Moran wrote: »

Again, was any of this doom and gloom in position three years ago without these regulations? I certainly don’t recall being locked behind any paywalls other than newspapers, and I don’t think the ISPs had anything to do with that.

Until 2005, ISPs were considered common carriers and couldn't do any of this anyway. In the years between, net neutrality was always in a state of limbo. The reality is that legislation hadn't been made either way at the time, which is why there was a big fight to have it implemented when the FCC was writing these rules. If this repeal goes through though, it will be a pretty clear license to say ISPs can legally discriminate different types of traffic, which puts us into new circumstances.

Also, newspapers have nothing to do with this. A newspaper or other content provider deciding to charge for their content is perfectly fine. They made it, they can decide how to distribute it. An ISP being allowed to step in the middle and charge for it is completely different and can effectively turn websites and services that were supposed to be "free" into paid services instead.

Looks like Donny has some retort, real accusers should get away from Bloom after the Weinstein debacle as her reputation or what little she had of one is in tatters.

No doubt in my mind Trump harassed Women and did sleazy stuff but info like this is going to play into his hands, he's a "master" of denial. We saw that during the election, the information was public and he still won.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/365068-exclusive-prominent-lawyer-sought-donor-cash-for-two-trump-accusers

"A well-known women’s rights lawyer sought to arrange compensation from donors and tabloid media outlets for women who made or considered making sexual misconduct allegations against Donald Trump during the final months of the 2016 presidential race, according to documents and interviews.

California lawyer Lisa Bloom’s efforts included offering to sell alleged victims’ stories to TV outlets in return for a commission for herself, arranging a donor to pay off one Trump accuser’s mortgage and attempting to secure a six-figure payment for another woman who ultimately declined to come forward after being offered as much as $750,000, the clients told The Hill.

The women’s accounts were chronicled in contemporaneous contractual documents, emails and text messages reviewed by The Hill, including an exchange of texts between one woman and Bloom that suggested political action committees supporting Hillary Clinton were contacted during the effort."

We all know he wouldn't step down regardless of what allegations are made or proven against him in that nature (I mean even as per Kelly Anne conway he raped his own wife back in the 90s), but nine of that is going to protect him from Mueller.

Noel82 wrote: »

Looks like Donny has some retort, real accusers should get away from Bloom after the Weinstein debacle as her reputation or what little she had of one is in tatters.

No doubt in my mind Trump harassed Women and did sleazy stuff but info like this is going to play into his hands, he's a "master" of denial. We saw that during the election, the information was public and he still won.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/365068-exclusive-prominent-lawyer-sought-donor-cash-for-two-trump-accusers

"A well-known women’s rights lawyer sought to arrange compensation from donors and tabloid media outlets for women who made or considered making sexual misconduct allegations against Donald Trump during the final months of the 2016 presidential race, according to documents and interviews.

California lawyer Lisa Bloom’s efforts included offering to sell alleged victims’ stories to TV outlets in return for a commission for herself, arranging a donor to pay off one Trump accuser’s mortgage and attempting to secure a six-figure payment for another woman who ultimately declined to come forward after being offered as much as $750,000, the clients told The Hill.

The women’s accounts were chronicled in contemporaneous contractual documents, emails and text messages reviewed by The Hill, including an exchange of texts between one woman and Bloom that suggested political action committees supporting Hillary Clinton were contacted during the effort."

She's a piece of work that one although I'm not sure why this is a big deal. It's Injury Lawyer level stuff.

Coincidentally, guess who else is hyping the sht out of this?

aloyisious

Noel82 wrote: »

Looks like Donny has some retort, real accusers should get away from Bloom after the Weinstein debacle as her reputation or what little she had of one is in tatters.

No doubt in my mind Trump harassed Women and did sleazy stuff but info like this is going to play into his hands, he's a "master" of denial. We saw that during the election, the information was public and he still won.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/365068-exclusive-prominent-lawyer-sought-donor-cash-for-two-trump-accusers

"A well-known women’s rights lawyer sought to arrange compensation from donors and tabloid media outlets for women who made or considered making sexual misconduct allegations against Donald Trump during the final months of the 2016 presidential race, according to documents and interviews.

California lawyer Lisa Bloom’s efforts included offering to sell alleged victims’ stories to TV outlets in return for a commission for herself, arranging a donor to pay off one Trump accuser’s mortgage and attempting to secure a six-figure payment for another woman who ultimately declined to come forward after being offered as much as $750,000, the clients told The Hill.

The women’s accounts were chronicled in contemporaneous contractual documents, emails and text messages reviewed by The Hill, including an exchange of texts between one woman and Bloom that suggested political action committees supporting Hillary Clinton were contacted during the effort."

Is Don asking for an investigation into whether her activities were legal or does he have a thing for women lawyers and their attempt to sell info to political people? Is there any relevance to this?

mcmoustache wrote: »

She's a piece of work that one although I'm not sure why this is a big deal. It's Injury Lawyer level stuff.

Coincidentally, guess who else is hyping the sht out of this?

It's the top headline on thehill.com, foxnews.com and trended top on twitter too, cop yourself on. Even if I got it from reddit, so what? Doesn't change anything with the story. As I said before, anything that isn't 100% anti Trump or objective, you smear. It's what you do, that's cool, but you should try to make it less transparent.

aloyisious wrote: »

Is Don asking for an investigation into whether her activities were legal or does he have a thing for women lawyers and their attempt to sell info to political people? Is there any relevance to this?

Of course it's relevant, why do you think the Dem's woke up one day and 20 of them suddenly threw Franken under the bus? They did it to create the moral ground to go after Trump and the allegations surrounding him since the Russia stuff is going no where.

Noel82 wrote: »

It's the top headline on thehill.com, foxnews.com and trended top on twitter too, cop yourself on. Even if I got it from reddit, so what? Doesn't change anything with the story. As I said before, anything that isn't 100% anti Trump or objective, you smear. It's what you do, that's cool, but you should try to make it less transparent.

No sir, I was merely wondering what his had to do with anything.

Did she attempt to coerce women into making up stories about Trump? If she did, you might be on to something as it could mean that some of Trump's accusers are lying.

If she did not, and instead tried to profit from people who already had accused Trump, then her libertarian entrepreneurship is sleazy but has little to do with anything.

As to why I added the r/the_donald screengrab, your posts here are never about defending Trump - they are always deflection and whataboutism and they are always the same daily outrage that I've already seen in the alt-right forums.

If you're telling me that Ms Bloom tried to get people to lie about Trump, I'm all ears. Otherwise, this is just more of your irrelevant outrage and may be better suited to the Weinstein thread.

Noel82 wrote: »

Of course it's relevant, why do you think the Dem's woke up one day and 20 of them suddenly threw Franken under the bus? They did it to create the moral ground to go after Trump and the allegations surrounding him since the Russia stuff is going no where.

What the hell, man? I heard Trump say that but he has a habit of lying when it comes to Russia. Are you one of those people who takes Trump at his word?

You do realise that Flynn and Papadopolous have pleaded guilty and Manafort and Gates are in custody? I'm not sure what kind of reality you can be living in if you think the probe is going nowhere. Are you privy to special information or something? Because your take on this can only be possible if you made up your mind last year and make up your own reality around that.

mcmoustache wrote: »

If you're telling me that Ms Bloom tried to get people to lie about Trump, I'm all ears. Otherwise, this is just more of your irrelevant outrage and may be better suited to the Weinstein thread.

Yeah, because Women would never exaggerate or straight up lie about anything - especially not for large sums of money. If you don't think there's an industry of people devoid of morals willing to twist stories or sensationalize for profit then you're either naive or being disingenuous. Like I said in my original post, I don't doubt Trump is a sleaze - this story is relevant because since Franken announced he was quitting, the Dem's have turned their attention to Trump and he will use the fact Dem donors were offering large sums of money to Women to accuse him publicly.

Noel82 wrote: »

Yeah, because Women would never exaggerate or straight up lie about anything - especially not for large sums of money. If you don't think there's an industry of people devoid of morals willing to twist stories or sensationalize for profit then you're either naive or being disingenuous. Like I said in my original post, I don't doubt Trump is a sleaze - this story is relevant because since Franken announced he was quitting, the Dem's have turned their attention to Trump and he will use the fact Dem donors were offering large sums of money to Women to accuse him publicly.

That's fair enough. I a woman makes a false accusation against Trump, I hope she gets sued into bankruptcy.

However, the star witness against Trump's assault allegations is Trump himself. Unless you think he was lying those times?

mcmoustache wrote: »

I'm not sure what kind of reality you can be living in if you think the probe is going nowhere

If you take out all the stories that had to corrected or removed, there's very little that makes me think otherwise. Most of it is sensationalist rubbish, look at the first week of December

Dec 1st - Brian Ross goes on air and says that Flynn is prepared to testify that President Trump had instructed him to contact Russian officials before the 2016 election

Dec 3rd - the NYT's has a story that says Trump offical K. T. McFarland lied to congress about her knowledge of the Trump transition team’s contacts with Russia. They had to issue 4 corrections before rewriting the entire body

Dec 5th - There was widespread reporting that Trump's bank records had been subpoenaed, this turned out to be untrue

Deck 8th - CNN do a story saying Trump Jr was sent an email saying he was offered early access to Wikileak dumps, it turned out multiple sources were lying to CNN - the emails were already public

You go back every month and do the same thing ever since the probe was announced and you'll find the same garbage over and over.

Christy42

Noel82 wrote: »

If you take out all the stories that had to corrected or removed, there's very little that makes me think otherwise. Most of it is sensationalist rubbish, look at the first week of December

Dec 1st - Brian Ross goes on air and says that Flynn is prepared to testify that President Trump had instructed him to contact Russian officials before the 2016 election

Dec 3rd - the NYT's has a story that says Trump offical K. T. McFarland lied to congress about her knowledge of the Trump transition team’s contacts with Russia. They had to issue 4 corrections before rewriting the entire body

Dec 5th - There was widespread reporting that Trump's bank records had been subpoenaed, this turned out to be untrue

Deck 8th - CNN do a story saying Trump Jr was sent an email saying he was offered early access to Wikileak dumps, it turned out multiple sources were lying to CNN - the emails were already public

You go back every month and do the same thing ever since the probe was announced and you'll find the same garbage over and over.

Dec 1st We are not sure what Flynn has promised.

Dec 5th evidence? I can see the white house denying it but nothing showing that the papers were wrong.

Anyway deflect away. Your posts seem to suggest you think that Trump is guilty of sexual assault but somehow the big story according to you is the Democrats focusing on it?

Also you say there is little left after the corrected stories. How many stories were run during that first week of December that were negative towards Trump. I am going to give a quick Gamble and say that 4 is not the total.