You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

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BoSoxGal
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by BoSoxGal »

The new 13 foot fence going up around the White House is slated to cost $64 MILLION - and will no doubt go over budget.

The Secret Service claims it has enhanced security features, but won’t say what they are. In what universe is it remotely rational to spend $64 MILLION on a perimeter fence for a property of that size?! The mind boggles.
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Big RR
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Big RR »

We're not going to pay it. Mexico is.

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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by RayThom »

BIGGER, STRONGER, SHARPER

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“In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among us, a greater sincerity.” 

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BoSoxGal
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by BoSoxGal »

Seriously, how many SS agents and trained attack dogs could be salaried/funded for how many years for $64 MILLION?? The new fence will totally alter the character of the White House property and obscure the view permanently, yet this is the solution to a couple of guys scaling the old fence? It seems ludicrous to me. I can’t help but wonder if this project would’ve been greenlighted under a different administration.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
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ex-khobar Andy
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

I took a look at a map. That's about 1.5 km max. Call it a mile. 2016 figures for interstate highway construction are around $7 million per mile for a six-laner. Land acquisition costs of course make it higher. One supposes that there would be no land acquisition cost here: it's already ours.

That's $40,000 for a meter of fencing. Someone is going to get seriously rich off this. Maybe Ivanka's gone into the fencing business now that the clothes operation has closed down.

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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Big RR »

I guess they could try to recoup some of the investment by raffling off or putting the current fence up for auction. I'm sure there would be a good amount of interest.

The price is very high, but I'd like to see what security measures are included--electrification at the flip of a switch; tear gas canisters atop the fence--maybe a moat behind it? the mind boggles. kind of sopunds like someone is worried and is setting up his bunker?

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Scooter
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

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Lord Jim
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Lord Jim »

Trump tweets: ‘Who is our bigger enemy,’ Fed Chairman Powell or Chinese President Xi?

President Donald Trump again ripped into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Friday, questioning whether he is a “bigger enemy” to the United States than Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Trump tweeted his attack, which misspelled the central bank chief’s name before it was corrected, not long after Powell delivered a speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. As he uses tariffs to try to force China to change what he calls unfair trade practices, Trump has repeatedly said he does not blame Xi, a communist leader who has consolidated power in China.

His tweet came shortly after Beijing fired another shot in the trade conflict between the world’s two largest economies and just before the president pushed American firms to “start looking for an alternative to China.” It is unclear what authority Trump thinks he can use to stop U.S. companies from operating in China. The U.S. trades more goods with China than with any other country.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/23/trump-t ... nt-xi.html

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"Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China"
Anybody know the over/under on how many times The Mad King will embarrass our country and disgrace his office during the G7 trip?


Where's Jaime Lannister when we could really use him...
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ex-khobar Andy
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

Trump is now claiming that he indeed does have the authority to force all businesses to leave China. So a centrally planned and directed economy is a good thing, then. I have to admit that I hadn't previously characterized Trump as a commie but maybe he's been taking lessons from his beautiful pen-pal Kim.

In a twit (how else?) he wrote:
“For all of the Fake News Reporters that don’t have a clue as to what the law is relative to Presidential powers, China, etc., try looking at the Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Case closed!”
Based on what I have read this seems to be an overreading (to put it mildly) of the circumstances under which that act could be applied. A legal question: does SCOTUS have to wait for a challenge to the president's actions - which presumably have to be more than just a threat because someone has to actually lose following some action by the administration - or could John Roberts, before such an action occurs, tell the president he is dreaming?

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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Bicycle Bill »

I wonder if Trump ever checked the "Made in __________" label on his computer or cellphone — or those MAGA hats he's been selling?

I'm just waiting until Trump tells all the Apple sheeple that because we ain't doing business with China, they can't get their (Chinese-made) iPhones any more.  They would march, en masse, on the White House and throw him so far out of the Oval Office he'd hit the Washington Monument on the bounce.
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Sue U
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Sue U »

ex-khobar Andy wrote:Trump is now claiming that he indeed does have the authority to force all businesses to leave China. So a centrally planned and directed economy is a good thing, then. I have to admit that I hadn't previously characterized Trump as a commie but maybe he's been taking lessons from his beautiful pen-pal Kim.
While it's (almost) funny to call Trump a commie or a socialist for his apparent embrace of a command economy, what we are witnessing is the very real rise of a fascist government, and I am not speaking in hyperbole. As I have pointed out before, fascist economic theory (such as it is) provides for dictatorial control over ostensibly private property and subordinates existing capitalist economic activity to the state.

Wikipedia describes the rise of fascism in the period between the World Wars as follows (see if any of this sounds familiar):
The first fascist movements arose in the last years of World War I. They were a form of radical nationalism carrying a promise of national rebirth; they blamed liberalism, socialism, and materialism for the decadence they perceived in society and culture, and they expressed an appreciation for violence and the role of leadership and willpower in shaping society.[4]

One significant fascist economic belief was that prosperity would naturally follow once the nation has achieved a cultural and spiritual re-awakening.[5] Different members of a fascist party would often make completely opposite statements about the economic policies they supported.[6] Once in power, fascists usually adopted whatever economic program they believed to be most suitable for their political goals. Long-lasting fascist regimes (such as that of Benito Mussolini in Italy) made drastic changes to their economic policy from time to time.

Fascism rose to power by taking advantage of the political and economic climate of the 1920s and 1930s, particularly the deep polarization of some European societies (such as the Kingdom of Italy and Weimar Germany), which were democracies with elected parliaments dominated by supporters of laissez-faire capitalism and Marxian socialism, whose intense opposition to each other made it difficult for stable governments to be formed.[7] Fascists used this situation as an argument against democracy, which they viewed as ineffective and weak.[8] Fascist regimes generally came into existence in times of crisis, when economic elites, landowners and business owners feared that a revolution or uprising was imminent.[9] Fascists allied themselves with the economic elites, promising to protect their social status and to suppress any potential working class revolution.[10] In exchange, the elites were asked to subordinate their interests to a broader nationalist project, thus fascist economic policies generally protect inequality and privilege while also featuring an important role for state intervention in the economy.[11]
If you are not at least unnerved by the direction the current US government is headed -- and I am well on my way to terrified -- you are ignoring the blaring klaxon horns and flashing red lights of history coming around again for another whack. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. Democracy is a lot more fragile than any of us would like to believe, and a government that so casually takes a battering ram to the foundations of the American experiment with the complicity of Congress (cough Mitch McConnell cough) can bring it down pretty quickly.
ex-khobar Andy wrote:In a twit (how else?) he wrote:
“For all of the Fake News Reporters that don’t have a clue as to what the law is relative to Presidential powers, China, etc., try looking at the Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Case closed!”
Based on what I have read this seems to be an overreading (to put it mildly) of the circumstances under which that act could be applied. A legal question: does SCOTUS have to wait for a challenge to the president's actions - which presumably have to be more than just a threat because someone has to actually lose following some action by the administration - or could John Roberts, before such an action occurs, tell the president he is dreaming?
One of the primary jurisdictional rules of the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court, is that there must be an actual "case or controversy" in which there is an actual party who has suffered (or is in immediate threat of suffering) some genuine identifiable injury before a court can even consider the matter. So no, the Supremes cannot step in without a live case, and cannot offer an advisory opinion. (There are a bunch of other principles regarding when and how judicial power should be applied that generally counsel avoiding political questions and constitutional issues, and deciding as little as possible to dispose of any case.)

As for the IEEPA itself, Lawfare took a look at the statute and its implications in a blog post last year, when Trump was making noise about Chinese communications technology. They do a pretty good job of splaininstuff.
GAH!

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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Big RR »

Since Nixon, the US has made the mistake, over and over again, of placing more and more power in the hands of the executive, usually because Congress is seen as being unable to get much done, especially in times of crisis. I had hoped Trump would show how stupid these policies are, but there are many who cheer his actions, and many others who stand silently by and permit us to move further and further away from freedom to rule by fiat of a single individual. If an ass like Trump isn't enough to convince Congress and the people to stand up and get rid of this idiocy, then maybe we'll end up with shat we deserve. And freedom will come crashing down to the thunderous applause of the people.

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Sue U
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Sue U »

For the tl;dr crowd, the Lawfare analysis I linked above basically concludes that Congress has given the President near-dictatorial authority in international relations of all kinds as long as he declares a "national emergy" -- which Trump is apparently happy to do -- and the courts have virtually nothing they can say about it. The concluding graf:
IEEPA is an incredibly powerful tool that presidents have made considerable use of in the national security sphere. Since the Trump administration has defined strategic competition as a national security concern, it is logical that it would seek to use IEEPA’s broad authority to respond to allegations of anticompetitive Chinese behavior. Such an aggressive step would cause a seismic disruption to markets and to the U.S. relationship with China. For now, external forces seem to have persuaded the president to rely on existing and calibrated measures. But there is no guarantee that this will hold. And if the president decides to use his IEEPA authority, little would stand in his way. The United States exists in a near-permanent state of national emergency, and in that context IEEPA permits the president to take dramatic action with minimal oversight by Congress or the courts.
When I said I was well on my way to being terrified, I wasn't kidding; this Administration is one Reichstag fire away from assuming "emergency powers" to institute unchecked authoritarian control, using the crises Trump and his crew themselves create as justification. And with a spineless Senate majority led by a collaborationist Majority Leader and Judiciary Committee chairman, there is literally nothing to stop them.
GAH!

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Lord Jim
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Lord Jim »

Since Nixon, the US has made the mistake, over and over again, of placing more and more power in the hands of the executive,...
Actually, this trend predates Nixon; it really goes back to FDR...
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Big RR »

Well we pretty much had a dictator then; a benevolent one, but someone who usurped a lot of power that didn't belong in the hands on one person IMHO.

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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

And you can forgive FDR - he had had two genuine, enormous and unprecedented, emergencies going on and that's not even counting the European War and the likelihood, which was beginning to take shape, that Stalin would exert hegemony over most of Eastern Europe once WW2 drew to a close. The Japanese war and the Depression were existential threats to the country.

The threats of Islamic terrorism and US Chinese trade imbalance are not on the same page as those.

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BoSoxGal
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by BoSoxGal »

The threat of climate change usurps them all in terms of scale and possible devastating consequences. Let’s hope while we still have these strong executive powers we can get someone in the WH who cares about AGW & CC.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

ex-khobar Andy
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

Sue - (four or five posts up from here) - I've taken a day to digest what you wrote, and you're right. I've been reluctant to use the f-word because most of my generation, who came of age in the tumult of the sixties, were too quick to call those who disagreed with us 'fascists.' The word lost its meaning, and we need to remind ourselves how Hitler and Mussolini came to power. Both won elections with at least a veneer of legitimacy but they used fake news and manufactured crises (the Reichstag fire, the Corfu Incident) to consolidate power.

Your sentence "Democracy is a lot more fragile than any of us would like to believe" is absolutely accurate. A century of (more or less) democratic institutions throughout most of the developed world - and I am well aware it's a lot closer to 'less' in many places and times particularly with respect to race - has lulled us into thinking that it's the natural order of things. We've come to expect common safety features which protect us from ourselves (seatbelts; guard rails on mountainside bends) or others (traffic separation schemes). We think that democracy is self policing: after all, if the guy running things is a halfwit or corrupt, it will soon be obvious and he can be replaced quickly (parliamentary system) or at the next electoral opportunity. We give this person extraordinary powers because issues might arise with no time for consultation or debate; so he - and it's usually as 'he' - has a nuclear button or something like the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) which is what Trump cited as justification for 'hereby order[ing]' companies to leave China. National leaders from Muammar Gaddhafi to Margaret Thatcher and everyone in between have seized on external threats as heaven-sent opportunities to unite people with a common purpose and to distract them the erosion or rapid removal of their rights.

One could plausibly argue that the President has the right to declare a national emergency on the issue of Chinese trade. (Note - that's long way from saying that he would be right to do so.) There are at present 30 IEEPA emergencies, declared at some point over the last 40 years, which are current and open. (Trade imbalance with China is not one of them.). We give him this authority because someone has to have it and because we trust the process which elevated that specific person to that position. And - just a reminder - the last century's exemplar of the man who took on extraordinary power and won was Winston Churchill. He was not elected Prime Minister in 1940. A meeting of exactly four men - Chamberlain (outgoing PM); Halifax (Foreign Secretary); Churchill; AN Other (memory isn't what it was) decided who would run the war.

If I'm not careful I'm going to get bogged down in metaphor. (DYSWIDT?) But let me make another one. I've spent a lifetime in science. I believe in the scientific process. But I have seen plenty of charlatans, ego-mainacs, cheats and prima donnas, enough so that I no longer have the rose-tinted view of science that I did 50 years ago when I eagerly read Popper, Kuhn and Bernal. (And, pace Rube, bits of Bertrand Russell too: although anyone who takes 362 pages to prove that 1 + 1 = 2 is not my idea of a useful thinker for daily purposes.). Those of us who continue to defend science despite its failures recognize that it's the best system we have for answering questions providing we guard against and minimize those hostile interventions which seek only to generate the requested answers rather then the correct answers.

Similarly with democracy. It's the best we have; and while we have, for a couple of generations at least, been almost daily reminded that it's the military - of whatever stripe - that protects the elements of democracy, the truth is far deeper and wider. It's not the guys in uniform although they have an obvious part in the process: it's you and me and how we live our lives and what we choose to put up with.

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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Big RR »

Andy--I agree it is up to all of us and what we are willing "to put up with", but what terrifies me is that there are a lot of people who are willing to put up with less and less freedom and choice for a number of reasons, from a craving for security, to a desire to get something (anything) done, to having their point of view validated. And these are the people who are voting alongside us, who are electing the egomaiiacs ho slowly but surely are using the laws to cement their power. Yes, democracy is the best we have, but for the first time in my life I am beginning to become seriously scared of its future, and more specifically, the future of the rights which we claim to hold so dearly, when people are all too happy to abandon them.

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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

Yes - I recall posting something, not long after the 2016 election, to the effect that the truly scary thing we had found was not that one Trump existed but that something close to 50% of the voting public thought that it would be a good idea for him to be President. We have always known that chancers and conmen and career turds existed but we've always managed to keep them in some sort of reasonable check.

Long after he has gone most of them will still exist. Some of course will have become disillusioned and will crawl back to the light. Some will be disillusioned and will dig deeper, if that's possible.

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