Hello Don, got a new tax cut? Trump continued

[PerkingFaintly]

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3035639-Is-he-Right-Left-or-is-He-Nothing-at-All-Trump-thread-continued?pg=1

Nice work if you can get it.

Kyle Griffin
Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1
Trump this morning nearly walked out of the room without signing his health care exec. order, had to be brought back by Pence.

mobile.twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/918537489769488385/video/1

That video! "I'm only signing it cause it costs nothing!" YOU FUCKER!!! It will cost lives and greatly increase human misery for poorly, vulnerable people!

Across that's a very bleak view on why the us has left UNESCO. I was assuming it was a simple case of pleasing the base. I don't think Trump's supporters, or administration, value education, science or culture and don't see why they should be paying for them.

Worrying Tweet which shows that guests at Trump's Washington Hotel are being handed flyers promoting a petition to ban CNN from Federal buildings due to their anti-Trump stance.

twitter.com/ackrantz11/status/917926381547335680

You turn your back for five minutes ....

amp.cnn.com/money/2017/10/12/media/dont-shoot-us-russia-pokemon-go/index.html

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/unesco-israel-withdraw-netanyahu-united-nations-trump-latest-a7997506.html

Has Jared commented at all?

lion ffs.
If your friend jumped off a bridge would you copy him?

(The Hill) 69 Republicans vote against Puerto Rico aid. It’s all about the priorities, people! War and walls and stuff. Not people.

thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/355225-69-republicans-vote-against-puerto-rico-aid

Manu Raju @mkraju
NEWS: Panel sets FRI deadline for STONE to turn over name of Assange contact. Subpoena may be next. @jeremyherb, me

Roger Stone faces subpoena threat over Assange contact

amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/10/12/politics/roger-stone-house-intelligence-committee-subpoena/index.html

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump 5m5 minutes ago
More
People are just now starting to find out how dishonest and disgusting (FakeNews) @NBCNews is. Viewers beware. May be worse than even @CNN!

I read a lot of Terry Pratchett and the following paragraph from Jingo seems so relevant right now:

... he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary folk, the kind who brushed their dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No-one ever them thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things

Especially if next-door is one of Them, SanFran, or your own brother, or your brother thinks you are Them, not Us. I’d love my brother to be one of Us. But he’s Them. He’s not a bad person - he just thinks differently to me and Us. I hate thinking in such defined terms.

I haven’t read any Terry Prachett, but maybe I should! I’m currently on some Tolstoy.

BTW - earthquake in North Korea. Not a huge one, but more or less in the same place as the last few. This article discusses the conspicuous absence of two of NK’s nuclear leaders from recent celebrations, fuelling rumours of an impending missile or bomb test.

www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/absence-of-north-koreas-rocket-men-raises-fears-ahead-of-earthquake/news-story/7e2f1eed2457c7f56ed3b108d044d5e2

Badness. www.politico.com/story/2017/10/12/trump-obamacare-subsidy-243736

Topher Spiro
Topher Spiro @TopherSpiro
Whoa. Here the WH admits the exec order will ⬆️ premiums, ⬆️ taxpayer costs, and screw unsubsidized people with pre-existing conditions.

Sarah Kliff
Sarah Kliff @sarahkliff
To recap: ending these subsidies costs the federal government money, increases Obamacare premiums 20 percent.

Jim Newell
Jim Newell @jim_newell
Republicans seem very confident that intentionally spiking premiums won't hurt them, the governing party, in 2018

Renato Mariotti @renato_mariotti
The White House is producing documents to Mueller—he is already making follow-up requests and interviewing staff.

amp.thedailybeast.com/white-house-turns-over-russia-docs-to-mueller-probe

The White House has made significant progress turning over documents to Bob Mueller’s special counsel probe, according to a lawyer familiar with the investigation. The lawyer also said that several current and former White House staffers either have been interviewed by Mueller’s investigators or are scheduled to be interviewed by them in the next few weeks.

[...]The attorney familiar with the probe told The Daily Beast that the White House has made substantial progress responding to Mueller’s requests.

“The bulk of the heavy lifting is largely behind,” the lawyer said.

But it isn’t finished. Mueller and his investigators have been making follow-up requests of the White House legal team as they follow up on their original queries and refine them, per our source, and the legal team has been moving to answer those requests as they come.

I haven’t read any Terry Prachett, but maybe I should! I’m currently on some Tolstoy.

You definitely need to read some Prachett! Though Tolstoy is also very good.

Saw on twitter there was a shooting in Sweden - immediately thought "Fuck, what's Trump going to say about that?!" but then saw that terrorism has been ruled out already so hopefully he won't say shit about it.

Jamie Weinstein
Jamie Weinstein @Jamie_Weinstein
Interesting piece for many reasons, not least because it subtly posits new theory for why Trump fired

Preet Bharara
Preet Bharara @PreetBharara
Turkey's President Erdogan "demanded...the firing of Bharara in a private meeting with then-Vice President Joe Biden on Sept. 21, 2016."

The man at the crux of the U.S.-Turkey dispute is about to go on trial

www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/opinions/global-opinions/the-man-at-the-crux-the-of-us-turkey-dispute-is-about-to-go-on-trial/2017/10/12/92c4c7a2-af96-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html

At the center of the increasingly bitter dispute between the United States and Turkey is a demand by an irate President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that American prosecutors free a Turkish-Iranian gold dealer who is about to go on trial on money-laundering and fraud charges.

The confrontation sharpened Thursday, as Erdogan protested in Ankara that the businessman, Reza Zarrab, was being squeezed as a "false witness" about corruption. Turkey alarmed Washington by arresting a U.S. consular official last week, in what some U.S. officials feared was an attempt to gain leverage for Zarrab's release before the scheduled Nov. 27 start of his trial in New York. Turkish and American officials plan to meet next week for talks to ease tensions.

What dirt could Zarrab dish in court? A possible preview comes in a May 2016 court filing by then-U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. Citing a December 2013 Turkish prosecutor's report, Bharara's memo said the Turkish evidence "describes a massive bribery scheme executed by Zarrab and others, paying cabinet-level governmental officials and high-level bank officers tens of millions of Euro and U.S. dollars to facilitate Zarrab's network's transactions for the benefit of Iran" to evade U.S. sanctions against that country. Bharara's memo noted that these "conclusions are corroborated by emails obtained through the FBI's investigation."

Erdogan's campaign to free Zarrab has been extraordinary. He demanded his release as well as the firing of Bharara in a private meeting with then-Vice President Joe Biden on Sept. 21, 2016, in which U.S. officials say half the 90-minute conversation was devoted to Zarrab. Erdogan's wife pleaded the case that night to Jill Biden. Turkey's then-justice minister, Bekir Bozdag, visited then-Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch in October to argue that the case was "based on no evidence" and that Zarrab should be released.

Erdogan appealed personally about the matter in his last two phone calls with President Barack Obama, in December and early January, former aides say. "Our operating assumption was that Erdogan's obsession with the case was that if it moved forward, information would come out that would damage his family, and ultimately him," said one former senior Obama official.

Erdogan's government began cultivating Donald Trump's team before the election. Michael Flynn, then a campaign aide, was hired as a pro-Turkey lobbyist, and his firm continued to receive Turkish money during the transition. After Flynn resigned as national security adviser in February, the Turks began working with Rudy Giuliani, a close Trump adviser.

[...]Giuliani's involvement is one of the many unusual aspects of this case. He contacted Bharara on Feb. 24 to inform him that he planned to travel to Ankara on Zarrab's behalf. Trump fired Bharara in March; around that time, Giuliani began pressing the Justice Department for "some agreement between the United States and Turkey" to aid American "security interests" and help Zarrab, Giuliani said in a filing with the court.

Mediaite @Mediaite
Oliver Stone Refuses to Condemn Weinstein: ‘It’s Not Easy What He’s Going Through’ bit.ly/2zjUWNW

Julia Davis @JuliaDavisNews
Such an understanding guy! Putin, Assad, Weinstein - they're all going through some tough times, according to Ollie.

natsku People killed by anything other than POC e.g white mass murderers, hurricanes, hikes in health insurance etc are just part of life and not to be challenged, let alone addressed or fixed.

Throw in some melanin however and then it’s time to restrict everyone’s freedom and strip them of their rights.

That narrative definitely has nothing to do with shit like this though. Nope, not related at all.

Caroline O.
Caroline O. @RVAwonk
Trump's new refugee policy uses white supremacist language to allow discrimination against nonwhite refugees. JFC.

The Trump Administration Wants Refugees to Fit In or Stay Out

An obscure new policy would give priority to refugees who seem like they might “assimilate.”

According to both international and U.S. refugee law, people like my great-grandfather have for decades been candidates for refugee resettlement based solely on their well-founded fear of persecution in their home countries. Their ability to “assimilate” — learn English and embrace the customs of the United States — had no bearing on their asylum applications. That, however, may be about to change: Buried inside the 65-page Sept. 27 directive that also capped the number of refugees to be resettled in the United States next year at 45,000, the lowest since the White House began setting a limit in 1980, there is vague, disconcerting language that lawyers and immigration experts say they have never seen before in reference to refugees in this country.

The Trump administration may now consider “certain criteria that enhance a refugee’s likelihood of successful assimilation and contribution in the United States” in addition to the humanitarian criteria that have long been the standard for refugee claims, according to the determination, which is similar to an executive order in that it has the force of law. That term, “assimilation,” is brand-new in the history of U.S. policy on refugees, and it appears in the document over and over again. Previous directives have used the word “integration,” which comes from the Latin “integrare” — “to make whole” — and implies some change on the part of society as well as those entering it. “Assimilation,” in contrast, “is kind of the erasure of cultural markers,” according to Kathleen Newland, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute. “It’s important to make a distinction,” because, she said, the word “has that connotation of erasure of one thing and absorption into the mainstream culture.”

There is little doubt that this is the meaning of “assimilate” the White House has in mind. As a candidate, Donald Trump complained about what he saw as a lack of assimilation among Muslim immigrants, a group he has smeared repeatedly, from belittling Muslim Gold Star parents to pretending his “Muslim ban” never really targeted Muslims, despite the fact that his campaign website called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the U.S.”. More recently, on Sept. 15, the National Archives in Washington debuted a video of the president welcoming new U.S. citizens in which he says, “Our history is now your history. And our traditions are now your traditions.” He adds, “You now share the obligation to teach our values to others, to help newcomers assimilate to our way of life.”

It remains unclear how exactly the administration would go about assessing refugees’ ability to assimilate. The document itself does not address this, despite claims to the contrary from the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which referenced the “apparent inclusion” of an “assimilation test” in a confusing Sept. 28 press release. In fact, a close reading of the presidential determination yields no mention of a test. There is, however, an ominous undertone that seems to hint at future efforts to gauge the likelihood that asylum applicants would assimilate. “Improved assimilation of refugees and asylees will not only boost their ability to be successful in the United States, but will also secure our communities by fostering a cohesive society based upon shared civic ideals, and appreciation of our history, and an understanding of the English language,” reads one particularly troubling sentence.

Two days after the release of the presidential determination, the White House put out a fact sheet apparently meant to justify what is contained in the larger document. Referring to Trump’s “America First Refugee Program,” the sheet repeatedly emphasizes the “safety” of Americans. “Some refugees who have been admitted to the United States have posed threats to national security and public safety,” the fact sheet asserts. It goes on to say: “Since 2011, there have been at least 20 admitted refugees who have been arrested or removed from the United States based on terrorism investigations.” The fact that this was 20 out of hundreds of thousands — making Americans roughly 3,000 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be killed by a refugee — was of course left unsaid.

[...]Indeed, the language in the directive is suspiciously similar to the language used online by white supremacists and members of the alt-right, including Ann Corcoran, who in June 2013 lamented on her nationalist website, Refugee Resettlement Watch, that the term “‘assimilation’ is no longer a part of government lexicon and does not even occur in dozens of recent reports and papers generated about refugee resettlement. The operative term in vogue now is ‘integration’ with its clear intent of maintenance of ethnic identity.” And it’s not just that Trump’s determination echoes the language of racists and hate groups — such groups seem to have played a direct role in this language modification. The Sept. 29 White House fact sheet cites as a source the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as a hate group because of the “fear-mongering misinformation” it publishes about immigrants.

You're so right there Pain sigh

WeAreAmerica🇺🇸
WeAreAmerica🇺🇸 @DemocracyValues
➡️➡️➡️People need to follow this thread because it explains why we are experiencing so much POLITICAL CONFUSION and why our existing political fractures are being exploited by Russia and their American enablers.
We know that Russia is heavily influencing our social media channels. They invested in social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and even into gaming ventures like Zynga.

Why? Data. That's power to exploit. They're laughing because we gave our data away willingly. (1/20)

Here comes spinning plate #1:

Social media networks. Advertising to exploit the polarization in our society. Doesn't matter if it's the left or right. Exploit them both to cause strife. Get Americans to fight with each other. (2/20)

When America is consumed with internal confusion, it presents opportunities to exploit for outside forces. It means creating fake opposition to drown out real opposition. (3/20)

When you control the opposition on the left and the right, you get to identify the real actors. They end up being targets. So that's why we're seeing fake antifa, and democratic socialist accounts popping up on left.

So you get to identify real people, real actors, by creating outside groups to control them, and to remove them from actual resistance groups or existing progressive organizations. It's meant to undermine infrastructure for authentic groups. (5/20)

Spinning plate #2: They're also exploiting the right's prejudices. This is why they used Black Lives Matters & changed the narrative to drive racial divisions in our society to increase negativity in R base towards what should be unifying concerns. (6/20)

The unifying concerns I speak of should be about community policing, fair treatment regardless of race, and a crackdown on bad police with support for more and better cops to create trust in communities. (7/20)

Russia and their right-wing American enablers don't want Americans to unite on what should be commonsense reforms for police reforms, and criminal justice. They'd rather focus on racism & fear, because that's what keeps their base with them for elections. (8/20)

Oh, and while we're being consumed with internal strife, Russia and China are making their moves.

Why?

😒 We withdrew from TPP.
😒 We withdrew from South Korea trade.
😒 We withdrew from UNESCO.

Trump wants to withdraw from NAFTA. This isolates us from the world. (9/20)

So we're ceding our economic leadership to China and Russia. That's why Trump keeps attacking NATO, the UN, and trying to divide our traditional allies from us so they can't continue to support us, and are forced to make economic alliances with either China or Russia. (10/20)

Spinning Plate #3. Let's talk about perception management. This is where bots come in. Why do you think Trump has millions of fake bots?

This may surprise you. Bernie Sanders does too. The use of bots isn't just for amplification, it's to create sense of popularity. (11/20)

When you send out a tweet on an issue, and boom! It gets amplified, retweeted, and responded to by bots. People reading those tweets don't know how to tell difference between real users and bots, so they think the response is authentic and must indicate popular sentiment. (12/20)

BOOM! 🔥🔥🔥While I'm building up this thread -- this just came in. Remember how I mentioned Russian influence into gaming networks?

WELL, HERE IT IS. ⬇️⬇️⬇️ Now back to thread. t.co/TFnpJY3Ep0?amp=1

Trump, Bernie, and others have fake bots to drive perception that something is super-popular AND to make themselves look popular. (12/20)

With Trump, the alt-right and their provocateurs use bots to make hashtags trend around fake articles to gain traction among their base. This is known as social engineering.

Fake a crisis, drive up positive/negatives in their audience, and keep their narrative going. (13/20)

Social engineering is meant to shift the discourse in their direction. Essentially push the Overton window from what is unacceptable to the acceptable.

So they want to normalize the alt-right, Nazis, and Trump's way of thinking. This changes America's social fabric. (14/20)

Social engineering further polarizes our nation, and Russia uses the data from that to target us for further active measures to keep us in disarray.

Facebook is contributing greatly to this polarization, and they just destroyed evidence. (15/20)

It's super-easy to influence voters on Facebook. The main reason for this is that political online ads on Facebook is NOT regulated by the FEC. For $100,000, Russia can swing an entire election against us.

And midterms are coming up. (16/20) amp.businessinsider.com/facebook-ad-targeting-means-voters-can-be-swayed-at-low-cost-2017-10

It's not only Russia that's exploiting our political vulnerabilities. It's bad American actors on left and right. It's easy for disinformation from both sides to rocket through the American populace to further tear down existing parties and our civic infrastructure. (17/20)

A united America is bad for Russia and China. They don't want us to pull together to push back against the rise of authoritarian governments, and they both think our democracy is a failed experiment.

Let's not make it so.

Spinning Plate #4 - the counter reaction. While Russia is spinning plates around us, we need to do our own spinning:

➡️ Call out active measures
➡️ Identifying and calling out bots
➡️ Setting up counter social media accounts and pages
➡️ Focus on what unites us

(19/20)

Trump likes to talk about making America great. Right now, he's not. People of all political stripes need to say so.

We need to get rid of GOP enablers. We need to register to vote.

We need to vote in sane candidates.

Voting is our power. We need to vote in midterms.

(20/20)

How to use a statement to make a point: Generalise rather than focus on specifics:

Q And I have one quick follow-up, Sarah, on taxes. The President repeated this claim in the Oval Office today, saying we're the highest-taxed nation in the world. Why does the President keep saying this? It's not true, overall.

MS. SANDERS: We are the highest-taxed -- corporate tax in the developed economy. That's a fact.

Q But that's not what the President said.

MS. SANDERS: That's what he's talking about. We are the highest corporate taxed country in the developed economies across the globe.

Q Sarah, so that's accurate, but the President keeps repeating this claim that we're the highest-taxed nation in the world.

MS. SANDERS: We are the highest-taxed corporate nation.

Q But that's not what he said. He said we're the highest-taxed nation in the world.

MS. SANDERS: The highest-taxed corporate nation. It seems pretty consistent to me. Sorry, we're just going to have to agree to disagree