FMOTUS: F***ing Moron of the United States (Trump) thread continued

[TheClaws]

As aptly dubbed by his own Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.

Old thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3047195-Hello-Don-got-a-new-tax-cut-Trump-continued

And as I love giving you images to haunt your dreams, here’s another one, blasphemously titled ‘Our Lord and Saviour’.

Should I bother looking for news on news sites or just keep checking this thread today? best news source for all things Trump

www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/30/japan-donald-trump-pen-pineapple-apple-pen-singer if I have had to listen to this so can FMOTUS

6 am in US time is still 4 hours away so i think we have a small window of calm lumbers up and ignores the fact that I’m still running late for the first day back

This was a very good piece (apols if already posted)

Silicon Valley helped Russia sway the US election. So now what?

amp.theguardian.com/media/2017/oct/29/media-symbiotic-relationship-facebook-worry-democracy

In getting to grips with this problem, politicians and the media are realising that the way we think and talk about different types of messages has been well and truly broken. Social media has made a practice – and a fortune – out of erasing traditional boundaries between different types of material. Where once we had propaganda, press releases, journalism and advertising, we now have “content”. Where once we had direct marketing, display advertising and promotions, now we have “monetisation”. Where we once had media owners, ad agencies and clients, now we have “partners”. Who could possibly object to partners monetising their content? It sounds so mutually beneficial and efficient. On the other hand neo-Nazis paying to target pensioners with racist propaganda has a less wholesome ring to it.

Revealed: Ukip whistleblowers raised fears about Breitbart influence on Brexit

Sources tell Guardian that senior ‘volunteers’ in Ukip before EU referendum were paid by the rightwing US website

amp.theguardian.com/politics/2017/oct/30/revealed-ukip-whistleblowers-raised-fears-about-breitbart-influence-on-brexit

Two internal Ukip whistleblowers filed complaints to the UK’s Electoral Commission over fears the party was making “unusual arrangements” with a pro-Trump website in the months before the 2016 EU referendum, the Guardian has learned.

The concerns included allegations that individuals who were being paid by Breitbart, a rightwing American news organisation, were working as senior unpaid Ukip volunteers, raising questions in their minds about whether their work could be construed as an indirect political donation by a foreign donor, according to sources who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity.

One whistleblower told the Guardian that concerns that the party was turning to “off-balance-sheet financing”, possibly in violation of UK rules, prompted the decision to turn to the electoral commission.

This echos my thoughts, and I do not anticipate any coming together, sadly. Yes, it will be imperative to know what happened but will we be able to all know it together or will this just deepen the rifts of the two realities?

David Roberts‏
@drvox

1. Here's a morbid train of thought. I feel quite confident I'm not the only one thinking it. But let's get it down for the record.
2. Tomorrow is going to be something close to a clean test - the kind of perfectly constructed experiment sociologists & polisci folks love.
3. It is a test of whether right-wing media can distort reality sufficiently to prevent any kind of transpartisan consensus from forming.
4. On one side you have a richly detailed history of shady behavior from Trump, an impeccably credentialed investigator, & indictments.
5. It is a paradigmatic example of the kind of thing that might once have been able to unite Americans as Americans, party aside.
6. It's the kind of thing that eventually did unite Americans re: Watergate (though it was slower to do so than the romanticized history).
7. With Watergate it took an escalating series of revelations & defensive flails to eventually tip the scales, but the point is ...
8. ... at that time, the scales were still capable of tipping. There was a limit to conservatives' ability to distort the facts and ...
9. ... and, when the facts became widely known, a limit to partisanship. There was such a thing as party leader going "too far."

10. Does either limit still exist? Tomorrow will kick off our latest experiment. Because now, on the other side, you have ... 11. ... a vast edifice of media outlets, think tanks, advocacy groups, & hyper-ideological pols that dwarfs what cons had in the '70s. 12. And the entire machine has sprung to life, throwing chaff about the dossier & Mueller & Comey & uranium & Hillary & whatever the F. 13. It is as frantic & deafening & coordinated an effort as I've ever seen, now enthusiastically being led by the president himself. 14. (The experiment depends on Mueller actually uncovering serious wrongdoing connected to Trump, of course, but it's looking pretty bad.) 15. If there is serious wrongdoing, then, we will find out: are we still capable of learning a set of facts as a nation? Together? 16. Are we still living in the same world, at all? Do we share any common set of facts? Or is it the case that literally anything ... 17. ... even collusion with a foreign power to subvert democracy, can simply be fed into the partisan-bullshit machine & processed. 17 1/2. [I hope everyone's watching this insane f'ing world series while they are reading this.] 18. The difference b/t the Rs of the 70s & now is that R electeds & the party itself had some power back then to shape opinion. 19. Now R electeds cringe at the feet of the baying, insatiable base, which is never not outraged & exercised by RW media. 20. RW media pulls the strings, controls the very reality the base lives in, and it has no incentive to moderate or tell the truth. 21. So even if some GOP officeholders see what's happening & feel some pangs of responsibility toward national integrity & dignity ... 22. ... they cross the base at their peril. Corker & Flake are leaving b/c they no longer have any control over what their constituents ... 23. ... believe or want. And constituents believe & want increasingly ugly things. The grievance machine has colonized the GOP, entirely. 24. So is there anything, at all, that Mueller could do or discover that would tip the scales like they eventually tipped on Watergate? 25. Is there anything, at all, that Trump could do - fire Mueller, issue blanket pardons, shoot someone on 5th Ave. - that could tip them? 26. Are the scales still capable of tipping? Are there any limits left? Tomorrow will kick off our grand experiment in earnest. 27. My guess: no & no. *@mattyglesias* is probably right. ☹️

Matthew Yglesias
@mattyglesias
My prediction: Mueller fired, blanket pardons, Rs defend, Russians hack again in 2018, House Ds win popular vote by 7 points, GOP majority.

28. The US conservative movement has been bulldozing norms for decades. This is just another increment. Why would it play out any different?
29. Maybe I'm too pessimistic. We'll see. Perhaps US institutions still have a little life left in them.
30. The Cubs winning the Series was the last good thing to happen. Maybe this Series will break the streak. 🤞

Those are depressing but realistic threads Pain. I may have been thoroughly gaslit but Red’s comments yesterday about Trump always coming out of these things stronger really resonated. It’s as though there is an invisible elastic pulling us back into dystopia whenever we see glimpses of normality.

On practicalities, what time is Mueller action likely to start? I’ve seen comments about 6am arrests which means 10am in Uk the difference in summer time changes working in our favour here. Otoh, if it’s a surrender at the court house, I’m assuming it will be around 10am ET so 2pm here?

I’m preparing to be underwhelmed. The important thing is whether Mueller makes it through the day in post and reasonable unscathed.

I dare say I'm wrong here but I just cannot see Nigel Bloody Farage having the power people are bestowing on him. I know his whole persona was village idiot but I struggle to get my head round the fact he's so deeply involved and such and pivotal player

And yet there he is, pushing ukip’s fringe agenda so successfully that we’re nowing leaving the eu, meeting up with trump/Assange/rohrabacher and generally being astonishingly shady.

I don't think Nigel does have personal power, though. He's the bombastic front man, like 45.

The organisers and funders behind them both are where the power and competence reside.

Gosh, I think I’ll be asleep when anything happens

Yes, that's a fair point perking.

Actually I'm not quite right: he does have the personal power of being the brand. The funders need one of those, as they can't appear themselves.

Same as 45. It's not like Rebekah Mercer would get elected herself.

Don’t stay up Claws. It might be a false alarm

Mensch a few moments ago
Mini thread. I hope we will see an arrest today. But we may not. If CNN was wrong on the timing they weren’t wrong on substance.
One, CNN was wrong on date. Could happen soon but not now. Two, arrest is done very quietly and lawyers don’t talk. Three...
...something happened to change a plan, perhaps the report itself. I’m not predicting any of this. But then I am absolutely confident^
In both Bob Mueller and the process here. And I say this because Russia’s allies try to mobilize online against hope when they can.

No, I know the potential for disappointment. But - I could get a present with breakfast!

I think that's a good point San but with Farage it might be a case of 'fools rush in where angels fear to tread.'

Going back to lionheart's link yesterday:

How Steve Bannon Played the Mainstream Media
washingtonmonthly.com/2017/08/21/how-steve-bannon-played-the-mainstream-media/

"Time-strapped reporters squeezed for copy will gratefully accept original, fact-based research because most of what they’re inundated with is garbage. 'The modern economics of the newsroom don’t support big investigative reporting staffs,' says Bannon. 'You wouldn’t get a Watergate, a Pentagon Papers today, because nobody can afford to let a reporter spend seven months on a story. We can. We’re working as a support function.'

"The reason GAI [Government Accountability Institute] does this is because it’s the secret to how conservatives can hack the mainstream media. [Wynton] Hall has distilled this, too, into a slogan: 'Anchor left, pivot right.' It means that 'weaponizing' a story onto the front page of the New York Times ('the Left') is infinitely more valuable than publishing it on Breitbart.com…"

Of course churnalism has been around for a while. To keep costs down, the media publish PR with minimal input of their own - so it becomes easier to plant and to spin stories.

I've not heard that word before, Perking.

Nothing yet as far as I can see

It's a topic I've been interested in for years. As you can probably tell from my posts here, the dissemination of information and ideas, and how language is used, fascinate me.

Nick Davies' book Flat Earth News is a good read on churnalism.

The guardian piece above deals with how the muddying up of labels has also contributed to this (post from this morning at 7.18)

It's 7.46 EDT. Most Govt offices open between 8-9.

I wouldn't expect any thing for another 2 hours, if anything happens at all.

Too many really, really interesting links today, Pain! And I had stuff to do an' all...

Ooo here we go! www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/us/politics/paul-manafort-indicted.html?_r=0

Manafort and Gates. I'm not immersed in this, so will follow the thread with interest for your ideas about/reactions to this breaking news.

Meanwhile, I'll just do a quiet little jig of joy.

Could this be the beginning of the end? I'll settle for the end of the beginning ...

Not berating perking! Just adding info you might find interesting.

We’re going to need a new thread