Octopus Overlords

Alefroth wrote: Fri Nov 03, 2017 12:34 pmPretty much. I never thought entertaining that possibility would be a thing.

Kurth wrote: Fri Nov 03, 2017 11:11 am

El Guapo wrote: Fri Nov 03, 2017 10:12 am Can I say how mad I am at Warren for spreading this rigging nonsense? It wasn't 'rigged'. Even Brazile, in her article, while she includes lots of drama and loaded language, says in her article (/book excerpt) that she did a thorough digging and didn't find any evidence of skewed decision making or really any actual rigging. The bombshell, such as it is, is that the fundraising agreement (which was reported on at the time, and which Sanders had complained about during the campaign) may have given Clinton some control over the DNC organization earlier than is normal during a campaign, but there's no evidence that the DNC did (or perhaps even could) do anything to actually influence or alter the outcome of the primaries.

Well done, Warren.

Typical Warren. I just don't like her.

Jeff V wrote: Fri Nov 03, 2017 10:08 pm So, who thought it was a good idea for Trump to visit the Pearl Harbor Memorial just before visiting Japan? What could possibly go wrong?

The White House on Saturday disparaged the legacies of the only two living Republican presidents to precede Donald Trump, after reports that both men castigated Trump in interviews last year and refused to vote for him.

Former president George H.W. Bush mocked then-candidate Trump as a “blowhard” and voted for a Democratic president, while the younger Bush worried aloud that Trump would destroy the idea of a Republican president in all but name, according to “The Last Republicans,” which is scheduled to go on sale later this month.

The White House responded after quotes from the book were published on Saturday, entering an extraordinary war of words involving three presidents from the same party.

“If one Presidential candidate can disassemble a political party, it speaks volumes about how strong a legacy its past two presidents really had,” the White House wrote to CNN. It called the younger Bush's decision to wage war on Iraq “one of the greatest foreign policy mistakes in American history.”
...
As he watched Trump's campaign, the younger Bush feared he — Bush — would “be the last Republican president,” said the author, who founded the National Medal of Honor Museum this year, after several years as director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum.

“And it wasn't just about Hillary Clinton becoming president,” he said. “It was because Donald Trump represented everything that the Bushes abhorred.”

Trump stood for rudeness, international isolationism and weak leadership in the eyes of the Bushes, according to Updegrove — reservations echoed by many establishment Republicans. In September, George W. Bush gave speech in which he didn't mention Trump but lamented these same vices — and politics that “seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.”

Isgrimnur wrote: Sat Nov 04, 2017 5:47 pm WaPo

“If one Presidential candidate can disassemble a political party, it speaks volumes about how strong a legacy its past two presidents really had,” the White House wrote to CNN. It called the younger Bush's decision to wage war on Iraq “one of the greatest foreign policy mistakes in American history.”

Jeff V wrote: Fri Nov 03, 2017 10:25 pm I'm thinking he brings up the "cowardly sneak attack" at an inappropriate time and demands Japan buy us a new navy or something.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said Japan should have shot down the North Korean missiles that flew over the country before landing in the Pacific Ocean earlier this year, diplomatic sources have said, despite the difficulties and potential ramifications of doing so.

[...]

The U.S. president said he could not understand why a country of samurai warriors did not shoot down the missiles, the sources said.

Holman wrote: Sat Nov 04, 2017 10:53 pm

Jeff V wrote: Fri Nov 03, 2017 10:25 pm I'm thinking he brings up the "cowardly sneak attack" at an inappropriate time and demands Japan buy us a new navy or something.

Well, there's this...

U.S. President Donald Trump has said Japan should have shot down the North Korean missiles that flew over the country before landing in the Pacific Ocean earlier this year, diplomatic sources have said, despite the difficulties and potential ramifications of doing so.

[...]

The U.S. president said he could not understand why a country of samurai warriors did not shoot down the missiles, the sources said.

hepcat wrote: Mon Nov 06, 2017 8:15 pm Cool, we have our own Neville Chamberlain.

Trump wrote:Getting ready to make a major speech to the National Assembly here in South Korea, then will be headed to China where I very much look forward to meeting with President Xi who is just off his great political victory.

Holman wrote: Tue Nov 07, 2017 9:26 pm

link

Trump wrote:Getting ready to make a major speech to the National Assembly here in South Korea, then will be headed to China where I very much look forward to meeting with President Xi who is just off his great political victory.

WTF? "Political victory"?

Either Trump
(a) believes China actually has free elections, or
(b) is congratulating Xi on his recent elevation by the Party to Mao-like levels of autocratic authority.

WTF???

El Guapo wrote: Tue Nov 07, 2017 10:45 pm It's one of those situations where you hope it's the result of Trump's idiocy rather than his malevolence.

Max Peck wrote: Wed Nov 08, 2017 9:31 am

El Guapo wrote: Tue Nov 07, 2017 10:45 pm It's one of those situations where you hope it's the result of Trump's idiocy rather than his malevolence.

The most likely explanation is that he is saying nice things about Xi because he believes that will lead to Xi saying/doing nice things for him. The world's best negotiator, in action.

Joey Del Signore still loves Trump. “Everybody I talk to,” he said, “realizes it’s not Trump who’s dragging his feet. Trump’s probably the most diligent, hardest-working president we’ve ever had in our lifetimes. It’s not like he sleeps in till noon and goes golfing every weekend, like the last president did.”

I stopped him, informing him that, yes, Barack Obama liked to golf, but Trump in fact does golf a lot, too—more, in fact.

Del Signore was surprised to hear this.

“Does he?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

He did not linger on this topic, smiling and changing the subject with a quip. “If I was married to his wife,” Del Signore said, “I don’t think I’d go anywhere.”

He added: “Some of these things are like that thing he said to Billy, Billy Bob, Billy Bud”—searching, unsuccessfully, for the name Billy Bush—“on the bus, that comment he made.” Del Signore shrugged. “He’s a human male. I’m glad he wasn’t saying, ‘Hey, I like little boys.’ You know? So he’s not perfect.”

Del Signore said he’s been following politics far more than before because of Trump. Trump, he said, is just “more interesting.” So now he likes watching the news. “Ninety-nine percent of the time I watch Fox,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll be sitting there listening to all this Fox stuff, and I’ll say, ‘Maybe they aren’t right, maybe I’ll flip to CNN’—but every time I’ve found that Fox has been correct, and CNN is definitely fake news.”

A Catholic whose wife goes to church every Sunday, whereas he, “shame on me,” does not, Del Signore told me toward the end of our lunch that some people at church told his wife that Obama is the antichrist. “She comes home and tells me these things that they tell you in church,” he said. I asked him whether that’s what he thinks. “I don’t know,” he said. “Some people say that.”

If Obama, I asked, is the antichrist—whose arrival is said to precede the second coming of Christ—what would that make Trump?

“The savior?” Del Signore suggested.

Not even Trump, though, can stop what’s coming, he added. “Just looking around, and putting two and two together, a little bit of business savvy, a little bit of street savvy, a little common sense, a little bit of education, you kind of deduct different things,” he told me. “I think we’re going to see the end of the world in our generation.”

skinypupy wrote:Yep, we're fucked.

malchior wrote: Wed Nov 08, 2017 3:50 pm All of sudden anti-trust is an issue in the AT&T merger and word is they were told specifically to sell DirectTV *or* specifically the parent unit of CNN. Certainly looks retaliatory as hell. The business world might have just had a shot fired across its bow.

Edit: I wasn't a fan of this deal anyway - I think media consolidation is part of the cause of our extraordinarily compliant and vacuous media but this certainly doesn't look to be some principled decision. Maybe it is principled but this administration has deservedly earned extreme skepticism about its decisions.

El Guapo wrote: Wed Nov 08, 2017 4:11 pm Not really sure what to make of this. DOJ demanding divestments in a merger isn't unusual by itself. What's potentially questionable here is that since this is a vertical merger, antitrust concerns are typically less (at least, in general mainstream antitrust analysis), so blocking the deal in court would be a tough task for DOJ, making this a fairly aggressive stance. I do think that there has been more discussion lately about whether vertical mergers should receive more antitrust scrutiny than they have in the past, though, so while this would be aggressive, it's not obviously crazy. Trump's repeated threats to use antitrust as a weapon against opponents combined with this being fairly aggressive does raise red flags, though, to be sure. But then DOJ Antitrust staffers as a rule probably don't like Trump very much at all, so an order coming down from on high to the effect of "block this merger unless they divest CNN / Time Warner" would have a high chance of getting leaked.

Moliere wrote: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:29 pm

Pyperkub wrote:I find it hard to believe that laughter = willful conduct:

Judge Throws Out Conviction Of Woman Who Laughed At Jeff Sessions

"Instead of sentencing a woman to jail time for laughing during Jeff Sessions' confirmation hearing, a D.C. judge threw out the woman's conviction and called for a new trial."

Desiree Ali-Fairooz was scheduled to stand for her second trial on Nov. 13 after being arrested for what appeared to be laughing during Attorney General Jeff Sessions' confirmation hearing in January. Ali-Fairooz tweeted she had received notice that her case was being dropped on Monday afternoon.

malchior wrote: Wed Nov 08, 2017 4:29 pm

El Guapo wrote: Wed Nov 08, 2017 4:11 pm Not really sure what to make of this. DOJ demanding divestments in a merger isn't unusual by itself. What's potentially questionable here is that since this is a vertical merger, antitrust concerns are typically less (at least, in general mainstream antitrust analysis), so blocking the deal in court would be a tough task for DOJ, making this a fairly aggressive stance. I do think that there has been more discussion lately about whether vertical mergers should receive more antitrust scrutiny than they have in the past, though, so while this would be aggressive, it's not obviously crazy. Trump's repeated threats to use antitrust as a weapon against opponents combined with this being fairly aggressive does raise red flags, though, to be sure. But then DOJ Antitrust staffers as a rule probably don't like Trump very much at all, so an order coming down from on high to the effect of "block this merger unless they divest CNN / Time Warner" would have a high chance of getting leaked.

The anti-trust folks are definitely not Trump people. I am separated from many by < 3 degrees fwiw but these decisions generally have a very small loop so lack of leaking wouldn't shock me. I have been told there was reason to believe that extreme political interference in other anti-trust decisions in the past never got leaked (cough cough Whirlpool/Maytag). Anyhow these decisions are more political than they should be but that is of little surprise considering the money involved.

My ultimate problem here is that we just simply can't trust that this is not a sham. In a way though that is almost a universal problem now. The people they have around them are shady as fuck and we can't trust them. Not a great way to govern.

Octavious wrote: Wed Nov 08, 2017 4:40 pm

malchior wrote: Wed Nov 08, 2017 4:29 pm

El Guapo wrote: Wed Nov 08, 2017 4:11 pm Not really sure what to make of this. DOJ demanding divestments in a merger isn't unusual by itself. What's potentially questionable here is that since this is a vertical merger, antitrust concerns are typically less (at least, in general mainstream antitrust analysis), so blocking the deal in court would be a tough task for DOJ, making this a fairly aggressive stance. I do think that there has been more discussion lately about whether vertical mergers should receive more antitrust scrutiny than they have in the past, though, so while this would be aggressive, it's not obviously crazy. Trump's repeated threats to use antitrust as a weapon against opponents combined with this being fairly aggressive does raise red flags, though, to be sure. But then DOJ Antitrust staffers as a rule probably don't like Trump very much at all, so an order coming down from on high to the effect of "block this merger unless they divest CNN / Time Warner" would have a high chance of getting leaked.

The anti-trust folks are definitely not Trump people. I am separated from many by < 3 degrees fwiw but these decisions generally have a very small loop so lack of leaking wouldn't shock me. I have been told there was reason to believe that extreme political interference in other anti-trust decisions in the past never got leaked (cough cough Whirlpool/Maytag). Anyhow these decisions are more political than they should be but that is of little surprise considering the money involved.

My ultimate problem here is that we just simply can't trust that this is not a sham. In a way though that is almost a universal problem now. The people they have around them are shady as fuck and we can't trust them. Not a great way to govern.

Sis quit ATT on Friday. Coincidence? I THINK NOT!

malchior wrote: Wed Nov 08, 2017 4:29 pm

El Guapo wrote: Wed Nov 08, 2017 4:11 pm Not really sure what to make of this. DOJ demanding divestments in a merger isn't unusual by itself. What's potentially questionable here is that since this is a vertical merger, antitrust concerns are typically less (at least, in general mainstream antitrust analysis), so blocking the deal in court would be a tough task for DOJ, making this a fairly aggressive stance. I do think that there has been more discussion lately about whether vertical mergers should receive more antitrust scrutiny than they have in the past, though, so while this would be aggressive, it's not obviously crazy. Trump's repeated threats to use antitrust as a weapon against opponents combined with this being fairly aggressive does raise red flags, though, to be sure. But then DOJ Antitrust staffers as a rule probably don't like Trump very much at all, so an order coming down from on high to the effect of "block this merger unless they divest CNN / Time Warner" would have a high chance of getting leaked.

The anti-trust folks are definitely not Trump people. I am separated from many by < 3 degrees fwiw but these decisions generally have a very small loop so lack of leaking wouldn't shock me. I have been told there was reason to believe that extreme political interference in other anti-trust decisions in the past never got leaked (cough cough Whirlpool/Maytag). Anyhow these decisions are more political than they should be but that is of little surprise considering the money involved.

My ultimate problem here is that we just simply can't trust that this is not a sham. In a way though that is almost a universal problem now. The people they have around them are shady as fuck and we can't trust them. Not a great way to govern.

El Guapo wrote: Wed Nov 08, 2017 4:48 pm Side note: I joined the law firm that represented Whirlpool in their merger not long after the Whirlpool / Maytag merger review. While I was not there during the review, evidently all the lawyers at the firm assumed from the get-go that DOJ would sue to block the merger (since the combined market share was so astronomical). They were completely stunned when DOJ did not sue.