Octopus Overlords

In March, Trump said the Saudi military deals would produce 40,000 jobs.

A week ago, he made it 450,000 jobs. Wednesday, 500,000 jobs. Yesterday afternoon, 600,000 jobs.

Yesterday evening: "The million jobs."

GreenGoo wrote: Sat Oct 20, 2018 4:05 pm Holy shit, where are you going to find a million people to employ? Are the jobs centralised? Does the community have the infrastructure? Or is he splitting the jobs evenly across states? You get 20,000 jobs, you get 20,000 jobs...

Maybe it's just red states who voted to Drumpf?

A million jobs for a deal worth how many billions? Is it seasonal work? Pick guns off the weapons trees for a .month or two? What do these jobs pay?

I hate the constant, insanely unbelievable lies.

I’ve spoken to contacts in the defense business and on the Hill, and all of them say the same thing: There is no $110 billion deal. Instead, there are a bunch of letters of interest or intent, but not contracts. Many are offers that the defense industry thinks the Saudis will be interested in someday. So far nothing has been notified to the Senate for review. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the arms sales wing of the Pentagon, calls them “intended sales.” None of the deals identified so far are new, all began in the Obama administration.

An example is a proposal for sale of four frigates (called multi-mission surface combatant vessels) to the Royal Saudi navy. This proposal was first reported by the State Department in 2015. No contract has followed. The type of frigate is a derivative of a vessel that the U.S. Navy uses but the derivative doesn’t actually exist yet. Another piece is the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense system (THAAD) which was recently deployed in South Korea. The Saudis have expressed interest in the system for several years but no contracts have been finalized. Obama approved the sale in principle at a summit at Camp David in 2015. Also on the wish list are 150 Black Hawk helicopters. Again, this is old news repackaged. What the Saudis and the administration did is put together a notional package of the Saudi wish list of possible deals and portray that as a deal. Even then the numbers don’t add up. It’s fake news.

Moreover, it’s unlikely that the Saudis could pay for a $110 billion deal any longer, due to low oil prices and the two-plus years old war in Yemen. President Obama sold the kingdom $112 billion in weapons over eight years, most of which was a single, huge deal in 2012 negotiated by then-Secretary of Defense Bob Gates. To get that deal through Congressional approval, Gates also negotiated a deal with Israel to compensate the Israelis and preserve their qualitative edge over their Arab neighbors. With the fall in oil prices, the Saudis have struggled to meet their payments since.

You will know the Trump deal is real when Israel begins to ask for a package to keep the Israeli Defense Forces’ qualitative edge preserved. What is coming soon is a billion-dollars deal for more munitions for the war in Yemen. The Royal Saudi Air Force needs more munitions to continue the air bombardment of the Arab world’s poorest country.

Max Peck wrote: Sat Oct 20, 2018 9:35 pm
How many jobs will be created with empty promises?

Isgrimnur wrote: Fri Oct 19, 2018 4:10 pm

GreenGoo wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2018 12:53 am Money's nice. Being alive is nicer though. Clean air, clean water, corporate responsibility, these are things that are needed for quality of life for the general population and must be balanced against wealth generation for that same population.

Presidential memorandum

President Trump, along with local leaders Congressman Devin Nunes and Congressmen David Valadao, met in Arizona for the signing of a Presidential Memorandum.

The White House says the memorandum would reduce regulatory burdens and improve water reliability, while protecting endangered species.

The president has directed the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretory of Commerce to streamline regulatory processes and remove unnecessary burdens.

The administration says this new process will provide certainty for California farmers who need more water to restore farmlands crippled by drought and regulation.

Holman wrote: Sun Oct 21, 2018 9:09 am There are really only a handful of jobs that matter in all this, and they belong to the top execs and lobbyists who make the GOP possible.

LawBeefaroni wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 8:25 amAh yes, America's foremost authority on California water.

hepcat wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:23 am I'm surprised California has time for anything at this point. According to the orange in chief, isn't the entire state rioting over sanctuary cities? I mean, literally rioting in the streets?

...no?

Wait...are you saying he's not telling the truth?! <clutches pearls>

Now the Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.

The department argued in its memo that key government agencies needed to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” The agency’s proposed definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.

hepcat wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:23 am I'm surprised California has time for anything at this point. According to the orange in chief, isn't the entire state rioting over sanctuary cities? I mean, literally rioting in the streets?

...no?

Wait...are you saying he's not telling the truth?! <clutches pearls>

President Donald Trump on Monday evening proudly asserted that he is a “nationalist” — a designation some of his fiercest critics have previously wielded against him as an attack on what they deem nativist policy pursuits by his administration.

“You know, they have a word, it sort of became old-fashioned. It’s called a nationalist,” Trump said at a campaign event in Houston, where he rallied voters to support Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in November’s midterm elections.

“And I say, ‘Really? We’re not supposed to use that word,’” Trump continued. “You know what I am? I’m a nationalist. OK? I’m a nationalist.”

As the crowd in the Houston Toyota Center roared with applause, the president continued: “Use that word. Use that word.”

Trump’s remarks followed a rebuke of “globalists” whom he accused of putting other nations’ interests ahead of those of the United States.

“Radical Democrats want to turn back the clock. Restore the rule of corrupt, power-hungry globalists,” Trump said. “You know what a globalist is, right?”

He explained: “A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly not caring about our country so much. And, you know what? We can’t have that.”

YellowKing wrote: Tue Oct 23, 2018 10:03 pm Dementia, Alzheimer's, syphilis, whatever.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday that he argued that American experts should stay in the outbreak zone of the latest Ebola epidemic but was overridden by others in the Trump administration because of security concerns.

Archinerd wrote: Wed Oct 24, 2018 11:50 am Could be a savvy strategy by Mr. Bolton. If Trump doesn't know his name, he can't be fired.

The New York Times report that Trump is disregarding protocol and making frequent calls on cell phones, which have been intercepted by foreign hackers, should obviously dismay the information security fanatics that rallied to his cause.

The Times’ story is filled with the kind of mordant, understated humor that tends to characterize the White House beat in an era when the president’s abnormalities are piled one atop another. Trump “typically relies on his mobile phones when he does not want a call going through the White House switchboard and logged for senior aides to see, his aides said,” the Times reports. “Many of those Mr. Trump speaks with most often on one of his cellphones, such as hosts at Fox News, share the president’s political views, or simply enable his sense of grievance about any number of subjects.”



To unpack this a bit: When he is not binge-watching Fox News, a large part of Trump’s discretionary time is spent calling up Fox News personalities to get thoughts they didn’t express on the air. Trump’s staff tries to discourage this habit, in part because many of the Fox News personalities are insane, and their insanity creates problems when Trump uses it to override his staff’s advice or demand a course of action premised upon delusional interpretations of reality. So the reason Trump is exposing his conversations to foreign hackers is that he is sneaking around his own aides (who he could just fire, and replace with aides who would let him talk to Fox News lunatics however much he wants, but for some reason has failed to do so.)

The good news, as it were, is that aides think — or at least hope — that Trump is not giving away much of value with these calls, because he doesn’t know much of value. Administration officials “said they had further confidence he was not spilling secrets because he rarely digs into the details of the intelligence he is shown and is not well versed in the operational specifics of military or covert activities.” Also, Trump is apparently too compromised by Russia to be worth spying on by Moscow: “Russia is not believed to be running as sophisticated an influence effort as China because of Mr. Trump’s apparent affinity for President Vladimir V. Putin, a former official said.”

On Monday night, Donald Trump shoved the nationalist needle into the veins of millions of his followers, and slammed the plunger home. He finally said what we’ve known all along: He’s a nationalist.

He sent a signal to his alt-right allies that it’s time to rally to his side once again, just ahead of the midterm elections. It was one more knife into the moldering corpse of the GOP, which with every Trump rally has looked more and more like some clapped-out third-world claque of the Glorious Leader’s sycophants, and less like a modern political institution.

Even for a president who loves to disrupt traditional institutions, boundaries, and national mores, Trump’s full and open embrace of nationalism Monday night crossed a bright new line. We’ll likely read about Oct. 22, 2018, in our history books, for as much as Trump has consistently acted like a 70-year-old Queens racist with authoritarian statist leanings clad in nationalist rhetoric, last night was the first time the word escaped his blubbery lips, his quivering seven-pound chin-sack swaying to the roar of a Texas crowd of worshippers.

GreenGoo wrote: Thu Oct 25, 2018 11:51 am Wait, why is he glad they added China? Because they too are listening to this fake news story, or they too are the US's enemy so it's good they are identified as such, despite it being fake news, or...wtf?

The twitter for iPhone tag is just gravy at this point.

What. a. Dumbass.

GreenGoo wrote: Thu Oct 25, 2018 11:51 am Wait, why is he glad they added China? Because they too are listening to this fake news story, or they too are the US's enemy so it's good they are identified as such, despite it being fake news, or...wtf?

The twitter for iPhone tag is just gravy at this point.

What. a. Dumbass.