Donald Trump elected 45th US president

[Dave]

"protect our planet’s precious natural resources”

[Train<In>Vain]

Trump administration's 1st official scandal: Laughgate!

THIS IS NO LAUGHING MATTER (maybe I should rephrase that).

From Huffington Post:

Donald Trump’s Laugh Track Is Tricking America
The president is engaging in psychological warfare with Americans.
01/23/2017 02:06 pm ET

“But members of the CIA were clearly laughing at his jokes and clapping, so what he was saying couldn’t have been inappropriate.”  —  CNN pundit defending Trump’s CIA speech where he talked about his war with the media, in front of a memorial to men and women who lost their lives in actual wars.

The clapping and laughing you hear in both instances are Trump’s own people, who initiate and get the crowd to follow. They are sycophants who he brings to cheer him on and make it seem like what he’s saying is being well-received. And it’s working.

The laugh track was invented to cue the audience to the jokes and encourage laughter in response. But it has another effect: If you hear people laughing and you’re not, you start to question if maybe there’s something wrong with you for not getting it. You might even impulsively start laughing just to fit in, not because you think anything is funny.

In fact, that’s exactly how this works — one person initiates a clap and suddenly everyone thinks there’s something to clap for. And then everyone is clapping. For no reason.

This is how he’s going to chip away at our understanding of what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s real and what’s not.
Both during that press conference and during that CIA speech, what he was saying wasn’t as surprising as the fact that the response wasn’t dead silence or audible ****ing gasps.

How does the president say, “We should have taken the oil in Iraq” and “Maybe we’ll get another chance” to a crowd of CIA agents roaring with laugher?

It made me wonder — wait, am I the crazy one?

I’m not. Like everything with Trump, it’s made up, it’s put on, it’s a f*** illusion.

A former agent just told me that he has listened to Trump speech @CIA. He noted there is lead/prompt clapper who starts ALL applause rounds

— Juliette Kayyem (@juliettekayyem) January 22, 2017
There it is. Trump brought his people to cheer for him and create illusion of CIA support on television. https://t.co/tRBomUVnGF

But Trump’s seemingly warm reception might have been manufactured, according to The Washington Post’s lead fact-checker, Glenn Kessler. “The pool reports indicate the cheering and clapping was not from the CIA staffers but people who accompanied Trump,” Kessler tweeted.

[Former CIA Director] Brennan also deplored the rally-style event, according to his former deputy chief of staff Nick Shapiro. Brennan “is deeply saddened and angered at Donald Trump’s despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of CIA’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes,” Shapiro said in a statement provided to Newsweek. “Trump should be ashamed of himself.”
This is how he’s going to chip away at our understanding of what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s real and what’s not. This is even stronger, more powerful gaslighting —  making us question our own instincts and even start doing things because we want to fit in with “everyone else” who from what we know, seem to think this is all fine.

Trump wants a cheering section at all his press conferences and if you don’t realize that those are not the reporters clapping, it will seriously **** with you.

The media needs to take a cue from one of Trump’s own complaints during the campaign: Show us the crowd. Let us see who is clapping, and who is not. Otherwise, we’re all going to start feeling like we’re going crazy, even more so than we already are.

[SkeedR]

It might not be from TheOnion, but it does seem to be an opinion piece, by;

Sarah Cooper
Author, Comedian and Creator of TheCooperReview.com

So it's still not news.

[Train<In>Vain]

I did explicitly state From Huffington Post

Therefore posting "still not news" doesn't add anything new to this discussion.

[Chrill]

Huffington Post is a news source though. They've even won Pulitzers!

[SkeedR]

I did explicitly state From Huffington Post

Therefore posting "still not news" doesn't add anything new to this discussion.

Topic title of "The is NOT from THE ONION" suggests it's actual news. But it's not. I just wanted to clear that up.

[Dave]

I did explicitly state From Huffington Post

Therefore posting "still not news" doesn't add anything new to this discussion.

You don't get to decide what does and doesn't add anything to the forum. Wind your neck in.

[Drury]

Sick burn m80 u showt us

EDIT: Awww it got deleted


Meanwhile:

Trump administration tells EPA to cut climate page from website

EPA gets frozen and censored in general, speaking to the press prohibited

Backing up the data back in December was a pretty good call after all.

Sanders still fighting the good fight

Merkel is just done

Musk too

1984 sales surging following new administration's newspeak moment

Trump is buttmad that everyone is buttmad; fails to see it's his fault

EDIT: EPA meme attached

[AntoninKyrene]

Fun reading. Always interesting to see what others think of our circus we call the United States political process.

Amazing that so many are scared of Trump for all the wrong reasons. You shouldn't fear him for anything save one very important duty: unless Republicans defect in the Senate, Trump can ensure the Supreme Court remains a generally 5-4 split in favor of conservatives almost immediately. On paper, that's not necessarily a bad thing so long as Kennedy is still on the bench.

But...if Ginsburg or Breyer or Kennedy passes on during the first two years of his presidency, he could lock the Supreme Court in a conservative state for a very long time. Add a retirement by Clarence Thomas so that he can be succeeded by a much, much younger conservative justice, and you have what most liberals here considered to be a doomsday prophecy, especially since that idiot Harry Reid went nuclear in the Senate a while back. Oh how that gamble is going to hurt Democrats this time around. Harry really screwed up, and the Republicans might get the chance to destroy his legacy completely.

If Russia could be accused of - and actually have - interfered in our elections, could they take out a Supreme Court justice to further Trump's political agenda?

Think about that for a minute.

[Redirect Left]

Not content with removing pages from the White House website regarding climate change, the pages that used to specify the federal policy relating to disabilities.

That page has now also gone missing...

Washington Post

[Pyoro]

... and here I'd have thought Trump would be keen on help for mentally disabled.


Snark aside, all those removed pages featured Obama. Personally, I probably wouldn't have removed them, but do we know they aren't just getting a redesigned with the current president? ^^;

[Redirect Left]

If they're being redesigned, i would have expected them to notify you of that on the page, some generic maintenance page rather than just getting rid of them.

The White House website has also removed pages in Spanish and pages relating to Civil Rights & LGBT rights have been somewhat removed.

Whilst it is entirely possible that they're all going to be returned with slightly edited wording to relate to Trump instead of Obama and altering pictures to also reflect that. I find it odd that any website designer/developer good enough to be hired by the White House is lax enough to not put up a temporary page saying there is maintenance / will be replaced later on...

Edit:
The wall is afoot! Trump has issued an executive order for a wall to be built. He also demanded that funds be stripped from cities that harbor known undocumented immigrants.
BBC news

[orudge]

I have a sudden desire to play Age of Empires and build a giant wall across the map, sealing away the enemy. I used to do that sometimes against the AI, it was fun.

[supermop]

Edit:
The wall is afoot! Trump has issued an executive order for a wall to be built. He also demanded that funds be stripped from cities that harbor known undocumented immigrants.
BBC news

I am curious how that is going to work without outright theft / appropriation of funds, as those cities (NYC, SF, LA etc) do not really depend on federal funding apart from a few areas, and generally send much more money to the Federal Budget than they receive. As in most countries suffering from attack of populism now, the reactionary voting areas tend to be those that are dependent on government spending, while the 'out of touch' liberal' islands are the ones fronting the tax revenue for that spending. NYC doesn't need Federal funds to meet its budget, so the only way Trump is taking money from us is if he confiscates our local or state tax revenue. Of course that would be unconstitutional, but that doesn't seem to discourage him elsewhere...

After a huge showing at the Women's March here this past weekend (took us 7 hours to complete the 4 hour scheduled route due to more than double the expected turnout), I'm off to a rally tonight against the wall and Muslim Ban... These guys are wasting no time in making tens of millions of us angry and motivated to resist.

[Redirect Left]

It wouldn't surprise me if it starts off rather grand this wall, but then halfway through it switches to something rather pathetic like a picket fence. The funding i have read is going to come later on and Trumps intention is to claim the money back from Mexicans / Mexico through tolls to cross the wall for goods vans, individuals, etc. How viable that is, i don't know. They're going to need the funding to build the wall now, not after its built.

Trump has also signed an order that cuts funding to any (nongovernmental organization) group that offers counselling relating to abortion, suggests abortion for any reason, or performs abortions. There is a lot of fear that this won't stop abortions, they'll still occur just under less than sanitary or even safe methods.

The Independent & Grok Nation.

On the plus side, there are lots of memes going around with all the signing of things Trump is doing.

[Ameecher]

It wouldn't surprise me if it starts off rather grand this wall, but then halfway through it switches to something rather pathetic like a picket fence.

Bush already built one of those in the wake of 9/11

[michael blunck]

These guys are wasting no time in making tens of millions of us angry and motivated to resist.

"Resist"??? Where were you guys "resisting" during the Obama years? Not to talk about the GWB years ...

regards
Michael

[supermop]

These guys are wasting no time in making tens of millions of us angry and motivated to resist.

"Resist"??? Where were you guys "resisting" during the Obama years? Not to talk about the GWB years ...

regards
Michael

I wasn't "resisting" Obama, because whatever complaints I had about the Obama Administration were not enough to prevent me from having a generally favorable opinion of him and his policies (as is the case with many Americans - Obama left office fairly popular, while Trump entered deeply unpopular). Obama's administration implemented many changes I wanted to see in the country, even if only by half-measures, and made at least a show effort of limiting the the worst offenses of the Bush years (a constitutionally questionably drone strike is easier to stomach than an unfounded war or secret prisons, maybe you disagree). The people most angry now were by and large not angry at Obama, and I fail to see the equivalency - even the farthest left radical upset with centrist democrats would be hold Trump's positions to be an order of magnitude more retrograde. Today Trump issued executive orders to reopen Black Site secret prisons and to encourage the use of torture. How is that defensible? How does that not merit protest?

As for Bush - many of us did resist. We protested the Iraq war, we protested the Katrina response, we wrote to our representatives to speak out against nominees, and we worked to get a wave of democrats elected in 2006 and 2008. The difference being one of magnitude - many of those in the center who were by and large ok with Bush find themselves now appalled by Trump (a man who did not receive the largest share of votes). The issues being protested now are greater and impact a wider swath of Americans, so more people are angry.

[YNM]

"Apply salt to the burnt area"

EDIT : Interesting to see that the POTUS twitter account is now just more or less subordinate to the Real account.
god this is like watching APDAF back in TNG but it's irl now. no hard feelings, APDAF.

[Chrill]

Allow me to just name a couple of people who would be refused entry into the United States of America at the moment:

1. Mika Zibanejad - Swedish ice hockey player for the New York Rangers. His father is from Iran
2. Asghar Farhadi - Iranian movie director. Directed the 2012 Academy Award winning movie "A Separation" and the 2017 Academy Award nominated "The Salesman". Asghar Farhadi will not be able to represent his own movie during the Award ceremony because he may be a terrorist. How come they think he is a terrorist? Oh he was born in Iran, you know.

But the final one is a Knight of the British Empire...

1. Sir Mohamed Muktar Jama Farah - British athlete better known as Mo Farah and a resident of USA for the last couple of years. His wife and children live in the United States, but Mo Farah is originally from Somalia.

Now that's really nicely done, Mister Trump.