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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Trump’s tantrums won’t cost him the presidency – yet
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Trump’s tantrums won’t cost him the presidency – yet
Dysfunctional doesn’t begin to describe the White House. The high level of turnover among staff, the erratic decision-making, the presidential public streams-of-consciousness made with zero empathy for their subjects, the failure to actually deliver on key policies like The Wall: we knew all this and have done pretty much since Day 1, if not before. What we didn’t know before the sensational New York Times article[1] was the extent to which members of his own administration don’t trust him and are resorting to extraordinary measures to thwart his worst inclinations.
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And it is well-known there are record numbers of senior places unfilled, and record turnover of senior officials, which even has its own Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Trump_administration_dismissals_and_resignations
Sounds just like David Cameron.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45435813
But has Pence himself actually denied it? The first few pieces I've checked from a google search that headline Pence's denial are actually reporting that his staff denied it, often with what cynics would call non-denial denials. For instance, Time ran the headline: Vice President Pence Denies He's the 'Lodestar' Behind Anonymous New York Times Op-Ed above a story reporting that: “The Vice President puts his name on his Op-Eds,” Pence’s chief of staff Jarrod Agen said in a tweet. Obviously I have not checked all reports so perhaps Pence really has denied involvement.
This weekend’s revelations are just another nail in his political coffin.
Those efforts included a now-famous, private White House dinner with Trump just a week after the president was inaugurated, in which Trump, Comey writes, told him: “I need loyalty. I expect loyalty.”
Comey writes that to him, “The demand was like Sammy the Bull’s Cosa Nostra induction ceremony,” referring to Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, a former leader of the Gambino crime family, whose testimony ultimately helped convict mob boss John Gotti.
Comey responded with silence, he writes in the book, and Trump moved the conversation along. Later in the dinner, Trump returned to the subject: “I need loyalty.”
“You will always get honesty from me,” Comey writes that he responded.
“That’s what I want, honest loyalty,” Trump said.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/comey-book-claims-president-trump-sought-loyalty-mafia/story?id=54420635
Lethargy will aid Trump. We're closer to the start of 2019 than 2018. Not that much longer until the 2020 campaign (given US presidential campaigns seem to start a bloody long time before the actual elections. If they try and remove him it'll likely come through the more usual 2020 channels than the 25th Amendment.
Of course, if they didn't have such elections then doing nothing and pussyfooting about would be self-defeating inertia.
Chris Leslie probably likely to have a no confidence vote soon, he is the name I had heard most from a while back along with Woodcock (could be some self selecting bias here as they were probably my 2 least favourite Labour MPs) he suffered a no confidence vote within one branch of the wider constituency by a decent ratio.
- AV
The work of Satan.
- Christianity and gays
I fully endorse gay rights (marriage, next of kin status, adoptions etc). As with other religions, I endorse the right of people to believe and worship in the way they see best, provided it does not harm others or seek to impose their views on others. If Christians wish to enjoy fruity fun time with one another, this is entirely up to them.
- Legalising cannabis
Mixed feelings. Taxed and regulated weaker cannabis might provide a legal and safe way for consuming it, whilst also improving state coffers. However, studies have indicated cannabis can cause psychological problems and I'd want at least a pilot into any legalisation and, preceding that, a full run-down of the pros and cons from a health perspective.
- Brexit
As a Democrat, of course I respect the right of the electorate to determine their destiny. Following our departure, a full policy review of the new position and how to make the best of our situation (in both the short and long term) would occur.
- Sandals with socks?
These were worn by the Romans when they conquered Britain and, as such, form a crucial part of our national history. Whilst I do not wear sandals myself, I do support those who wish to do so, whether with or without socks.
I'd also like to emphasise the environmentally friendly aspect of the solar death ray, which can be used to annihilate our enemies whilst producing no carbon dioxide whatsoever.
If you devote an article (by someone who listened) to the topics in the podcast then even those who didn't listen will be guided towards that discussion and those who did will have the extra knowledge and talking points provided already.
Also in regard to the small parts vs longer podcast as you already discuss a few topics could the podcast not be released in full and also cut up into a few smaller parts. If necessary maybe an extra minute or two recording for each smaller part to smooth transitions in the cut up version without affecting the current flow of the longer episode.
I wonder if the short sentences points to a business background? When I worked for an American Corp the 'house style' was short sentences, short paragraphs with one point and 'one page memos'. Pence is a lawyer.
OT - did DavidL mention how he got on in his election yesterday?
But Pence must still be favourite. It is his style and the vice-president cannot be sacked by the president (although Trump can choose a new running mate for 2020).
Re Elon Musk
Peter Thiel is the person who deserves the credit for PayPal. You don’t hear much about him anymore because he’s not flavour of the month in California (he’s a Republican)
Thiel founded Confirmity (a money transfer company) in 1998. It merged with Musk’s X.com (an idea for online banking in March 2000). Musk was fired in October 2000 and replaced by Thiel.
eBay also deserves credit - they bought the start up in 2002 and developed the business we know today
Musk has traded off PayPal for most of his career. He’s a good promoter (ie good at raising capital) but I’m not convinced that makes him a good businessman
Tesla can’t produce on schedule abd loses money. A business that can’t scale is problematic. I don’t know enough about SpaceX.
https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1038204127170441216?s=21
https://twitter.com/msmithsonpb/status/1038199014372638720?s=21
Unless this is some intentional play or I have a higher opinion of Pence than I should there is no way he would have used the phrase lodestar. Clever people make mistakes admittedly but I would have scanned that article, along with maybe some incredibly trusted person (eg wife husband), incredibly carefully. Even rewritten it just to absorb every line again once finished.
The party splits are
Con 16%
Lab 21%
LD 11%
I would read it as *This* does not make BJ unfit... because he already is. This just confirms it.
And, after a decent interval, switch sides completely!
Musk's idea of bringing rapid development practices from software to rockets worked - just. However it's utterly failed in Tesla - the market is too large, and you are selling to hundreds of thousands of consumers, not a handful of large organisations. You can coachbuild a hundred items a year, but not a hundred thousand.
It should also be noted that he has relied heavily on investment from his mates on alleged good terms, e.g. the lads at Google. This is unavailable to most businessmen.
I really want to like Musk, and there is much to admire, but he needs to grow up a little. Replacing Tesla's board might be a good start ...
So it is quite easy to believe most people would accept the newspaper's guarantee of anonymity and take no other precautions, even if they knew what precautions to take.
Lawyers taking their time.....I'm shocked I tell you! Shocked!
That's very volatile with +4s & -4s.....
@rcs1000 has got this right. Even the Radiohead bits are not too long.
MPs take note:
Conservative voters however were much more likely to back May over Johnson – 55% of Conservative voters backed May for best Prime Minister, with only 29% saying Johnson.
Commenting on the findings, Survation Chief Executive Damian Lyons Lowe said:
"The polling shows the public are largely unconcerned over revelations regarding Johnson's private life, and marginally prefer his Brexit plans over Theresa May’s - small comfort for Boris and his supporters.
‘However, it suggests "Prime Minister Johnson" would be a vote loser for the Conservative party among voters in general and Conservative voters significantly preferring Theresa May as Prime Minister to Johnson.
‘Despite the Prime Minister's poor favourability ratings and the public's clear view that Brexit negotiations are going badly, Boris Johnson, on the evidence, would not appear to be the candidate to improve the fortunes of the Conservative party.’
Lab and Tories neck and neck still, despite both parties attempts at seppukko.
Likelihood of voting Con if Boris PM; more / no diff / less (net more minus less)
Lab: 13 / 44 / 35 (-22)
LibD: 8 / 35 / 51 (-43)
“Does Chuka come across a bit... pathetic?” would have sufficed.
Tribal loyalty trumping intelligence or backbone is just pathetic. Reminds me a little of a Babylon 5 episode. An alien race, every so often, splits into two camps, chosen by chance, each preferring a different colour. Then they have a massive fight until one side wins. Because tribalism.
Dr. Foxy, timestamps help with such a problem.
https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/jeremy-corbyn/news/98067/chuka-umunna-calls-jeremy-corbyn-
What was the straw that broke the camel's back? And why?
Second - and this point might sound controversial but I think he has Asperger's. There is no filter with him, and Unsworths insult about the sub being stuck up his ass he has basically taken entirely literally. I have no idea if this helps him his law suit, he probably needs to be sued at this point quite honestly. The lack of filter may also have been the reasoning for the whole.Tesla private business. He probably was considering doing it bearing in mind his character. The rest of the board have overruled him though.
Third, he is basically a good and optimistic person. He cares deeply about climate change in particular; he is a genius with more ideas springing into his head in a week than many people (I'd include myself here) have in a lifetime. And they are original ideas. However you want to label his brain function, it is wildly different to most other people's.
Paul Goodman, editor of the website Conservative Home, said that Mr Johnson’s latest marital turbulence would have limited consequences. “As far as the activists are concerned most of them have already discounted this in his share price,” he said. “The Conservative Party isn’t the model of tongue-clicking finger-wagging say it was at the time of [John] Profumo in [the early Sixties]. It could dent his ratings a bit but I doubt it could break them.”
Normally that might have some sway. But you have to think that the Corbynistas will just glide on, unbothered, saying "ah, but last time....he made up a much bigger gap...."
Brexit is Corbyn's achillies heel. It is the area that he is most vulnerable on at Conference, and unlike Israel policy, it is current and matters. Brexit will be Jezza's downfall if he doesn't shift opinion.
It's a view.
Personally, I like the right to political dissent, and dislike a media organisation banned from broadcasting in the UK for being too horrendous (must be ropey if they paid Corbyn to be on) filming the first stage of crushing someone for not genuflecting before the Cult.
And that's before we get onto the deranged, socialist economic views of someone who used to praise Venezuela's approach. Tends not to do that now that the consequences of socialist insanity have been unleashed.
"he is basically a good and optimistic person."
I fail to see how that can be said from his public acts and utterances. Certainly his recent actions have not been 'good', and his treatment of his staff is not *good*, yet alone his wives.
I'd also argue that saying we need to move a million people to Mars just in case Earth gets wiped out is not optimistic.
"he is a genius with more ideas springing into his head in a week than many people"
He might be a genius, but again I am unsure the second part of the sentence holds water. He may claim it does, but I'm far from convinced.
Where he does have skill is to take ideas and run with them - he has a filter where most of us are put off by people saying: "You can't do that." He's also excellent at assembling small teams focused on a small problem, whilst he appears less good at managing massive teams.
I think Musk does literally see himself as Tony Stark (and the filmmakers used him as a model for the character). Instead, he should model himself on Branson: a figurehead. with a canny idea for new markets and leave the real work to his underlings, e.g. Shotwell at SpaceX.
But I'm just a pleb on t'Internet. I daresay he'll manage without my contributions.
Trump's made all his money out of essentially real estate inflation and golf courses.
Trump is not dealing with the Republican party of McCain, Reagan and George H Bush; if he was he would never have won the nomination first time around. He is dealing with the Trump version of the Republican party and it adores him. Anyone taking that on is going to have a hell of a mountain to climb. Despite the Chuka type mumblers, wailing ineffectively in the background whilst remaining in the party, I seriously doubt whether Trump will even face a meaningful primary challenge. If he does, just like Corbyn, his slavering attack dogs will go for the throat.
Winning the Presidency again is a tougher call but the advantages of incumbency in the US are immense and the US economy is being pumped with disgraceful and unsustainable deficits to deliver short term growth. I have a modest bet on his re-election and I am still pretty comfortable with that.
As for liking the right to political dissent that is something you have in common with Corbyn supporters.
I can detect no useful human virtue in Trump, who is a deeply morally corrupt social parasite, albeit in financial terms a successful one, like a giant tapeworm in the body of US democracy.
Mr. Jezziah, I'm not sufficiently friendly with Hamas, historically ignorant, or economically illiterate enough to be a Corbyn supporter.
I will hazard a guess. Their youngest child is 19 and, presumably, off to university. So a woman looks around, sees her children safely out of the home and into adulthood, looks at a husband carrying on being a hurtful, selfish arse and asks herself whether she wants to keep on putting up with this or whether she would like a life for herself.
She could find a lover for herself. There are plenty of 50+ women who do this. Or she could decide she wants the opportunity to have a new life. Plenty of women at that stage start divorce proceedings.
No idea whether this is the truth or not. But women will put up with a lot when children are young but not once the child-rearing years are over. They get a second wind, have much to offer and don’t see why this should be wasted on someone who no longer deserves it.
Running Tesla has proven even harder than sending rockets up for him, see also my previous point 2 about his lack of filter. He's the last person I would seek out a job with quite honestly, say I was an aerospace engineer... I'd be much happier with a job at ULA or NASA. I think he's made this up quite honestly. If we're ever truly going to become an interstellar species though, the first step is Mars. It's more of the whole Everest/Marianas Trench/1969 moon landing that appeals. The illustrations of the High Frontier, the childish sense of wonder that one day we can be amongst the stars... obviously we're nowhere near that yet - so he's set himself the goal of creating a martian colony; and hey he's working to stop earth having the runaway Venus problem which another million years of fossil fuel burning would probably bring about with Tesla.
The visions of Sagan, Gerard O'Neill, the way humanity managed to go fricking backwards in space terms after Apollo - thats what drives him.
ETA Musk, another subsidy junkie, might prove more significant as a maker of batteries than cars.
I suspect both sides fear they'll lose if they try to move and are paralysed. However, that is still qualitatively different to having the party permanently in the hands of the likes of Corbyn.
https://twitter.com/CNET/status/1038325195767984128
https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1038278366925864961
Compare and contrast with the Labour Party, who are absent from the Brexit debate, instead spending all their time deciding just how racist they are allowed to be. And then deselecting those they think aren't allowing them to be racist enough.
Other people comes to him with their ideas, he rents them his brand and then screws then on the equity. See the history of Virgin Atlantic as a good case study.
This place could probably run the country quite satisfactorily, avoiding many of the pratfalls that our current crap of politicians seem intent to engage in. But it wouldn't be as much fun as leading the lives we do.
"But why now, after so many decades together?"
"Well, we thought we should wait for the children to die."
However, I would suggest he hasn't done this without support from colleagues and that it is a preamble to the conference and the attempt they are making to get a peoples vote (come on be honest, call it a second referendum) adopted as party policy.
When this inevitably crashes that is the moment for a mass walkout from Corbyn's party. Remember 205 labour mps voted for the definition, if a good number of them walked away it would be a big moment.
Indeed, Sky suggested this morning that Brexit and the second referendum was the only thing holding the party together