Donald Trump

Ben6899

Coopster the 1st wrote:

I only agree with DT on one policy and that is his approach taken to NATO...

If I may.

If you only agree with one of DT's policies (the NATO one), then by deduction you disagree with the remainder of his policies. Right?

Rick had a bit of a rant about DT in the EU thread (yes it is relevant to that) and you told him he has "out of touch leftie views".

So which is it?

briantrumpet

bendertherobot wrote:

In built? He bypassed even internal checks and balances to draft this one. Some Courts have stepped in. Others not. And the Judiciary is not longer listed on the White House page as part of that system.

I'm absolutely sure that Trump and Bannon are pushing boundaries deliberately to see what they can get away with. That Trump has so far not divested himself in any meaningful way whatsoever from his myriad business interests is making a mockery of these 'checks and balances'. I'm confident that this is a conscious part of Bannon's grander plan to reshape the US.

tangled_metal

bendertherobot wrote:

Tangled Metal wrote:

Just one point about POTUS they use their own airforce one and IIRC it flies into a private/secured area of i think Stanstead. Along with backup plane and a 757 loaded with kit/personnel. Airport gets shut down and same with main roads on the route he will take to his destination. I doubt any press gets near without his permission. He'll not notice protesters i reckon. Either way most POTUS have had protesters on state visitors. Hardly much pressure that way.

Sorry but it's not going to succeed or have any influence on DT. What it will possibly do is force the speaker to table a debating time if enough signatures are received on the official government petition site. It'll be 10 minutes late on, mid week and sandwiched between two longer but administrative debates. The last bit will mean MPs will dash out for comfort breaks before the second more significant debate. There will only be a handful of MPs keeping seats warm while waiting for the debate after it or some minor MPs using it to get noticed. Or even some more widely known troublemakers out to show their right on status as a protest MP. Before Corbyn took over the Labour party I'd have thought he'd do this sort of debate.

Sorry for being so cynical. I actually don't want to cosy up to him if he does half of what he campaigned on. I just don't believe petitions work. I mean, IIRC it was a Blair invention this government petition site. It's not really meant to work you know. It's just spin!

There's no secret tunnel to the Palace

Where did i suggest that? It's Stanstead, he'll be in a fast moving convoy. He'll be discussing protocols, policy or some such official matter with aides. He'll probably only pay attention to what's outside of the car when he's at least somewhere a bit more pleasant than Stanstead!

briantrumpet

benws1 wrote:

I must admit that I'm finding this whole thing rather amusing. There are a lot of angry people around.

It could be worse. Clinton could have won. :shock:

People need to stay angry - part of the plan will be to wear people down so they just shrug their shoulders at subsequent outrages. Though if you don't think targeting people for the religion of a country they were born in is outrageous, and is just amusing...

tangled_metal

Conflict of interest legislation doesn't apply to POTUS or his VP. IIRC congress in their wisdom tabled an amendment to the relevant law in 1784 or1795 and it passed. They are deemed to have such power as to mean without this exemption they'd have potentially a conflict of interest over most of what they did.

It might not go down well but i guess he could negotiate business on state visits to other countries without any problem under the law. So talk about CoI is a bit pointless. It is convention to enter a blind trust though. Doesn't mean they have to.

bendertherobot

Tangled Metal wrote:

bendertherobot wrote:

Tangled Metal wrote:

Just one point about POTUS they use their own airforce one and IIRC it flies into a private/secured area of i think Stanstead. Along with backup plane and a 757 loaded with kit/personnel. Airport gets shut down and same with main roads on the route he will take to his destination. I doubt any press gets near without his permission. He'll not notice protesters i reckon. Either way most POTUS have had protesters on state visitors. Hardly much pressure that way.

Sorry but it's not going to succeed or have any influence on DT. What it will possibly do is force the speaker to table a debating time if enough signatures are received on the official government petition site. It'll be 10 minutes late on, mid week and sandwiched between two longer but administrative debates. The last bit will mean MPs will dash out for comfort breaks before the second more significant debate. There will only be a handful of MPs keeping seats warm while waiting for the debate after it or some minor MPs using it to get noticed. Or even some more widely known troublemakers out to show their right on status as a protest MP. Before Corbyn took over the Labour party I'd have thought he'd do this sort of debate.

Sorry for being so cynical. I actually don't want to cosy up to him if he does half of what he campaigned on. I just don't believe petitions work. I mean, IIRC it was a Blair invention this government petition site. It's not really meant to work you know. It's just spin!

There's no secret tunnel to the Palace

Where did i suggest that? It's Stanstead, he'll be in a fast moving convoy. He'll be discussing protocols, policy or some such official matter with aides. He'll probably only pay attention to what's outside of the car when he's at least somewhere a bit more pleasant than Stanstead!

You said he'll not notice protestors, so assuming no tunnel he goes through London. Where, if people carry through their convictions, there will be a few. His mind may not be able to process their presence but he will see them.

veronese68

Tangled Metal wrote:

Where did i suggest that? It's Stanstead, he'll be in a fast moving convoy. He'll be discussing protocols, policy or some such official matter with aides. He'll probably only pay attention to what's outside of the car when he's at least somewhere a bit more pleasant than Stanstead!

No, he'll be checking his Twitter feed. You know, the important stuff.

burnthesheep

Our local airport in Raleigh had expected 150 protesters and ended up with 1000 to 1500.

The hypocrisy among the evangelical crowd on the refugee and immigrant bit is sickening. I still believe, but I have read and been taught that you are supposed to care for the alien. There's about 50 teachings on it that American evangelicals conveniently ignore on this issue.

They also like to call themselves "pro-life". That's not true. It's only "pro-birth". The child and mother be damned once the birth is over, they don't want to support either of them.

At first, when he won, I was holding out hope he would turn off campaign mode and turn on "statesman mode". Didn't happen.

A lot of the conservatives are suddenly silently hiding in their holes in embarrassment. You wanted a Supreme Court against abortion, congrats. Now where is your morality on refugees and immigrants.

During his 90 day ban I wonder how many people turned away that could have become strong supporting Americans will instead turn to the evil guys.

rjsterry

Tangled Metal wrote:

Conflict of interest legislation doesn't apply to POTUS or his VP. IIRC congress in their wisdom tabled an amendment to the relevant law in 1784 or1795 and it passed. They are deemed to have such power as to mean without this exemption they'd have potentially a conflict of interest over most of what they did.

It might not go down well but i guess he could negotiate business on state visits to other countries without any problem under the law. So talk about CoI is a bit pointless. It is convention to enter a blind trust though. Doesn't mean they have to.

Does it not come under the prohibition on receiving anything from foreign states?

bendertherobot

This was May's previous response:

For good reasons the Government does not routinely comment on individual immigration and exclusion decisions.

The Home Secretary may exclude a non-European Economic Area national from the UK if she considers their presence in the UK to be non-conducive to the public good.

The Home Secretary has said that coming to the UK is a privilege and not a right and she will continue to use the powers available to prevent from entering the UK those who seek to harm our society and who do not share our basic values.

Exclusion powers are very serious and are not used lightly. The Home Secretary will use these powers when justified and based on all available evidence.

The Prime Minister has made clear that he completely disagrees with Donald Trump’s remarks. The Home Secretary has said that Donald Trump’s remarks in relation to Muslims are divisive, unhelpful and wrong.

The Government recognises the strength of feeling against the remarks and will continue to speak out against comments which have the potential to divide our communities, regardless of who makes them. We reject any attempts to create division and marginalisation amongst those we endeavour to protect.

Home Office

bendertherobot

On the Obama did the same point:

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/30/sor ... ation-ban/

rjsterry

Bizarrely, no. 10 now seems to be trying to imply that it was the Queen's idea and TM was just passing on the invitation. I know we've invited some pretty unsavoury characters to Buckingham Palace over the years, but if TM is so hell bent on this, she should at least admit that it was her idea.

rjsterry

bendertherobot wrote:

On the Obama did the same point:

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/30/sor ... ation-ban/

Can't see without registering. Could you summarise?

bendertherobot

rjsterry wrote:

bendertherobot wrote:

On the Obama did the same point:

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/30/sor ... ation-ban/

Can't see without registering. Could you summarise?

Less detailed but:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fac ... cdeaf62f65

Anyone who clicks on the original, if first visit, should get one free. Could they cut and paste?

bendertherobot

rjsterry wrote:

Bizarrely, no. 10 now seems to be trying to imply that it was the Queen's idea and TM was just passing on the invitation. I know we've invited some pretty unsavoury characters to Buckingham Palace over the years, but if TM is so hell bent on this, she should at least admit that it was her idea.

It might be. It might also be that she wants to appease him or have a pop. If May is lying she will be caught out here.

veronese68

bendertherobot wrote:

Anyone who clicks on the original, if first visit, should get one free. Could they cut and paste?

Here you go

Sorry, Mr. President: The Obama Administration Did Nothing Similar to Your Immigration Ban

There are so many reasons to detest the Donald Trump administration’s executive order on “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” that it’s hard to know where to start.
Others have already argued eloquently about its cruelty in singling out the most vulnerable in society; its strategic folly in insulting countries and individuals the United States needs to help it fight terrorism (the ostensible purpose of the order in the first place); its cynical incoherence in using the September 11 attacks as a rationale and then exempting the attackers’ countries of origin; its ham-handed implementation and ever-shifting explanations for how, and to whom, it applies; and, thankfully, its legal vulnerability on a slew of soon-to-be-litigated grounds, including that it may violate the Establishment and Equal Protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
In light of all that, and particular in light of the new White House’s acknowledged aversion to facts, it may seem like a minor point that President Donald Trump and his advisors, in seeking to justify and normalize the executive order, have made a series of false or misleading claims about steps taken five years earlier by the Barack Obama administration. In case you missed it, a statement from the president published Sunday afternoon read:
“My policy is similar to what President Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months. The seven countries named in the Executive Order are the same countries previously identified by the Obama administration as sources of terror.”
Leaving aside the unusual nature of team Trump looking to his predecessors’ policies for cover, it seems worth pointing out this statement obscures enormous differences between the executive order the White House issued on Friday and what the Obama administration did. Here are six important points of differentiation:
1. Scope: The Obama administration conducted a review in 2011 of the vetting procedures applied to citizens of a single country (Iraq) and then only to refugees and applicants for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs), created by Congress to help Iraqis (and later Afghans) who supported the United States in those conflicts. The Trump executive order, on the other hand, applies to seven countries with total population more than 130 million, and to virtually every category of immigrant other than diplomats, including tourists and business travelers.
2. Rationale: The Obama administration’s 2011 review came in response to specific threat information, including the arrest in Kentucky of two Iraqi refugees, still the only terrorism-related arrests out of about 130,000 Iraqi refugees and SIV holders admitted to the United States. Thus far the Trump administration has provided no evidence, nor even asserted, that any specific information or intelligence has led to its draconian order.
3. Impact: Contrary to Trump’s Sunday statement and the repeated claims of his defenders, the Obama administration did not “ban visas for refugees from Iraq for six months.” For one thing, refugees don’t travel on visas. More importantly, while the flow of Iraqi refugees slowed significantly during the Obama administration’s review, refugees continued to be admitted to the United States during that time, and there was not a single month in which no Iraqis arrived here. In other words, while there were delays in processing, there was no outright ban.
4. Process: The Obama administration’s review was conducted over roughly a dozen Deputies and Principals Committee meetings, involving Cabinet and deputy Cabinet-level officials from all of the relevant departments and agencies — including the State, Homeland Security and Justice Departments — and the intelligence community. The Trump executive order was reportedly drafted by White House political officials and then presented to the implementing agencies a fait accompli. This is not just bad policymaking practice, it led directly to the confusion, bordering on chaos, that has attended implementation of the order by agencies that could only start asking questions (such as: “does this apply to green card holders?”) once the train had left the station.
5. Far stronger vetting today: Much has been made of Trump’s call for “extreme vetting” for citizens of certain countries. The entire purpose of the Obama administration’s 2011 review was to enhance the already stringent vetting to which refugees and SIV applicants were subjected. While many of the details are classified, those rigorous procedures, which lead to waiting times of 18-24 months for many Iraqi and Syrian refugees, remain in place today and are continually reviewed by interagency officials. The Trump administration is, therefore, taking on a problem that has already been (and is continually being) addressed.
6. The notorious “seven countries”: The White House’s claim that the seven countries listed in the executive order came from the Obama administration is conveniently left unexplained. A bit of background shows that Trump is borrowing from a totally different context: soon after the December 2015 terror attack in San Bernadino, Obama signed an amendment to the Visa Waiver Program, a law that allows citizens of 38 countries to travel to the U.S. visa-free (and gives Americans reciprocal privileges in those countries). The amendment, and subsequent steps by the Obama administration, prevented citizens of the seven countries, or anyone who had recently traveled to those countries, from coming to the United States visa free.
In other words, it did not bar anyone from coming to the United States, but only denied a relatively small number of people an exceptional privilege. Even so, to mitigate unintended effects of that amendment, the administration used a waiver provided by Congress to ensure that it did not impact certain categories of people who traveled to those countries, like journalists, aid workers, or officials from international organizations.

bendertherobot

Good man

bendertherobot

#faketears taking over from #fakenews now

rjsterry

Thanks V68. Not exactly a surprise to find the claim was all BS.

kingstongraham

media bias. Sean Spicer says it is "a small price to pay as opposed to somebody losing their life". I want to hear him on gun control.

fat daddy

yeah banning people from those 7 countries makes no sense ...... the amount of terrorist deaths they have in the USA it would be far better to ban the police

mr_goo

Can't quite understand the furore over the 7 country, 90 day ban and the subsequent petition to stop Trump's state visit to the UK.
First off over the last couple of years our royal family have met with some heads of state from countries with atrocious human rights and animal rights records.
Secondly where are the petitions and demonstrations about Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Muslim majority countries banning Israeli citizens from entering their countries. And I also believe that if ones' passport has an Israeli visa stamp in it one is still not permitted to gain entry (I'd like clarification on this, but it was discussed on Radio 5 today).

Trump is a berk. But where is the balanced view?

rjsterry

Mr Goo wrote:

Can't quite understand the furore over the 7 country, 90 day ban and the subsequent petition to stop Trump's state visit to the UK.
First off over the last couple of years our royal family have met with some heads of state from countries with atrocious human rights and animal rights records.
Secondly where are the petitions and demonstrations about Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Muslim majority countries banning Israeli citizens from entering their countries. And I also believe that if ones' passport has an Israeli visa stamp in it one is still not permitted to gain entry (I'd like clarification on this, but it was discussed on Radio 5 today).

Trump is a berk. But where is the balanced view?

The USA aspires (aspired?) to a higher standard than some of the other countries you mention. It also has significantly more power in the world than Qatar or Saudi Arabia.

This is already affecting UK citizens with dual nationality. Trump is testing the checks and balances of the US system to see what he can get away with, which should concern all of us.

Are people absolutely consistent in who or what they protest against? Of course not, but that doesn't invalidate their concerns over Trump.

tangled_metal

rjsterry wrote:

Tangled Metal wrote:

Conflict of interest legislation doesn't apply to POTUS or his VP. IIRC congress in their wisdom tabled an amendment to the relevant law in 1784 or1795 and it passed. They are deemed to have such power as to mean without this exemption they'd have potentially a conflict of interest over most of what they did.

It might not go down well but i guess he could negotiate business on state visits to other countries without any problem under the law. So talk about CoI is a bit pointless. It is convention to enter a blind trust though. Doesn't mean they have to.

Does it not come under the prohibition on receiving anything from foreign states?

I'm no expert but there's an amendment or whatever they call it specifically exempting POTUS and VP. It's the only two positions in federal government that is. IIRC It's a very early legislation, 1790s, that was brought about following a court case in one of their higher courts. The law came in and the horse trading added the exemptions.

Of course there's other reasons why but this just made sure. Can't remember the other reasons but it was believed that those positions were except before the legislation change.

tangled_metal

bendertherobot wrote:

This was May's previous response:

The Home Secretary has said that coming to the UK is a privilege and not a right and she will continue to use the powers available to prevent from entering the UK those who seek to harm our society and who do not share our basic values.

Home Office

Interesting. So how does that apply to certain EU figures who have been so steadfast in their comments over Brexit? IIRC there's a few EU parliamentarians who've made quite clear they're going to aid in the Brexit pain. No cooperation in the difficult process coming our collective ways. Does this policy also apply to Tusk, Junker and a few low countrys' representatives in Europe and at home? IMHO you could exclude just about any French president from at least Charles de Gaulle onwards on that basis!

bendertherobot

I don't see why not. Which are visting?

briantrumpet

Tangled Metal wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Tangled Metal wrote:

Conflict of interest legislation doesn't apply to POTUS or his VP. IIRC congress in their wisdom tabled an amendment to the relevant law in 1784 or1795 and it passed. They are deemed to have such power as to mean without this exemption they'd have potentially a conflict of interest over most of what they did.

It might not go down well but i guess he could negotiate business on state visits to other countries without any problem under the law. So talk about CoI is a bit pointless. It is convention to enter a blind trust though. Doesn't mean they have to.

Does it not come under the prohibition on receiving anything from foreign states?

I'm no expert but there's an amendment or whatever they call it specifically exempting POTUS and VP. It's the only two positions in federal government that is. IIRC It's a very early legislation, 1790s, that was brought about following a court case in one of their higher courts. The law came in and the horse trading added the exemptions.

Of course there's other reasons why but this just made sure. Can't remember the other reasons but it was believed that those positions were except before the legislation change.

Some opinion here: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... st/503333/

veronese68

Tangled Metal wrote:

bendertherobot wrote:

This was May's previous response:

The Home Secretary has said that coming to the UK is a privilege and not a right and she will continue to use the powers available to prevent from entering the UK those who seek to harm our society and who do not share our basic values.

Home Office

Interesting. So how does that apply to certain EU figures who have been so steadfast in their comments over Brexit? IIRC there's a few EU parliamentarians who've made quite clear they're going to aid in the Brexit pain. No cooperation in the difficult process coming our collective ways. Does this policy also apply to Tusk, Junker and a few low countrys' representatives in Europe and at home? IMHO you could exclude just about any French president from at least Charles de Gaulle onwards on that basis!

Your selective editing missed this bit:

bendertherobot wrote:

The Home Secretary may exclude a non-European Economic Area national from the UK if she considers their presence in the UK to be non-conducive to the public good.

Pretty sure the people you list are within the EEA.

orraloon

bendertherobot wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Bizarrely, no. 10 now seems to be trying to imply that it was the Queen's idea and TM was just passing on the invitation. I know we've invited some pretty unsavoury characters to Buckingham Palace over the years, but if TM is so hell bent on this, she should at least admit that it was her idea.

It might be. It might also be that she wants to appease him or have a pop. If May is lying she will be caught out here.

When one is a poodle, rather than a corgi, one's only concern is how high one can jump on command.

Garry H

rjsterry wrote:

Garry H wrote:

People objecting to the democratically elected representative of the world's most powerful nation, meeting up with someone with "God's right" to rule. How I'm laughing.

Divine Right went out with the English Civil War. Do try and keep

I'm not the one that needs to keep up, it still appears on their coat of arms