Category: Donald Trump

Timelines and subthreads (part 1: Trump Jr emails and meetings)

On By Hitting BregmaIn 2016 Election, Donald Trump, How I see the world, politics, World events3 Comments

Steven Harper has assembled a very useful and impressive timeline of all the connections between Trump and Russia. It’s posted here, and updated regularly. As impressive as I find it, the problem with it is that it’s a series of overlapping timelines, rather than one single timeline. A way to sort it by a specific topic would be helpful, and certainly possible electronically. I hope they will do this in the future. For now, there are a couple of subthreads that I found particularly interesting to follow, and worth putting together here. I’m sure more will be added to these in the future. If I’m moved to update, I’ll do it in a separate post to preserve the sense of what we know now. I’m also going to keep the subthreads in separate posts so they don’t get buried under each other. Some text is copied and pasted directly from the timeline, other text is paraphrased.

The Trump Jr email/meeting timeline is below, and others will follow:

Subthread 2: Trump campaign and the GOP platform position on Russia and Ukraine.

Subthread 3: all about Manafort

Subthread 4: who is Felix Sater?

Continue reading “Timelines and subthreads (part 1: Trump Jr emails and meetings)” →

Another example of why FoxNews makes me sad (or want to vomit, depending on the day)

On By Hitting BregmaIn Donald Trump, Education, How I see the world, politics2 Comments

I’ve used a fair number of Facebook posts to vent my frustrations about the methods that FoxNews uses (intentionally or otherwise), to paint pictures of the world that aren’t true. The logical fallacies they throw around. This morning, while doing my usual flipping between news stations, I came across this lovely example of awfulness from FoxNews’s guest, Mark Levin. I couldn’t help but do a little fisking of the segment in a Facebook vent, and I’m cross-posting here.

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“It’s all about trust”

On By Hitting BregmaIn 2016 Election, Barack Obama, Crime, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, How I see the world, Obama, politics, Terrorism, World events2 Comments

My wife has some strong opinions about things, and some of them she raises over and over again. One (of the many) with which I agree is that trust plays a fundamental role in how we feel about our leaders. We trust some leaders, and we don’t trust others. If we trust a leader, we assume that some action is legitimately justified. If we don’t trust a leader, that same action can be nefarious or a sign of incompetence. I’ll come back to something more contemporary in a minute, but let’s start with Obama and Bush.

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More distractions and straw men

On By Hitting BregmaIn Donald Trump, How I see the world, politics, Terrorism, World events2 Comments

I’ve been posting a lot on FaceBook (as me, not as Hitting Bregma) about the lousy journalism and logical fallacies I’m seeing on FoxNews. I don’t watch a ton of FoxNews, but I flip over somewhat regularly, just to see what’s going on. Many of these times, I’m struck by how different the coverage is. For instance, while all the other networks (regular networks and cable news) are focused on one story, like a new leak about something from the Trump administration, FoxNews will run a story about a person killed by an immigrant in a hit and run, or something equally unrelated to what everybody else is covering. I’ve also spent a lot of time harping on the classic straw man fallacies that they are so good at. They construct this ludicrous picture of a “liberal” or something that liberals are mad about, and then justifiably call them silly or hypocritical. The problem is that the whole premise gets it wrong. It’s not just FoxNews, but it’s also clearly a tactic of the Trump administration. Let’s look at a couple of key examples, including one from today.

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What’s a RINO?

On By Hitting BregmaIn Donald Trump, Economy, How I see the world, politicsLeave a comment

Todd Starnes has a piece on FoxNews today about all the people who want to take Trump down. “Mainstream media, Dems, RINOS: They all want to overthrow Trump.”  It’s a strange read to me. The premise (that all these people want Trump gone) doesn’t seem far from the truth, but the thing that gets me is the use of “RINO,” Republicans in name only.

Isn’t Trump the quintessential RINO? He’s different from classic (at least over the last few decades) republicanism. He’s against free trade (republicans have long supported free trade). He’s for increasing the deficit to “prime the pump” and stimulate the economy. That’s something that democrats fight for, not republicans. He’s praised health care systems of countries with single-payer, and himself has said that single-payer is a good idea. The GOP has strongly supported integration of religion and politics (not that the democrats haven’t, but religiosity and frequency of church attendance does correlate with republicanism). Trump only recently started talking about religious values.
 
So, is he a RINO himself? Or did that definition change to any registered republican who doesn’t support Trump? I guess in Todd Starnes world the answer is yes. 

How to know when things are upside down

On By Hitting BregmaIn Donald Trump, Fascism, How I see the world, politicsLeave a comment

I wish this was an instructional manual to help achieve the title. It isn’t. In fact, I have a hard time knowing when things are all messed up, or when my fears are irrational. That’s the thing with irrational fear, it doesn’t subside with reason. That said, I wouldn’t call myself afraid right now, but I am certainly concerned, and really disappointed. The Trump presidency continues to take a toll, with the primary victim being my faith in the decision-making and analytical abilities of my fellow citizens.

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Sometimes when you win, you lose. Sometimes when you lose, you win. And sometimes when you win or lose you really tie.

On By Hitting BregmaIn Donald Trump, Economy, Famous quotes, Health and Healthcare, How I see the world, politicsLeave a comment

 

 

The House of Representatives has voted, once again, to repeal the Affordable Care Act. This is not the first time they have done so, and it likely won’t be the last. They passed several bills and amendments since 2011 that repeal or limit Obamacare, and few of these became law. My guess is that this bill will die like the others have, but this time it will be killed by a more pensive (and smart?) Senate. Senate republicans are already saying that they can’t pass the current bill, and it’s not clear that they even have enough support for a vote. It’s hard to see how the House and President see this as a win, but they do, and they had a party at the White House about it. Vice President Pence rallied the crowd (of middle-aged to old white men) with a line, “Welcome to the beginning of the end of Obamacare.” Silly line. Doesn’t that assume that Obamacare will end? Doesn’t it assume that the previous votes weren’t the beginning of anything? Silliness all around.

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Putting on a show

On By Hitting BregmaIn 2016 Election, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Economy, Hillary Clinton, How I see the world, politics, societyLeave a comment

I don’t know why, but I’m still trying to view the Trump administration through rational eyes. Perhaps there are several versions of rational. There really shouldn’t be, but maybe what I think is rational isn’t actually rational. I am saddened by what I see as missed opportunities (see here and here), but I’m starting to accept the fact that it’s never going to happen. I’m starting to accept the fact that we all have things that motivate us, and I think what motivates Trump has more to do with celebrity than anything else. That’s not inconsistent with doing good things for the country, but I’m not convinced that it’s what drives him. I can imagine that he can convince himself that it’s driving him, but I think deep down the things that he embraces are things that feed his celebrity status. I should be clear that I’m not saying that there’s no concern for others in that. I think he enjoys entertaining people. I think he likes it when they’re excited to see him. I think he thrives on that. There’s a level of admirable selflessness in that. Like the comic who stands on stage making fun of himself to make you laugh. On the other hand, it leads to some pretty strange moments when the President of the United States acts that way.

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Do as I say, not as I do…but actions speak louder than words

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The scientist in me craves information. I want to know what’s going on and why. It’s undoubtedly what made science so attractive to me. It’s also what makes research with human subjects so unappealing to me. People lie, and can’t be trusted (of course I know that’s not entirely true, but when it comes to research, it’s a real problem and I’m continuously impressed by those who take on those problems). We know people lie because we see it all the time. This isn’t a misanthropic judgement, it’s just a statement about who we are. Most of it is unintentional, and we even lie to ourselves. How many times do we say that we don’t want to eat that last chocolate, but we eat it anyway? We say that we wanted to go to the gym, but we stayed on the couch instead. We become living contradictions. We have the verbal report (even the voice in our head) saying that want something (or don’t want something), but our behavior tells the opposite story. When faced with this contradiction, if we’re trying to figure out which is the real version (the not wanting to eat the chocolate, or the eating the chocolate), I think the behavior tells the real story. We may say or think that we don’t want to, and a piece of us might not want to, but if we eat the chocolate, we clearly wanted to more than we didn’t want to. To make it worse, how can I know if somebody is lying when they say that they don’t want to do something, but they do it anyway? Until we invent a mind-reader, and can be sure that we aren’t lying to ourselves, all I have is the action, and, to be as cliche as possible, actions speak louder than words. What makes me say this today? Sanctuary cities. It’s a stretch, but follow along if you want.

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