Would You Trust the Trump Administration to Teach Digital Literacy?
Plus: Trump murder meme makes waves, California requires abortion pill at public universities, and more...
The most attention-getting news this Monday morning has been about a video played at a Trump 2020 conference at Mar-a-Lago. The video—shown as part of a "meme exhibit" at the right-wing American Priority conference—was built around a reedited scene from the film Kingsman: The Secret Service; it shows an actor with the president's head imposed on him, fighting and shooting avatars of Black Lives Matter, Adam Schiff, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and various media outlets as they try to flee from "the Church of Fake News."
"Content was submitted by third parties and was not associated with or endorsed by the conference in any official capacity," American Priority spokesperson Alex Phillips said in a statement. Nonetheless, the violent fantasy fits right in with real rhetoric from President Donald Trump, who frequently describes media as the enemy of the people and throws around words like "traitor" and "treason" when talking about political opponents.
Oddly, some of those same opponents want to give the Trump administration more sway over how American children interpret news and online content.
The Digital Citizen and Media Literacy Act, introduced in the House last Friday, would give the Department of Education $20 million to help fund "media literacy curricula" for kindergarten through 12th grade.
"The funds would be available to local education agencies to create programs on media literacy and to state agencies to create 'advisory councils' to establish state-wide media literacy guidelines," reports The Hill. But federal officials will be setting the parameters of those programs and deciding which groups get the grants.
The bill was sponsored by seven Democrats—Reps. Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Jim Langevin of Rhode Island, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Xochitl Torres Small of New Mexico, Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, and Lauren Underwood of Illinois.
In a statement, they repeatedly refer to Russian election meddling, social media, and the need to safeguard our democracy from foreign influence.
Americans (of all ages) surely have some problems with media literacy. But it seems unlikely that we can combat those with federally funded and guided training—especially under an administration with such a loose interpretation of truth. Meanwhile, the lawmakers lauding the legislation seem unwilling to extend their discussion of social media literacy beyond combating current boogeymen and reiterating Democratic talking points.
Over the summer, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.) introduced a bill similar to the new House legislation. "Adversaries are targeting our democracy with sophisticated information campaigns designed to divide Americans and undermine our political system," she said at the time.
Another bill introduced by House Democrats recently (the Digital Equity Act) would also fund "digital literacy" training for various adult populations.
FOLLOW UP
"Antiwar" president ramps up military presence in Middle East. Trump is using phony antiwar rhetoric to defend his actions last week on Syria—even as his administration touts plans to send another 1,800 troops to the Middle East.
QUICK HITS
- California will require public colleges to provide prescription abortion drugs on campus. The state also just banned vaping on public beaches and "lunch shaming" students by refusing to serve them if they have unpaid food fees.
- Here's a good thread on how incarcerated people being temporarily allowed out into the community was once much more common than it is today.
- A federal court said Virginia can't make marriage license applicants list their race.
- Is the end of Netflix binge culture coming?
- Protecting and serving:
Retaliatory arrest & public strip searching, all because a citizen non violently walked by & said "I hate police". If you cant handle that, shouldnt be a cop. Police are agents of The State, emboldened to commit brazen acts of corruption because of the immunity that State affords https://t.co/czE1IMKRpf
— Liberal, Not Lefty (@liberalnotlefty) October 14, 2019
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
The state also just banned vaping on public beaches and “lunch shaming” students by refusing to serve them if they have unpaid food fees.
Both of which lead to unwanted pregnancies.
Hello.
Calvin Ball has a new rule. Every time Reason uses the term ‘right wing’ it must be offset with a ‘left-wing!”
California. Does it ever tire of its horny fetish for laws and regulations? This is what you get in a one-party state. Complete abandonment of restraint, respect and rationality but full embrace of the retard.
But in California there is no “left wing”. There is only the party and the ‘right wing’ which is made up of some of the party and every thing that is remains.
i cant trust i open this for satta king https://www.sattaking.info
Police are agents of The State, emboldened to commit brazen acts of corruption because of the immunity that State affords
If you can’t handle that, shouldn’t live in a creeping police state.
Just host your videos somewhere else.
Is the end of Netflix binge culture coming?
We never had the attention span to sustain it.
Are we officially out of content?
An interesting observation… Disney’s “new” content seems to be retelling old stories with CGI instead of traditional animation. Other movie productions, like the Addam’s Family movie, are doing the exact opposite.
I’m looking forward to their CGI update of Song of the South.
Well, Disney’s old stories were retelling of Grimms fairy tales, so it’s kind of precedent to rehash.
…it shows an actor with the president’s head imposed on him, fighting and shooting avatars of Black Lives Matter, Adam Schiff, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and various media outlets as they try to flee from “the Church of Fake News.”
If this isn’t a call to ban violence from Hollywood, I don’t know what is.
At least ban political cartoons!
Ban the use of orange face
So I have to burn my copy of “Team America: World Police” because of the violence against Progressives, right?
So, they played a video that jokes around about church shootings at a Trump rally. Stay classy, Trump.
Nonetheless, the violent fantasy fits right in with real rhetoric from President Donald Trump, who frequently describes media as the enemy of the people and throws around words like “traitor” and “treason” when talking about political opponents.
Likewise, I’m sure.
This is the publication that barely pushed back about tweets asking for the covington kids to be fed to wood chippers.
Let’s be fair. Considering Soave was in the vanguard against the inaccurate reporting in the case, I think Reason did its part.
To be clear, I agree with your recollection of said events.
To be sure, Robby has been the most objective writer at Reason.
I PURPOSELY DIDN’T USE “TO BE…” IN MY COMMENT SO IT COULDN’T BE USED LIKE THIS.
Blaspheming against the media priesthood is a serious offense.
“Antiwar” president ramps up military presence in Middle East. Trump is using phony antiwar rhetoric to defend his actions last week on Syria—even as his administration touts plans to send another 1,800 troops to the Middle East.”
In related news, ENB apparently can’t tell the difference between defending an ally from within their territory at their invitation and pulling troops out of a raging quagmire–which is willful stupidity.
Does she oppose pulling troops out of Syria?
Is she in favor of invading Syria?
ENB doesn’t give a shit either way. She’s just anti-Trump.
So Afghanistan isn’t endless war because we’re fighting at the request of a govt?
This observation is obtuse in so many ways, it’s hard to know where to start. Just a couple of highlights.
1) Because we’re being stupid in Afghanistan, you think that means it’s smart to be stupid in Syria, too? Because Afghanistan is a quagmire, we should get involved in another one in Syria?
This only computes to people with TDS–if your primary criticism of Trump’s foreign policy is that it’s Trump’s foreign policy.
2) Trump is still negotiating to get out of Afghanistan.
“U.S. Moves to Restart Taliban Peace Process”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-moves-to-restart-taliban-peace-process-11570964400?
—-WSJ, October 13, 2019
You’re talking to Pod. He makes baby Jeffrey’s hot takes from Vox look halfway intelligent.
Anyone ever seen pod and turd at the same time? The stench suggests not.
P.S. I’m not sure it’s impossible to both be in favor of withdrawing from Afghanistan and opposed to negotiating with the Taliban, but I think that position would be extremely difficult without contradiction.
At best, that argument is likely to come across as naive; at worst, that argument is likely come across as dishonest.
From the perspective of a neutral observer, what’s more likely, that someone making that argument both wants to withdraw from Afghanistan and opposes negotiating with the Taliban, or that someone making both arguments harbors a hatred of Donald Trump that is so intense, that he or she would argue for conditions that make withdrawing from Afghanistan impractical rather than support a policy of Donald Trump?
“”So Afghanistan isn’t endless war because we’re fighting at the request of a govt?”‘
Obama said he won that war. Why are we still talking about it?
Does she oppose pulling troops out of Syria?
Are they actually being pulled out of Syria entirely though? I can’t find a straight answer to that anywhere.
They’re being pulled out of the part where the war is heating up to an area where it isn’t.
Do you support pulling our troops out of Syria entirely but oppose keeping our troops out of the fray for . . . some reason?
This isn’t like being pregnant. Because being out of it entirely is better than staying out of the fighting doesn’t mean that staying out of the fighting isn’t better than fighting a civil war on the side of the Kurds.
The funny part is the NYT even had to admit yesterday not every Kurd is a good Kurd, and how problematic that area is. Somehow Pod and baby Jeffrey didnt read that article yesterday.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/world/middleeast/syria-turkey-invasion-isis.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Turns out the situation is complicated and getting involved in Turkish Kurd relations has been problematic for decades.
The ‘good’ Kurds are no-shit old-school communists who have been fighting to establish their own independent socialist state for half a century. Those are the ‘good guys’. Of course Reason has never met a communist guerrilla that wasn’t deserving of military aid.
Just for the record, it isn’t and shouldn’t be about whether the Kurd’s are good people or bad people–or whether this is a bad bunch of them or a good bunch . . .
This is and should be about the interests of the United States.
If it’s in the best interests of the United States to ally ourselves with this Kurdish group and defend them to the death, then that’s what we should do. If it is in the best interests of the United States to withdraw and leave them to the Turks, then that’s what we should do.
If it’s in the best interests of the United States to ally ourselves with nasty, evil, and awful groups, then that’s what we should do.
If it’s in the best interests of the United States to abandon good and honest people to suffer at the hands of evil lunatics, then that’s what we should do.
Are you seeing a pattern here?
There are all sorts of considerations that go into whether something is in the best interest of the United States, including ethical calculations, and honest and smart people can disagree about those interests–but within that disagreement about policy, it’s the United States’ best interests that should always prevail. If you can’t put it in terms of American interests, why bother?
I have yet to see where it was in the best interests of the United States to invade, occupy, or fight in Syria. I have yet to see where it’s in the best interests of the United States to ignore or undermine the Constitution. I suppose those arguments may be out there, but I’ve never seen one that was strong enough to persuade me of either one. And the fate of the Kurds, be they good or bad, has never been the operating consideration for me.
To whatever extent helping the Kurds, the Mexicans, the Israelis, or the British is of benefit to the United States, that’s what we should do.
In the weird mind of the New York Times, the United States government exists for the benefit of the suffering people of the developing world. That’s half way to neoconservatism. You might even say that the New York Times is staffed with Marxists who haven’t yet graduated to neconservatism.
You might even say that the New York Times is staffed with Marxists who haven’t yet graduated to neconservatism.
Might?
I’m not an Objectivist at all, and yet there was something important that my fellow libertarians miss out on when we ignore some of that “virtue of selfishness” logic.
If people don’t dig Rand for aesthetic reasons anymore, they can get the same thing from Adam Smith. But we really need to proceed from the primary perspective that working in our best interests is a good thing.
Where libertarians and Objectivists used to part ways was over Adam Smith observations about how working in our own best interests produces the best results for society at large, even Hayek said that he came to think of himself as a free market person because it was the system that was the best for the downtrodden and struggling.
To Rand, that wasn’t icing on the cake of capitalism. Benefiting the weak and downtrodden may have been no better to her than a necessary evil.
Regardless, her lack of shame for being preoccupied with her own best interests is what’s missing now. I think the government would have a hard time justifying the invasion of Syria to a group of voters who were preoccupied with their own best interests and the interests of the United States. You have to care more about the Kurds than the interests of the United States to get to that point.
Also, strictly speaking the U.S. government doesn’t have the rightful authority to send its citizens to die in any interests other than those of its citizens. Of course, the government has operated outside of its authority for so long that many people see it as “normal” (as least, as long as those sent to die are other people’s kids).
Agree on all points. And to add to that, even if one has US interests in mind, why is it patently obvious to some that our best interests lie in not pulling out now? What’s the exit strategy otherwise, why might it work, what are the chances it will work, and what are the risks? NO ONE who opposes pulling out now has touched on any of that. Yes, abandoning an ally sucks. But all of our options with regard to Syria suck. These people act like there’s a no-downside alternative, without saying what it is.
“Antiwar” president ramps up military presence in Middle East.
Looking for that elusive peace prize.
Snubbed!
California will require public colleges to provide prescription abortion drugs on campus.
Of all the medication to provide for “free” this would have to be it.
Wonder how this effects federal funding… hope it gets looked into.
More bad economic news.
Charles Koch current net worth: $60.3 billion
OK, so he’s above the 60 billion barrier. Barely. And you know what? By the end of this week he’ll probably fall below 60 billion.
This is exactly what Koch / Reason libertarianism wants to prevent. Our philosophy exists to make the richest people on the planet even richer — not to see them stagnate and tread water.
#DrumpfRecession
#VoteDemocratToHelpCharlesKoch
A federal court said Virginia can’t make marriage-license applicants list their race.
But they need a registration system in case Virginia ever returns its common sense miscegenation laws.
Common sense marriage safety rules.
A real journalist decided to look at the makeup of that fox poll last week supporting impeachment. Found put the makeup of population percentages was heavy on democrats.
https://nypost.com/2019/10/12/fox-news-pollster-braun-research-misrepresented-impeachment-poll-analysis/
Reason journos too lazy for basic journalism.
Time to unskew those polls!
Oh jeff. Just keep doubling down on ignorance. The researcher was a Democrat dear. Try reading the articles sweetie.
Clinton by 100 electoral votes amirite?
Only if the electoral college survives until November 2020.
The Steele Report lives on. Piece of Schiff is expected to call Fiona Hill to testify, despite her being fired before the Ukraine call. Turns out she is linked to anti trump outfits and to Christopher Steele.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/30/fiona-hill-russia-trump-adviser-228758
I’ve been Porsche shamed by the dealership for long enough!
Fortunately, you don’t know the horrors of Ferrari shaming.
Newsweek has a fantastic piece about the indefensible decision to deny Greta Thunberg the Nobel Peace Prize she so obviously deserves. Instead they gave it to “Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed”? I don’t even know who that is!
The Babylon Bee mentioned this as well.
https://babylonbee.com/news/nobel-peace-prize-committee-criticized-for-selecting-winner-who-actually-did-something-for-world-peace
If you don’t know, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed definitely deserved the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the seemingly intractable war with neighboring Eritrea by the simple expedient of standing on the border angrily shouting “How dare you!” until both sides were shamed into putting down their weapons.
Hard to deal with.
He is a man, so not fair to little girls; but he is black and she is white, so privilege has to be considered.
(The fact that she has done nothing for world peace is not a factor due to the Obama rule.)
“”(The fact that she has done nothing for world peace is not a factor due to the Obama rule.)””
Apparently you can bomb people for eight years and still get to keep the prize.
Impeachment is going so well for the democrats they are now interviewing people under House disposition rules to stop the GOP from even commenting on the inquiries. Of course the democrats keep leaking written testimony providing a one side narrative. This is the strength of their argument…
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/dems-ratchet-up-impeachment-secrecy
Elections have consequences and your tears are delicious.
God. You sound like a crying version of baby jeffrey. 2016 was an election and you havent stopped crying since.
I do like how you openly support a break if norms to openly criminalize politics. Arent you special.
LMAO. Like when Trump won the presidency and Republicans won the elections for a majority of senators and state houses? Feel free to get in back while Trump drives the car for a while, bitch.
And yet you fuckers still lose and cry. Couldn’t even repeal Obamacare. You’ve even invented a term to explain why you never succeed — the RINO.
Rino has existed ad a term for decades dumb ass.
Because you losers have been losing for decades.
“Because you losers have been losing for decades.”
Still hoping that the fed gov will allow p[rice fixing on the net, you pathetic piece of shit?
“…Couldn’t even repeal Obamacare…”
Pick them cherries, turd; It’s all you got, loser.
Savor them yellow tears.
The term “digital literacy” means the skills associated with using technology to enable users to find, evaluate, organize, create, and communicate information.
Oh, FFS! Why don’t the Dems require people to be able to read, write, and solve logic problems before touching a computer?
Videos of Tesla’s “smart summon” feature have been hitting the intertubes. This allows Tesla owners to summon their car to them from within a parking lot with their phones–and the car drives itself to the owner with no one inside. You can see videos of the scariness here:
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/10/i-watched-over-100-tesla-smart-summon-videos-heres-what-i-learned/
And, yes, from the perspective of someone who rides a motorcycle every day, it’s more than scary. Drivers in grocery store parking lots already have a hard enough time noticing much less tracking motorcycles around them–from the first person perspective of the driver’s seat. A third person perspective isn’t likely to improve that situation.
And the technology still requires the Tesla owner to monitor the car and hit a kill switch on their phone if the car is about to kill someone!
Should people be allowed to do this?
Yes.
Will it make going to the grocery store in Solana Beach feel like riding my motorcycle through an episode of Battle Bots?
Yes, it will. Actually, I trust the remote control operators of a fire spraying battle bot more than I trust the kill switch talents of the average Tesla owner. And if the Tesla owner can sue Tesla to cover the owner’s damages to me, I may still be in a wheelchair.
Tesla can rely on taxpayer money to pay the judgements.
Spongebob Squarepants is an alt right racist.
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/spongebob-violent-racist-colonizer
Even the theme song, according to Barker is problematic, as it denounces the area as one full of “nautical nonsense.”
“Plus, that fucker is gay!”
Nowadays publicity or perish.
In a report Jeff will silent be refreshing Vox for a take on… IG report on the origins of the trump investigation is to release on Friday. Initial reports show strong indications comey took it upon himself to start the investigation with heavy involvement with the IC.
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/07/22/comey_under_scrutiny_for_own_inquiry_and_misleading_trump_119584.html
STAY TUNED. Friday will be fun.
Maybe it had something to do with Trump hiring a guy connected to Russian mobsters as his campaign manager? Maybe it was Trump naming the guy who was once described by Kremlin spies as a useful idiot as his top foreign policy advisor? Or could it have been the secret deal to bribe Putin in return for Russian permission to build Trump Tower Moscow? I can’t wait to find out why Trump’s own appointee Rosenstein decided Trump and his campaign needed to be investigated for links to the Russian conspiracy to undermine Clinton and elect Trump.
Maybe you might post without lying one day, you slimy pile of shit.
Or maybe all of those are insane thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories that died with the Mueller report and it’s just another plain old Clinton influence peddling scandal.
Keep up the hope. 3 more years, 40 million more a d you’ll finally get him Pod.
Trump grew angry at Comey for failing to tell the American people in public what he had been told at least three times in private — that he was not not under investigation in “this Russian business.” Comey, in fact, promised Trump on several occasions that he would try to find a way to acknowledge that publicly. He never did.
“I forgot!”
My theory has always been that since the investigation was a counter-intelligence investigation, Trump not only wasn’t but couldn’t be a target of the investigation. Counter-intelligence investigations are fishing expeditions with few of the usual probable cause checks looking for subjects suitable for criminal investigations whereupon the probable cause checks kick in. Of course, there’s a pretty damn good suspicion that Trump was in fact the target of the Russian counter-intelligence probe, but they couldn’t legally make Trump the subject because then they’d have to make it a criminal investigation and produce some probable cause for warrants and wiretaps and so on. See for example, their tapping of the Trump Tower phone lines on the premise that they were monitoring incoming Russian traffic and nothing else, but naturally they had to monitor all the traffic in order to determine which parts were Russian. Comey was technically correct in saying Trump was not under investigation, but he refused to say so publicly because he knew his sainthood would come into question when it later turned out that Trump was very much informally under investigation and Comey might be forced to give a Clintonesque answer to the question of why he said Trump wasn’t under investigation when he was.
A federal court said Virginia can’t make marriage-license applicants list their race.
But Virginia still requires a photo showing the applicant’s race on drivers licenses, right? RIGHT?!
Hard-hitting journalism from the New York Times:
What, Exactly, Is Tulsi Gabbard Up To?
“As she injects chaos into the 2020 Democratic primary by accusing her own party of ‘rigging’ the election, an array of alt-right internet stars, white nationalists and Russians have praised her.”
Look, when we say things like #ElectWomen, we certainly don’t mean women like Gabbard. Honestly even elderly straight white cis-male Joe Biden is a better choice for 2020.
#GabbardRussia
The video—shown as part of a “meme exhibit” at the right-wing American Priority conference—was built around a reedited scene from the film Kingsman: The Secret Service…
Doubly insulting because, as I recall, the scene in question was the slaughter of an over-the-top fundamentalist Christian church.
I’m a Catholic whore, currently enjoying congress out of wedlock with my black Jewish boyfriend who works at a military abortion clinic. Hail Satan, and have a lovely afternoon madam.
“Tech giants shift profits to avoid taxes, but there’s a plan to stop them”
[…]
“Digital tax dodgers, take heed: International leaders have advanced a plan to prevent large multinational companies like Apple, Facebook and Amazon from avoiding taxes by shifting profits between countries.”
[…]
The framework proposal, released last week by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, would allow countries to tax large multinationals even if they do not operate inside their borders.”
https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Tech-giants-shift-profits-to-avoid-taxes-but-14518568.php
If it moves, tax it…
No level of greed can ever outdo government greed. Govt can never, ever, take enough.
Yeah I remember that time when he went on a national news program, accused his opponents of treason, and called for them to be executed. Or that time when one of his celebrity fans decapitated Joe Biden in effigy. Or that time when Hollywood made a movie about assassinating his political rivals. Or that time when he held a public rally and told his supporters to assault Democrats in every public venue.
Do you really think anybody actually believes your ridiculous lies you retarded used up cunt?
Oh, also, resistance isn’t always rational. Just pretend the fictional video is an actual race riot and that there’s some big black cock involved somehow and I’m sure you can find a way to justify it.
Considering that the only reason Republicans want the Ukraine call whistleblower(s) to testify in person is so that the Republican House members can identify them and Trump can have Barr, Mitch, you-pick-em, send the hit squad to eliminate them (and, yes, I’ve seen folks claim this with complete sincerity), it seems (to them) to be a reasonable precaution.
Maybe he can murder a few American citizens, start 3 civil wars and give nuclear weapons to a rogue theocracy bent on exterminating Jews so he can earn Reason’s accolades as a foreign policy master. Or maybe all he needs to do is grow a big black cock.
That video was one of the most over the top, ridiculous, obscene, vile and hilarious memes I’ve ever seen. The amount of things going on in it are ridiculous Bernie getting shot by the DNC, Harvey Weinstein strangling Bill Clinton and Romney stabbing Trump in the back were all hilarious. You have to hand it to the trumpers they can f’n meme. Also this is your daily reminder that the NYT published a piece of fanfic fantasizing a Secret Service officer killing Trump and most of the media memory holed the fact that a Sanders supporter explicitly and for political reasons tried to assasinate the entire republican leadership on a baseball diamond in Alexandria a mere couple of years ago. Also the media that is so breathlessly clutching it’s pearls are hyping this video to new heights, a video mind you that before this controversy had only 80k views on youtube and was posted there a year ago, with the breathless hope and anticipation that it actually inspires violence so they can report about Trumps divisiveness for the millionth time. Fuck everyone involved and Go Nationals.
ENB has clearly lost it.
Enjoy the decline!
(This message contains 0 actual violence)
This is the scenario that the media has painted from the time Trump started his run for the presidency. At Trump rallies when violence happened it was Tump’s fault.When violence happened at Clinton’s rallies it was Trump’s fault. When violence happened at universities and colleges where conservatives tried to speak it was conservatives and Trump’s fault.
“Is the end of Netflix binge culture coming?”
The Morning Show is hardly the first streaming series to release weekly, in fact the decision to release 3 episodes immediately instead of just 1 already makes it more bingeable than some of the alternatives
In other news, Trump has effectively called a truce in the trade war with China, and that’s kind of a big deal.
I don’t think there’s an honest way to read this other than that Trump appears to have blinked. He gave up a bunch of what China wanted–a delay in new tariffs–and the only thing he got in return for it was some soybean purchases (that will boost his reelection chances in farm states) and some vague promises. He walked away from that same deal more than once before, so what changed?
I think it’s based purely on his reelection prospects. Taking further tariffs off the table and stabilizing the future plans of businesses for the time being should be a shot in the arm for the economy and his campaign. The most consistent predictor of whether a candidate from the incumbent party will remain in the White House is still how well the stock market does in the months before the election. This is also, presumably, why he’s pushing the Fed to cut rates now. If they cut rates now, it may take a year (or more) for the effects to be felt by the voters on Main Street.
Notice a couple of things about the upcoming coverage:
1) If anyone who was criticizing Trump for the trade war before now turns around and criticizes him for ending it, it’ll be a lot like people who criticize our foreign adventure in Syria finding some way to criticize Trump for pulling our troops out the way of the civil war. When you’re an anti-Trump hammer, every issue looks like an anti-Trump nail.
2) I haven’t heard anyone going after Trump for colluding with the Chinese to get himself reelected, and yet it seems pretty clear to me that this is more or less what’s happening. It underscores my belief that if you’re a public figure and you want to do something truly awful in America, you’re probably okay–just so long as you do it out in the open.
Part of Hillary Clinton’s job as Secretary of State was approving arms sales from American defense contractors to foreign countries, and while Secretary of State, she accepted about $100 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation from defense contractors and foreign governments that had arms sales pending at the State Department for her approval.
No one batted an eye!
One of the reasons I think she was able to get away with that was because the Clinton Foundation and the State Department regularly reported those donations to the government. If she’d robbed a bank on live television, no one might have cared–so long as she announced the bank robbery beforehand and reported the income to the IRS. In the American mind, in order for it to be really bad, it has to be done in secret.
That may be why Trump can change directions on trade policy in order to get reelected–with no one batting an eye–but when he makes a classified phone call to the president of the Ukraine with no quid pro quo, the media and 40% of the American people act like he just robbed a bank.
Good post Ken.
I don’t think 40% of US people care one way or another. But the larger point stands.
(Sadly with the Clinton Foundation, she was able to parlay those donations into more influence by doing out sweetheart contracts on the backend… Wonder why Haiti is still a shithole? Clinton Foundation contacts responsible for much of the rebuilding…)
hey Ken I bet yesterday afternoon felt better after the Skins game.
>>>The man yells: “I can’t wait to see you on the front of the news.” He repeats himself. The cops approach and this happens.
the man won.
I’m still not sure the Dolphins didn’t throw the game at the end.
They shouldn’t have gone for two at that point, and the onside kick attempt may have been for show.
We’re like a minor league team at this point. Until The Danny fires Bruce Allen, we’ll stay that way.
gotta throw the ball *into* the end zone there, Ryan Fitzpatrick lol
You wouldn’t call that play if you wanted to score!
They wouldn’t let the Dolphins visibly throw the game. If they knew the Dolphins did that, the NFL would have to get involved. It would be like a gambling scandal.
So they called the very last play you would call. They would run it ahead, or pass to a screen on the outside, or pass into the end zone. There is no way they would pitch to his own backfield in that situation. in the whole playbook, it’s the play that’s least likely to score.
And it wasn’t 3d chess misdirection either. The defense showed run blitz and they that’s what they did!
They threw that game.
‘”Adversaries are targeting our democracy with sophisticated information campaigns designed to divide Americans and undermine our political system,” she said at the time.”‘
This has been going on for something like 250 years. How did we survive???
How did we survive???
Considering that prior to 1991, the campaigns of the East focused on making socialism palatable to the West, I am not sure we did.