US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6477

At least 11 people were killed and 50 were wounded in shootings over the Christmas weekend in Chicago, where this year’s homicide rate is the highest it has been since the 1990s.

More than 753 homicides have occurred in Chicago this year, including seven people who were killed on Christmas Day. More people were fatally shot in Chicago this Christmas than had been killed in the three previous years’ holidays combined.

Chicago police superintendent Eddie Johnson said on Monday that most of the holiday weekend violence occurred in areas with gang conflicts.

“These were deliberate and planned shootings by one gang against another,” Johnson said. “They were targeted knowing fully well that individuals would be at the homes of family and friends celebrating the holidays. This was followed by several acts of retaliation.”

Chicago police said that there were 753 homicides and 3,495 shootings from 1 January to 25 December. The same period in 2015 saw 478 homicides and 2,393 shootings.

Experts said that this year’s soaring violence is tied to cuts in social services, unemployment, distrust of police and an overworked, understaffed police force.

From Friday afternoon through Tuesday morning, at least 61 people were shot.

Eight of the weekend shootings had multiple victims, including an attack on the city’s south side where a man opened fire on a group of people celebrating on a porch. Two brothers, aged 18 and 21, died and five others were wounded.

Chicago police have a computerized algorithm to rate how likely people are to be victims of gun violence or commit acts of gun violence, based on their arrest records and known affiliations.

Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Chicago police department, told the Chicago Tribune that 90% of those fatally wounded were in this algorithm.

“While we have promising leads, this unacceptable level of gun violence demonstrates the clear and present need for policymakers to convene in January and give Chicago the gun sentencing tools against repeat offenders so that we can adequately hold people accountable,” Guglielmi said.

Though the nationwide crime rate has been stagnant for several years, Chicago is driving an increase of the homicide rate in the country’s 30 largest cities, which is expected to grow by 14% this year, according to an analysis published by the Brennan Center earlier this month.

The center had predicted 732 people would be murdered in Chicago by the end of the year. The Chicago Tribune, which monitors citywide homicides using a different definition, said on Tuesday morning 768 people had been killed in 2016.

The transformation of power in Washington begins at President-elect Donald Trump’s ear.

There are the intimates: Stephen K. Bannon, the controversial provocateur and keeper of Trump’s populist, nationalist flame; Jared Kushner, the unquestionably loyal son-in-law who whispers his machinations; and Jeff Sessions, the firebrand senator from Alabama whose clout is all-encompassing and often unseen.

There are the operators: ­Reince Priebus, the consummate party man who will manage the White House; Paul D. Ryan, the wonky House speaker who stands ready to implement a wholesale overhaul of the tax code, health care and regulations; and Mitch McConnell, the wily Senate majority leader who intends to personally tilt the Supreme Court and federal judiciary to the right.

And then there is Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who is positioned to exert sweeping authority on all matters foreign and domestic as Trump’s partner in governing.

These seven men, as well as Trump’s adult children and a few others, will make up an unusual power grid in a capital city used to a hierarchical structure. Trump is presiding over concentric spheres of influence, designed to give him direct access to a constellation of counselors and opinions.

Such an approach also risks bringing confrontation or even paralysis as feuding factions work to further their own goals, edge out adversaries or distract Trump — as happened more than once during his presidential campaign.

As president, his associates said, Trump will seek rather than shun competing advice. His presidency will be governance as a series of ongoing conversations.

“He’s got this habit where he calls people every day to check in,” said Barry Bennett, a former Trump campaign adviser. “He likes a lot of input, multiple, competing voices at the table. So a top-down White House is not him.”

This has certainly been the most extraordinary transition of power in recent American history. Donald Trump has effectively sought to assert the prerogatives of the presidency and make U.S. foreign policy from the moment he was elected, rather than waiting for niceties like actually being sworn into office or for his predecessor to leave. But even with the astonishing spectacle of Trumpian tweet storms to captivate us, the most interesting dimensions of this transition may well be found where they always are, down in the weeds, in the details of the emerging organizational chart of the government that is being put in place.

There is a long tradition in Washington of the fortunes of administrations and of key players within those administrations being made amid the seemingly innocuous structural and personnel decisions that come daily, often with little fanfare, during the months between the election in November and the inauguration in January.

...

So what has the Trump administration done thus far? Last week, it unveiled a new White House entity called the National Trade Council (NTC) to oversee many of the same responsibilities of the NEC and the USTR. On Tuesday, it announced that it is re-establishing the HSC as a separate agency. And, just for kicks, the transition team also announced the creation of a position called the “special representative for international negotiations,” to be filled by a Trump Organization executive vice president and lawyer who will be involved — somehow — in all U.S. negotiations around the world.

So, we now have four major interagency councils in the White House — the NSC, the NEC, the NTC, and the HSC. We have at least five entities that now feel empowered to take the lead on U.S. international trade policy: the NEC, the NTC, the new special representative for international negotiations, USTR, and the Commerce Department (whose incoming nominee for secretary, Wilbur Ross, has asserted that he will have a leading role in this regard). You have the overlap between the NSC (which, for example, might handle a terrorist threat where it originated) and the HSC (which might handle a threat where it manifested itself). You have the historic rivalry between the State and Defense departments over national security policy leadership, exacerbated by the move to add even more clout within the White House through the creation of the international negotiator job and the return to two security-focused interagency leadership groups residing there (the NSC and HSC). You still have two top-level officials in the intelligence community (the director of national intelligence and the director of the CIA) overseeing or leading 17 different intelligence agencies. And … well, you don’t need another “and” here. This is a mess waiting to happen. Rivalries, confusion, and miscommunication are all likely outcomes.

What is emerging looks less like a tight, well-managed structure for the world’s largest and most complex organization and more like a loose holding company. Perhaps that should not be a surprise given that the Trump Organization is a loose holding company with hundreds of entities within it and lots of different independent operating units. The key in such structures, however, is a strong coordinating hand at the top. But who is that going to be?

Reports from within the Trump Organization say Trump was not that day-to-day manager. He focused on building the brand, being its face, its messenger. He would dip in and make a few decisions on key deals or an element of a construction project — but leave the rest to his managers.

On December 29 2016 02:27 LegalLord wrote:
As I could have predicted, instead of going after Turkey, our president-elect decided to go after Obama.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/814110460761018368
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/814113616110751744
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/814114980983427073

To be fair he is right. Obama is just randomly passing dickish regulation to make life more difficult for Trump.

On December 29 2016 02:27 LegalLord wrote:
As I could have predicted, instead of going after Turkey, our president-elect decided to go after Obama.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/814110460761018368
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/814113616110751744
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/814114980983427073

To be fair he is right. Obama is just randomly passing dickish regulation to make life more difficult for Trump.

On December 29 2016 02:45 LegalLord wrote:

Israel UN vote, MANPADs to Syrian rebels, additional sanctions on Russia, in general just gestures to piss people off and add more obstacles for Trump's stated policy goals.

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s Twitter post last week that the United States must “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability” provoked confusion and anxiety that intensified the next day when he added, in a television interview, “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”

Largely unspoken in the tumult, but running just below the surface, was a deep uncertainty about the future of a cornerstone of America’s nuclear policy: its program to safeguard the nation’s atomic stockpile.

A central mission of the nation’s weapons laboratories is to ensure that the country’s nuclear weapons still work if needed. To do that, the government has long relied on a program that avoids the need for underground testing, instead using data from supercomputers and laboratory experiments and inspecting the warheads.

But some nuclear analysts say that the Trump administration is likely to face decisions that could upend the bomb program, leading to a resumption of testing and perhaps a new global arms race if they are mishandled. Adding to the concern is Mr. Trump’s choice of a politician with no expertise in nuclear or technical matters, former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, to lead the Energy Department, which runs the nation’s nuclear-weapons labs and the safeguards program.

Mr. Perry, who will follow two highly accomplished physicists if confirmed, is far more familiar with issues involving the oil and gas industry. But weapons programs account for more than half of the Energy Department’s $30 billion budget.

The United States has not conducted a nuclear test since 1992, and some weapons experts believe that it has lost ground to Russia and China as they ambitiously improve their arsenals and delivery systems. Mr. Perry is certain to receive pressure to resume low-yield underground tests to ensure that existing weapons will function, and to help create new bomb designs, which have been off-limits in the Obama administration. How Mr. Perry responds to that pressure could define his tenure.

“Support from outside the Trump administration for testing will be robust,” said John Harvey, who from 1995 to 2013 held senior positions overseeing nuclear weapons programs in the Energy and Defense departments. “I don’t think they will be compelling in changing minds, absent a serious problem that we uncover in the stockpile,” he said.

But Mr. Harvey, who does not believe testing is needed for now, fears that those influences could break the bipartisan compromise in Congress that produced the nuclear “modernization” program: an expensive effort to upgrade nuclear delivery systems — bombers, missiles and submarines — and refurbish existing weapons in the arsenal. This program ensures both that the weapons can strike an enemy if necessary and that they work as designed.

“I think a strong push to do nuclear testing could upset the consensus,” he said.

Since 1998, when India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests, provoking global condemnation, only North Korea is known to have undertaken tests. Some experts fear that if the United States began testing again, it would risk a new arms race by opening the door to testing for many other countries that want to improve or develop nuclear arsenals.

For that reason, testing would face opposition on many fronts. “It would be unbelievably stupid of us to start testing again,” said Burton Richter, a physics Nobel laureate and emeritus professor at Stanford who has advised presidential administrations since the 1970s.

Absent testing, the arsenal today is something like a 1967 Chevy that sits for decades without being driven, said Thomas Karako, a senior fellow in the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “You have to have the confidence that if you have to crank the engine, it will turn on,” Mr. Karako said.

Nearly all Clinton voters (87%) believe Russia hacked Democratic emails. Eight in ten Trump voters disagree. On the other hand, nearly half of Trump supporters give at least some credence to the Pizzagate rumors. In contrast, 57% of Clinton voters say that is definitely not true (some, however, answered that it could be true),

Once a story is believed, it also seems to stay believed. Donald Trump may have proclaimed that President Obama was born in the United States (having doubted that for years), but half of his supporters still think that it is at least probably true that the President was born in Kenya.

On December 29 2016 02:45 LegalLord wrote:

Israel UN vote, MANPADs to Syrian rebels, additional sanctions on Russia, in general just gestures to piss people off and add more obstacles for Trump's stated policy goals.

On December 29 2016 07:48 xDaunt wrote:

It's just more of Obama's typical petulance on parade. All he's doing is undermining the arguments of his supporters that his failure to get anything done is strictly a function of the GOP. But come January 20, that will all be in the past. Trump is gonna flush the entire Obama era down the toilet, and not a moment too soon.

On December 29 2016 07:52 GreenHorizons wrote:


Keep in mind the GOP has campaigned for the last 6 years on repealing the ACA, they have both houses and the presidency. If it doesn't get repealed and replaced Republicans will be shown to be just as ineffective as Democrats, then maybe, just maybe, more folks will be clued into the fact that they don't represent us at all. That the reason that they can't pass their promises isn't because of the other side, but because there was never any intention to pass the things voters want in the first place (unless they happen to line up with their big money donors preferences).

On December 29 2016 07:48 xDaunt wrote:

It's just more of Obama's typical petulance on parade. All he's doing is undermining the arguments of his supporters that his failure to get anything done is strictly a function of the GOP.

On December 29 2016 02:45 LegalLord wrote:

Israel UN vote, MANPADs to Syrian rebels, additional sanctions on Russia, in general just gestures to piss people off and add more obstacles for Trump's stated policy goals.

On December 29 2016 07:48 xDaunt wrote:

It's just more of Obama's typical petulance on parade. All he's doing is undermining the arguments of his supporters that his failure to get anything done is strictly a function of the GOP. But come January 20, that will all be in the past. Trump is gonna flush the entire Obama era down the toilet, and not a moment too soon.

On December 29 2016 09:17 Slaughter wrote:


Yep definitely looking forward to a good president's legacy getting shit on by someone who really doesn't know what he is doing...just a populist who had super high unfavorable ratings who squeezed out an EC win vs someone who happened to be liked less by a couple of swing demos at the time of the election. So looking forward to the mix of clueless missteps and standard issue gop policy retreads.

On December 29 2016 08:17 xDaunt wrote:

Don't worry, I have plenty of scorn reserved for the GOP, and I eagerly await seeing whether the GOP is as impotent and/or as uninterested in pushing a conservative agenda now as it has been for the past twenty years or so.