Showing posts with label trump. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trump. Show all posts

Monday, May 23, 2022

News: May 23

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Wednesday, February 16, 2022

New York Times: February 16: Hong Kong, Omicron, Trump, Bhutan

U.S. caseloads fall below the Delta peak. Deaths remain high at around 2,328 per day. ....... the organizers of the outdoor music festivals Coachella and Stagecoach said on Tuesday that they would not require attendees to be masked, vaccinated or tested for the coronavirus.

Hong Kong Can’t Live With the Virus. It Can’t Stop It, Either. An Omicron surge has exposed the weaknesses of a system that was once a world leader in containing the coronavirus. ......... As Hong Kong sinks under its worst wave yet of the coronavirus, overwhelmed hospitals have left patients waiting on sidewalks. People have stood in testing lines that wind across parks and soccer fields. Cases are still growing exponentially, as officials opt for targeted lockdowns rather than a citywide one. Researchers have warned that by summer the latest wave could kill nearly 1,000 people — more than four times the number that have died of Covid in Hong Kong over the past two years. .......... Until this wave, Hong Kong kept the coronavirus largely in check. The city’s combination of tight social distancing rules and aggressive contact tracing meant that the previous four waves of infection were curbed relatively quickly. For much of 2021, the city recorded no local cases. But the highly transmissible Omicron variant assaulted the cracks in the city’s defenses. ......... Hong Kongers could also prove fiercely resistant to a citywide lockdown. When Mrs. Lam visited a locked-down housing estate last month, residents showered her with insults from their windows — a display of public dissent rarely seen since the imposition of the security law.

P.J. O’Rourke Wrote With High, Cranky Style in a Shrinking Tradition O’Rourke, who died on Tuesday at 74, was a sharp-toothed satirist whose conservatism wasn’t doctrinaire. ...... He was well-read; he was, it often seemed, the only funny Republican alive. ....... Some of his best writing was about the open road. ..... For many years O’Rourke was Rolling Stone’s foreign-affairs desk chief. He was a detector of dichotomies, when he wasn’t camped out like Graham Greene in a hotel bar. “Each American embassy comes with two permanent features,” he wrote: “a giant anti-American demonstration and a giant line for American visas.” ........... “By loudly denouncing all bad things — war and hunger and date rape — liberals testify to their own terrific goodness,” he wrote. He added: “It’s a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don’t have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal.” ......... Yet he voted for Hillary Clinton. “She’s wrong about absolutely everything,” he said, “but she’s wrong within normal parameters.” About Trump he said, “This man just can’t be president. They’ve got this button, you know, in the briefcase. He’s going to find it.” ............ “Aren’t we pro-life?” he asked. “Aren’t refugees life?” ........ “The weirder you’re going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.” ...... O’Rourke was a charmer, not a haranguer. Each of his essays, I’d guess, won more converts to conservatism than a lifetime of columns by Charles Krauthammer or Michelle Malkin. ...... When my wife is anxious about our tax debt but I badly want to go out to dinner, I remind her, as O’Rourke wrote, that it’s “better to spend money like there’s no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there’s no money.”



Late Night Dunks on Trump for Getting Dumped During Tax Season “It’s like getting divorced on Christmas Eve,” Jimmy Kimmel joked. ...... Last week, Donald Trump’s longtime accounting firm Mazars USA cut ties with the former president and his family, saying financial statements they prepared for him from 2011 to 2020 should “no longer be relied upon.” ....... “If there’s any karma in this world, they dropped him for a younger, hotter client.” — STEPHEN COLBERT ........ “She tested positive for three substances that can be used to treat heart problems. Imagine how devastating that must be: You train your whole life to be in the Olympics, follow all the rules, put in all the hours, eat the right things. Last minute, you accidentally take your grandfather’s heart medicine.” — JIMMY KIMMEL ........ “But again, I’m not saying Russia did it on purpose; I’m not saying that. I’m just saying don’t be shocked when later this week they use 15-year-olds to invade Ukraine.” — TREVOR NOAH ......... “Her lawyer said maybe her grandfather drank something from a glass, saliva got in and this glass was somehow later used by the athlete. Ah, the old ‘must be from Grandpa’s saliva’ defense, huh?’” — JIMMY KIMMEL



‘Improbable Journey’: How a Movie From Tiny Bhutan Got an Oscar Nod “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” was filmed on a shoestring budget in a remote Himalayan village. It’s now an Academy Award nominee, a first for Bhutan. ......... The valley had no electricity. It could only be reached by walking eight days from the nearest village. And the schoolchildren who were expected to star in the film knew nothing about acting or cinema. ....... tells the story of a young teacher from Bhutan’s capital, Thimphu, who is assigned to work at a remote mountain school against his will. He dreams of quitting his government job, emigrating to Australia and pursuing a career as a singer. ....... But the teacher, Ugyen, is fascinated by the people he meets in Lunana — particularly 9-year-old Pem Zam, a radiant student with a difficult home life. ........ young Bhutanese increasingly believe that true happiness lies abroad, in places like Australia, Europe or New York City. ......... There was just enough solar power to shoot the movie on a single camera, but not enough for Mr. Dorji to review his footage each night after shooting, as most directors do. So he had to go by his instincts and hope for the best. .... “The camera in front of them could have been a yak, for all they cared,” Mr. Dorji said........ In a scene where Ugyen teaches his students how to use a toothbrush, they aren’t acting; they really didn’t know. ....... the film was made on a $300,000 budget — “peanuts when it comes to filmmaking” ....... “When I was in front of the camera, I wasn’t that excited,” said Mr. Dorji, the schoolteacher, who appeared in the film as an extra. “But after watching it and listening to the children’s dialogue, I realized how much hardship our community has had to overcome.”

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Sunday, August 23, 2020

Coronavirus News (217)

 Trump v American democracy: the real battle on the ballot this November According to one former senior FBI official, ‘The insider threat [to the election] is sitting in the Oval Office.’ ..........  Trump poses a more severe danger to the 244-year-old American experiment than any foreign adversary. ...............  Whereas in 2016 Vladimir Putin’s Russia meddled in an election, now it is the current occupant of the White House who seems hellbent on subverting an American election. ..........  Kamala Harris, the first woman of colour on a major party ticket, whom he has already dubbed “mean”, “nasty” and “a mad woman”. .......  Five states – Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah – already carry out elections almost entirely by mail. ...........  the postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, a Trump donor ...........  Republicans belong to “the party of voter suppression” .........  we’re still in the middle of a pandemic where showing up to vote in person could mean life or death for some people .......  US intelligence has warned that Russia is already interfering in the 2020 election with the aim of getting Trump re-elected. ............  a president gone rogue – a man who this week welcomed the support of believers in a baseless righting conspiracy theory that holds the world is run by a shadowy cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles. .................  “Who needs Vladimir Putin when we have Donald Trump? If you were Vladimir Putin and you wanted to disrupt this election, what would you do? You’d spread disinformation. You’d make people doubt the legitimacy of the vote. You’d peddle conspiracy theories and you might want to mess with mail-in voting. That’s all happening without him. Our president is doing that.”  ...............  if he loses, we will have a bitterly divided country with about 30% of the population angry, alienated, perhaps in the streets, something we’ve never seen here before   

Donald Trump in Old Forge, Pennsylvania, on Thursday. According to Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, ‘The insider threat [to the election] is sitting in the Oval Office.’ 

The Democratic ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are not the only adversary Trump is targeting in this election.

Mail boxes sit in the parking lot of a post office in the Bronx, New York, earlier this month, amid reports that many had been removed from service.


How Donald Trump canceled the Republican party  After the election, political scientists and historians will study his obliteration of the Republican party as his greatest and most enduring political achievement...........  In 1980, Ronald Reagan opened his general election campaign at the Neshoba County Fair, the place where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964. Surrounded by Confederate flags, he hailed “states’ rights”. As brazen an appeal as it was, Reagan felt he had to resort to the old code words. ............  Central to Trump’s unique selling proposition is that he dispenses with the dog whistles. His vulgarity gives a vicarious thrill to those who revel in his taunting of perceived enemies or scapegoats. He made them feel dominant at no social price, until his catastrophic mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic and economic crisis. Flouting a mask is the magical act of defiance to signal that nothing has really changed and that in any case, Trump bears no responsibility. ...................  Trump is the only president since the advent of modern polling never to reach 50% approval. Despite decisively losing the popular vote in 2016, he said he “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally”. This time, fearing an even more overwhelming popular rejection, he says the outcome will be “rigged” and he has pre-emptively tried to cancel the US Postal Service, to undermine voting by mail. ..............  Reagan represented free trade and western firmness against Russia. George HW Bush was a paragon of public service. George W Bush was an advocate for immigrants. John McCain was the embodiment of patriotic sacrifice. ......... After Trump, all that has been cancelled. .............  Since he first rode down the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, to declare his candidacy against Mexican “rapists”, there has always been a new escalator downward. .......  the conservative Trump apologists, the adults in the room, as latter-day versions of Franz von Papen, the German chancellor who enabled the rise of Hitler in the complacent belief that he could be controlled ..........  He had earlier told the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, “‘Did you know it’s my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?’” “And I started laughing,” she recounted. “And he wasn’t laughing, so he was totally serious.” ...........  Trump’s cancel culture deals in aggressions, not micro-aggressions. The only safe space is where Trump is worshipped. Before, during and after the death of McCain, Trump unleashed tirades of insult. ................  For years, Trump has disparaged the Bush family. At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, when George W Bush called for setting aside partisanship and embracing national unity, Trump tweeted, “but where was he during Impeachment calling for putting partisanship aside”. ............   Trump has constantly retailed a false story about Reagan supposedly remarking after meeting him, “For the life of me, and I’ll never know how to explain it, when I met that young man, I felt like I was the one shaking hands with the president.” The chief administrative officer of the Reagan Foundation felt compelled to note that Reagan “did not ever say that about Donald Trump”. ...............  Trump’s petty, vindictive and exploitative abuse of the Bush presidents, McCain and Reagan pales in comparison to his raging obsessions about Lincoln. He has boasted his poll numbers are better than Lincoln’s ever were (true), claimed he is more a victim than the assassinated martyr (untrue), and declared he has done more for Black Americans than Lincoln (untrue). ..............   Trump, the would-be Great Emancipator and upholder of Confederate monuments, has lately ruminated about giving an address at Gettysburg. ..........  What Lincoln consecrated, Trump would desecrate. ............  Bannon’s dark apocalyptic mutterings against the forces conspiring against him and Trump: the “Deep State”, rootless cosmopolitans, globalists and liberal elites. ..................  “This has been the experience of most,” she observed with the sagacious tone of a student of history. “Abraham Lincoln was famously, even within his own cabinet, surrounded by people who were former political adversaries.” Ivanka’s smug confusion was complete. She had mistaken the whistleblower whose memo triggered the impeachment process with Lincoln’s “team of rivals”. ...........  we’ll make America great again, again ..........  “Russia if you’re listening …” .........  To quote Marx – Groucho – “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” .........  quote from President Lincoln. He said … quote, ‘I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.’” ................  The identity of the enemy may change – Muslims, Mexicans or Moms – but Miller is prepared to draw the sword for whatever clash of civilization may come. He’s just not prepared for a virus.   


Donald Trump smiles as he addresses delegates during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in 2016.

A man dressed as Abraham Lincoln holds up a sign as Donald Trump’s motorcade passes in Washington in June.

An Abraham Lincoln statue with a face mask in Sioux City, Iowa.


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Saturday, July 25, 2020

Syria Has Come To America

Cartoon via Mike Luckovich

Posted by Robert Reich on Saturday, July 25, 2020
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Saturday, March 28, 2020

Make Believe



Imagine FDR Delegating World War II To Governors
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Imagine FDR Delegating World War II To Governors

World War II did not go to every country on earth. This pandemic has. World War II did not freeze national economies and supply chains, although there were unmistakable disruptions. My point is, on scale, this is big. World War II seems to be the only available metaphor. But that is like using earth as a metaphor to talk about Jupiter. Jupiter is also a planet, alright.

And Trump has been botching it.
  • He spent precious weeks in denial. He was going to tweet the pandemic away. 
  • A nationwide lockdown lasting three weeks would have been the least disruptive economically and the most effective medically. When testing everyone is not an option, putting everyone in isolation for three weeks is enough time for the infected to start showing symptoms and qualify for further self-isolation. 
  • Just like FDR needed airplanes in huge numbers, this pandemic is asking for supplies: masks, gloves, ventilators, hospital beds. This pandemic would be a good reason to call a truce on the trade war with China. China seems to have an immediate capacity to produce those things plenty. If not, the wartime act for this needed to be put to practice. Domestic production needed to be ramped up. 
  • Trump is in a hurry to get America back to work. Because if the economy does not go back to pre-pandemic, he is toast in November. The fastest way to get America back to work is through widespread testing. Everyone who needs to or wants to get tested should be able to get tested with results showing up within the hour. Then you become much better at identifying and isolating people. And the rest can go to work. 
  • But is is already late. The sky has already fallen. The unemployment numbers already have passed Depression levels. Numerous businesses have already gone belly up. 
  • With Trump not only is the national dimension missing, but the global dimension is also missing. This pandemic is global. Only a coordinated global dimension will work. In the aftermath of 9/11 the FBI and the CIA learned to work together. Now national governments will have to learn that same lesson. Otherwise you are looking at massive deaths and massive economic disruption. 
  • Trump is unfit for the moment. He has failed to rise to the occasion. Trump has botched it bigly.


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Thursday, January 16, 2020

The Dollar, Weaponized

America started using the dollar system as a geopolitical weapon in earnest after the attacks of September 11th 2001. President Donald Trump has taken this policy to a new level of intensity, using sanctions as his main foreign-policy tool and even targeting allies with “secondary” sanctions that punish anyone who trades with states in America’s bad books. America’s power ultimately stems from its ability to prohibit firms from using its financial system, in turn leaving them isolated and unable to interact with most counterparties. Often the effect is fatal....... Russia has substantially de-dollarised its trade flows, foreign debt and bank assets. ...... Russia, China, India and others are discussing—and signing—bilateral or wider deals to settle trade in national currencies. They are also exploring alternatives to swift, the dominant payments-messaging network, over which America holds sway. Europe, meanwhile, has built Instex, a clearing-house, that could allow its firms to trade with Iran while bypassing America’s financial cops. ...... Central bankers from Europe to China are stepping up work on public digital currencies. These could help bring down the cost of electronic cross-border payments, which is still relatively high. Some foresee the creation of cryptobaskets of reserve currencies. ....... an inflection point has been reached. Since Mr Trump began firing off financial ordnance, his targets have gone from merely musing about breaking free from the dollar to doing something about it ..... the dollar’s current pre-eminence is not an unalloyed good for America: it distorts the currency’s value (upwards) and market interest rates (downwards). ...... Some economists believe the Depression was partly caused by the absence of a hegemon to steady the world economy.
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Saturday, September 21, 2019

Twitter: AOC, Yang, Climate Strike, Pete, Slack, Hong Kong, Greta, Trump

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Saturday, September 14, 2019

Microsft, Huawei, Trump, 5G

If Donald Trump kills off Chinese firm Huawei, do Asia’s 5G dreams die? Some believe Huawei faces an existential threat. ....... this week’s dramatic escalation in the United States’ crackdown on Chinese telecoms giant Huawei has been a cold shower for those anticipating the mass-market arrival of a technology hyped as heralding a new dawn of driverless cars and artificial intelligence. ..... now some industry insiders say the Chinese behemoth has no clear way of continuing as a central player anywhere in the world....... a development that promises download speeds of up to 100 times faster than its 4G predecessor...... it relies on Western parts, such as chips. ...... will pave the way for developments such as driverless vehicles, remote robotic surgery and other aspects of the internet of things by offering far greater download speeds....... Unlike previous 3G and 4G networks, 5G ones will be “cloud native” – depending largely on software rather than hardware, and will also heavily utilise artificial intelligence........ With 4G networks becoming increasingly clogged, regulators in super-wired countries like Singapore want 5G rolled out sooner rather than later........ Even with the US action against Huawei, the Chinese company – widely lauded for being far ahead of Western competitors in developing 5G – is likely to have about 30 per cent of standard essential patents for the core of the technology. .........

Donald Trump’s Huawei ban is a more severe threat to global economy than trade war tariffs, economists say Blacklisting of technology firms is being viewed as a broad stroke by Washington to contain Beijing in its bid to lead the global tech race......... US President Donald Trump’s ban on Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies, and its implications for 5G development, poses a more serious threat to the global economy than higher tariffs, according to economists........ This week, the US was reported to be considering a similar ban against China’s Hikvision, one of the world’s biggest CCTV companies. ......

“The US-China tech competition will be more intense and drawn out, significantly outlasting the trade tensions.”

........ ......Blacklisting of tech companies is being viewed as a broad stroke by Washington to contain China in its move away from a large-scale manufacturing-led economy to a leader in the global tech race...... “5G is a really exciting technology. Having an edge in that space is an economic differentiation, so there is a race to be first.” ..... 5G, said Tannenbaum, is the secret for China to “continue its transition away from large-scale, heavy manufacturing” economy. Washington’s ban on Huawei, therefore, “strikes China right at the heart of their vision” ....... Huawei sources components from 22 suppliers listed in the US...... As a leader in cost, technology and innovative areas like 5G, it would be “very difficult for Huawei’s competitors to totally regain market share in this segment” ...... “Given the company’s broader contribution to industry innovation, the restrictions would likely slow down overall progress of such technologies.” ....... “At the same time, the US, and the world at large, will also suffer from their inability to use the best technology.”

Trump adviser asked Microsoft why it wouldn’t spy for the US, company president reveals in new book “As an American company, why won’t you agree to help the US government spy on people in other countries?” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, recounted how he was asked by the adviser on a trip to Washington. That inquiry is highlighted in Smith’s new book, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age ......... Smith wrote that he responded by shifting the question to Trump Hotels, which had opened new properties at the time of the meeting in the Middle East and in Pennsylvania Avenue, near the White House. “Are these hotels going to spy on people from other countries who stay there?” Smith said. “It doesn’t seem like it would be good for the family business.” .......

Huawei’s blacklisting should not have been made “without a sound basis in fact, logic and the rule of law”.

....... There is an “increasing possibility that American officials will seek to block the export of a growing number of vital technology products, not just to China but to a growing set of other countries”, wrote Smith, adding that such a move would jeopardise US competitiveness in the global market. “It’s impossible to pursue global leadership if products can’t leave the United States.”

Trump’s blacklisting of Huawei is unfair and un-American, Microsoft president says Software giant Microsoft has kept asking US authorities to clarify the basis of that trade ban, but Smith said: “Oftentimes, what we get in response is, ‘Well, if you knew what we knew, you would agree with us’.” ...... “Great, show us what you know so we can decide for ourselves. That’s the way this country works,” he said. ...... “Brad was talking about the need for countries to use consistent principles before imposing significant sanctions on any company, and that those principles should be grounded in due process, the rule of law and transparency of approach,” a Microsoft spokeswoman told the Post in response to the Bloomberg article. ....... “You can’t be a global technology leader if you can’t bring your technology to the globe” ...... Huawei also remains ahead in the 5G gear market with 50 announced commercial 5G mobile network deals. ........ The US blacklisting has also prompted Huawei to accelerate the roll-out of its self-developed mobile operating system called Harmony, which can support a range of devices as well as being compatible with all Android applications.

Donald Trump says the US does not want to discuss Huawei ‘national security concern’ with China

Microsoft's top lawyer: Trump's Huawei ban makes no sense Huawei ban is like preventing a hotel chain from buying beds, says Microsoft president Brad Smith........ Smith said the current restrictions on Huawei, the world's second-largest smartphone maker, are wrong. ....... Trump has said Huawei's situation could be resolved if China agreed to an acceptable trade deal with the US. ...... Microsoft could also be harmed by potential Commerce Department export restrictions on artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Smith told Bloomberg that "you can't be a global technology leader if you can't bring your technology to the globe". .......

Smith also posed an analogy for the situation Google, Microsoft, Apple, Arm, and Qualcomm face in terms that Trump might understand: hotels and beds.



Microsoft says Huawei ban is 'un-American'

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Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Brexit, Aexit, And Trump

Brexit is easier to look at for Americans because the distance the pond offers gives you perspective. The trade war is Donald Trump attempting Brexit for America. Is it possible for the British economy to disengage from the larger European economy? It is the largest market in the world. Is it possible for the American economy to disengage from the Chinese economy? Just like Brexit seemed to have bipartisan support in London, looks like Trump's moves enjoy bipartisan support in Washington DC.

I think the short answer is the attempted disengagement is not possible. You can try and create a lot of political drama. But the disengagement will not happen. The supply chains of the world have become so enormously complex. Country A exports item M to Country B, which uses item M to produce item N which it exports to Country A, and that back and forth goes five times, six times, 10 times. How do you disengage?

50 years ago the Chinese read the Chinese newspapers, the Americans read the American newspapers. Today Donald Trump's facial expressions are transmitted in real time to all world as he makes small talk with Abe or Xi. And they get archived for anyone else to see on their own time. In this information-rich environment, you can bluff but you will get seen.

I don't believe Trump cares for the cause of democracy. His relentless verbal attacks on media in the US is a hint. He has openly asked for violence in the streets.

I believe he is a demagogue who misleads his people. He taps into the anger from the lost manufacturing base and channels blame on the Mexican and the Chinese. He does not have a solution. The trade war is just a bigger version of the border wall theatrics. He promised he will get those manufacturing jobs back and he wants to be seen trying. Look, I did try to build the wall. Look, I did put the pressure on the Chinese.

The smart thing to do would be to face the facts of the massive transition that is underway. Evidence-based decision making will lead to a realization this transition need not be painful and it can be good news.

The smart thing to do is to face the facts of climate change and inequality. Both are existential.



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