I could trade for about 50, that should actually cover a small stand of trees.

Lol Trump fired scaramucci

Gotta say, I'm slightly disappointed, he could have done a lot more damage to the WH had he stayed on longer. But this looks bad too, just 10 days and already playing musical chairs again....

Kelly might turn things around. But even though he is a general, I doubt even he has what it takes to stay above the fray and remain entirely on the president's good side. But maybe he can bring at least some small amount of discipline to the operation as a whole.

Scaramucci must've been truly awful to have been fired so quickly.

My feeling is that any single person who has any scrupples will eventually run afoul of an unpredictable liar like Trump, almost with mathematical predictability. I think that the exception to this is based on mutual respect of prowess between two primates that causes the pair to keep a mutual distance rather than starting another bar fight. Therefore, fact that Kelly is a high ranking military official is likely to cause Trump to keep enough distance from him to avoid an outright fight, but he may eventually dispose of him too for unrelated frustrations.

It seems possible for sure. There've been tensions between him and McMaster lately (so I hear), so being a decorated high ranking soldier doesn't make a person immune to pissing matches with the president.

He was just another version of Trump, which is probably why Trump was close to him. But all Trump-like particles follow an exclusion principle. Trump, speaking to himself in front of the mirror: "Cant live with me, can't live without me".

Donald Trump has been said to represent the ultimate conclusion of what a conservative politician should be, according to the universe of Fox News. What's revealing is that the self-contradictory nature of this conservative caricature really does seem to manifest in clearly erratic and unpredictable behaviour when put into literal practice by Trump, rather than simply existing in some fantasy TV world.

For generations, we'll be able to point to Trump as the worst example of what a conservative can be, as intimated by Fox News. But I am sure their viewers will fail to connect the dots....

You know what, you are right. I was giving the president far too much credit by comparing him to an ape.

A better assumption would be that Trump will respect a powerful primate to whom he owes large sums of money (so he'll probably have little qualms shouting at generals so long as they are not connected to Russian oligarchs).

But hey, we don't need to resort to ape analogies if we're going to talk about primitive behaviour between aggressive parties who owe money to each other, it's called the mob!

Hitler's law: "As an online discussion about Donald Trump grows longer, the probability of comparison to me decreases, since people realize a better comparison is to the mafia"

Putin could buy Trump 200 times over, even using the most generous estimate of Trump's wealth. If the best comparison to Trump is to the mob, you'd best keep in mind that Trump is barely a lieutenant, not a boss.

Fox News' ideal president isn't Trump, it's Putin.

A key difference being that award winning movies could be written about the mafia.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/world-richest-people-vladimir-putin-wealth-russian-president-bill-gates-jeff-bezos-combined-a7868606.html

Well, yes they are if he follows through on his tweet and issues guidance to the military to disregard the previous administration's orders. Alas, there's no actual indication he will. Thought it was too good to be true but we'll see. I'm guessing he might have kept his twitter finger more steady if he knew McCain was going to show up and totally **** him.

Crazy to see all the chaos in the executive branch. I mean predictable, of course, but still crazy to watch.

It's not like Trump has a lot of experience hiring people to work for him. I'm sure with a little more practice he'll figure it out, have patience.

In light of that fact about Vladimir Putin's wealth and its origin, I think it is sort of telling that consumers of Fox News and Breitbart can hold the views they do and still support Trump. Consider:

• The alt. right rants about shadowy rich Jewish bankers like the Rothschilds, supposedly because of nebulous and undeserving sources of wealth
• cold war conservatives have railed against subversive Russian influence over our country for the better part of a century, and generally been hawks when it comes to US vs. Russian military

So, like, what the **** happened? I've been checking Mark Levin's show summary daily to see if he ever opposes Trump. He did it most when Trump attacked Jeff Sessions, but, like, the lion's share each daily episode of the three hour show is a big long rant about repealing Obamacare.

Are things that bad in red states that right wingers abandon all their previous sacred cows, just because Michelle Bachmann told them that Obamacare took their job?

He has plenty on experience firing people.

FTFY

Did you actually think you needed to fix that? I mean, you got the joke, right?

Well, as someone with experience hiring people, let me make something perfectly clear to everybody reading this. Every time you have to let someone go, it means you failed. It means you hired too many people, or ran your business poorly, or failed to make your expectations clear, or failed to retask a poor fit, or simply invested in the wrong person. Every time, it's on you. You failed. Not the person you fired; you.

Recruitment and management are basic executive skills, both in business and in government. Trump does not have those skills. If this is how Trump ran his businesses, it's really no surprise that he failed so hard that Russian gangsters had to bail him out.

What's there to get? He has that famous line, "you're fired", popularized from the apprentice, but as Jon`C points out, it's nothing to be proud of.

I linked to the New Yorker article because it brings up the more interesting question, which is: why would somebody with such an idiotic slogan become a strong enough brand to become president?

Like, I don't know why so many internets are making fun of Scaramucci for getting fired. Trump's the one who was friends with him, hired him, and "soured on him" all within 10 days. You don't need to do much digging into Scaramucci to realize he's emotionally unstable and has poor impulse control. How does hiring someone like him even happen, if that's not the kind of person you want on your staff? And why do you hire anybody when your Chief of Staff is on the chopping block, too? That'd be like hiring a new VP of HR while your COO is in the doghouse, it's just not something you do.

I mean, I know it's getting worn out to call Trump incompetent, but... Trump is incompetent. At hiring people. Like, we're talking retarded-at-business, can't-exploit-labor kind of incompetent. And yet, he's a rich and successful businessman!

If you have any faith left in capitalism, this should destroy it.

Trump needs to fire lots of people for the same reason that Michael Jackson had to sell a lot of the **** he bought over the years just to stay in the black.

Edit: just to be clear, that last adjective was about accounting, not surgery to hide vitiligo. Although who knows, maybe Trump blew all his inherited wealth on trying to stay orange.

Answer: Trump himself has all the weakness you listed, and is arrogant enough to see them as strengths until the bitter end.

but he didn't stay in the black

Hehe yeah I kinda realized that after I wrote that

MJ was the first transhuman

not the outofarmy kind though

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/shareholder-value-is-killing-innovation



That's capitalism

Well, the slogan conveys that Trump is unsentimental and willing to make tough decisions in order to win, no matter who is destroyed along the way. He'll do "whatever it takes". Plus it implies that he has that je ne sais que quality that it takes to be successful. And it colors him as the gatekeeper who gets to decide who joins the upper echelons of wealth and power in NYC.

And in terms of the brand... There's definitely a tension there. He's part of the upper class by birth, but he has a working class mentality, having been born in Queens and having always felt excluded from the true elites in Manhattan. He rebelled against it, and turned his nose up at the mores and customs of the upper class financial elite in Manhattan. He's in the elite, but not of it. The stupidity, the kitsch, the vulgarity, the ostentatiousness and the opulence, the complete lack of sophistication or refinement or taste, despite using words like "classy" all the time -- all of which can be found in his tv show -- that's all precisely what gives him and his brand populist appeal. And it's what makes "elites" recoil at him. And the fact they do so adds even more to his populist appeal. He's the personification of his anti-elite campaign message.

Help me out on why it was too good to be true. Why would you, no doubt a patriotic American, wish for the military to reject a good number of loyal, effective servicemen and women for being transgender? I understand feeling antipathetic toward transgender people on a general level. That's a knee-jerk reaction against that which threatens the sense of security, a natural bias against something one perceives to be out of the ordinary. What I don't understand is why you would not look past that in theory and realize that it makes no practical sense for the military to discriminate on that basis.

Yeah, I am pretty sure he trolled you.

Nobody on this board could possibly be so bigoted that, prima facie, they bluntly, and without any further explanation, celebrate the exclusion of a minority of the population from participating in society as equal citizens.

I mean, if this really did come down to policy, what is so significant about this particular regulation that would elicit enough emotion to care?

I guess since Wookie is a veteran, I could retract my previous post and give him the benefit of the doubt that he is simply a wonk when it comes to this issue because of his own personal experience and wisdom about what works well.

(And for the record, I don't think he's a bigot.)

So I edited your post down to the essentials. It's plain to see that your questions are filled with your opinions so they're not really honest questions. They're loaded. That's okay but clearly I have to take this into account in addressing them.

So if the estimates are correct, well even if they're wildly overestimated, there's fewer than one percent of the military that identifies as transgender and certainly most of their service precedes any official policy admitting them. I see that the estimate is 0.3% of the population is transgender. I don't know what constitutes a "good number" but based on the estimates I don't think it's impractical to deny transgenders especially considering the military has been reducing force size. So from a readiness standpoint there really doesn't seem to be a downside to reversing the previous administrations policy change.

I support reinstating the disqualification on the following bases.

First, transgender suicide rates are very high. Military and veteran suicide rates are shockingly high to begin with. This is simply not a good combination.

Second, with the military now having to treat gender dysphoria and perform surgeries for transgender service members the Veterans Administration medical system will now be obligated to treat these conditions as well as provide compensation for these issues as service connected disabilities. This is a little bit of inside baseball here but there is a tremendous issue here where veterans are essentially the new welfare queens. It's not politically correct and you're not going to hear too many people say it but it's 100% true. I just find it ridiculous that the military will be providing these services and then the VA will be further burdened when they're discharged.

Lastly, you just don't accomplish real social change with a policy like this. Why are transgender suicide rates so high? I don't know to what degree it is due to society or mental/psychological illness but true acceptance and integration takes time. One hundred years after the civil war Johnson was still blocking equal rights for blacks. Transgender is a psychological issue with real physical ramifications once you start factoring in elective surgeries. No matter how tolerant I am, that doesn't make transgenders the best candidates for military service.

Transgenders as a group are a troubled segment of the population. The military has many qualification standards, lowered when demand to fill the services are high and raised when they're low. Everyday people are disqualified for failing to pass a test, failing to achieve an educational certificate, failing a drug test, failing a physical, some stupid law violation, etc. Oh, and by the way, personnel on active duty that become disqualified for continued service are released all the time as well as soldiers that are fully qualified but selected for release because the military no longer needs them. It's not like transgenders are some lone category singled out for exclusion.

It might not sound nice but the military really isn't a very nice place.

Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

lol

I mean, you're not wrong, but I don't think "success is random" is a very motivating position to hold. At some level you have to believe your efforts will lead to (or at least increase the chance of) success.



Yeah, what you've said here is accurate, I was lol'ing mostly about the tone of admiration they were taking.

Why is that funny? Not taking his side necessarily, just curious. Don't respond if you don't want to though, this is only mildly interesting to me.

Might have something to do with being treated as an unpeople who have nothing to contribute to society and whose problems are too hard and expensive to bother solving. I dunno.

There are kernels of truth in what Adams is advising, but frankly, there are some people I don't want to succeed.

Re: Effort.

You can't win the lottery unless you buy a ticket.

The one kernel of truth is that you can't write what you don't know. Adams was only passable at writing Dilbert because he had business experience to draw upon (distressingly out of date, however). You can't create anything without drawing deeply from experience and knowledge.

However, that isn't a novel statement and it's not what he was trying to say, anyway.