[Discussion] Hope to Remember The Trump Administration Thread as being 'transparent and honest'

Let's follow and discuss what our newest presidential administration gets up to, the good, the bad, the lawsuits, and the many many indictments.

WaPo wrote:

Altering official government weather forecasts isn’t just a cause for concern — it’s illegal. Per 18 U.S. Code 2074, which addresses false weather reports, “Whoever knowingly issues or publishes any counterfeit weather forecast or warning of weather conditions falsely representing such forecast or warning to have been issued or published by the Weather Bureau, United States Signal Service, or other branch of the Government service, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ninety days, or both.”

That law applies to what is now known as NOAA’s National Weather Service, which contains the National Hurricane Center.

It would be a fittingly ludicrous thing if this is what got articles of impeachment rolling and ended his presidency.

At this point, I fully expect to find out that Trump has done all the stupid petty illegal things there are to do, and there'll be news stories about him doodling on dollar bills (i.e. defacing currency), jaywalking, stealing mail and, I dunno, refusing to get his cat spayed.

When you stop seeing the stories about the lies Trump tells, the complete transition to a fascist regime will be complete.

Jonman wrote:

refusing to get his cat spayed.

He's never had a pet. That would require caring about someone besides himself.

Trump just tweeted this image from the South Florida Water Management District from August 28th and claimed "As you can see, almost all models predicted it to go through Florida also hitting Georgia and Alabama."

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDp03OAWkAE36Sl?format=jpg&name=900x900)

At the bottom of the image is this statement:

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDp45iPUYAA9xmn?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)

If you dig more on the SFWMD's website you'll find this explanation of the spaghetti plots:

SFWMD wrote:

NOTE:
- National Hurricane Center advisories and County Emergency Management statements supersede the spaghetti plots referenced on this page.
- The products are intended to complement National Hurricane Center discussions, not replace them.
- These are automated products that have not been quality checked.
- If anything on these products causes confusion, ignore the entire product.

The model tracks depicted on these products are derived from products from the US National Hurricane Center, the US National Weather Service, the United Kingdom Meteorological Office and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast..

These spaghetti plots are intended for use by individuals with proper training and expertise.

There are multiple potential causes of misinterpretation that include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Each model utilizes different assumptions and different calculations which leads to different models performing better in different situations.
- All models have unique biases.
- Some models utilize statistics, some utilize physics formulas, some utilize a combination of both.
- Some models perform best with weaker systems, others perform best with well-developed, purely tropical systems.
- The spread of the various model solutions can give a sense of the uncertainty associated with a particular storm track. However, some of the models are interrelated as they share the same initial analyses or the same global forecast fields. Therefore, clustering of model solutions does not necessarily indicate truely independent agreement.
- Poor model analyses of initial conditions can lead to even worse model solutions.
- The National Hurricane Center has access to many other models and data not included in these products. At times, these other models and data have a significant impact on the forecast track issued by the National Hurricane Center.

And what was the official National Hurricane Center forecast when Trump tweeted that Alabama would be hit on Sunday?

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDp3z2XWkAAbdJp?format=jpg&name=900x900)

It's kinda crazy that we're expected to believe that a man who can't be assed to read the Presidential Daily Brief is going to be digging into spaghetti hurricane plots auto-generated by some podunk state water management agency barely anyone has heard of that has (checks their 2019 budget) exactly zero dollars and personnel allocated to forecasting hurricanes rather than admitting he f*cked up and made a mistake. Worse, someone in his administration spent our tax dollars today feverishly trying to dig up something that he could hide behind because he's such a broken human.

These spaghetti plots are intended for use by individuals with proper training and expertise.

Well there's your problem right there.

There's a picture on the White House flickr account showing the same map pre-sharpie: https://www.flickr.com/photos/whiteh...

Apparently, editing the map and rebroadcasting the edit as official advice may be a crime.

Sharpie-gate may have run afoul of the law, which calls for either a fine, no more than 90 days in jail — or both — for “whoever knowingly issues or publishes any counterfeit weather forecast or warning of weather conditions falsely representing such forecast or warning to have been issued or published by the Weather Bureau, United States Signal Service, or other branch of the Government service.”

EDIT: OG_slinger-hausered, because I apparently can't read posts on this same page.

Remember that Iranian oil tanker that the British seized and impounded in Gibraltar back in July?

Financial Times wrote:

Four days before the US imposed sanctions on an Iranian tanker suspected of shipping oil to Syria, the vessel’s Indian captain received an unusual email from the top Iran official at the Department of State.

“This is Brian Hook . . . I work for secretary of state Mike Pompeo and serve as the US Representative for Iran,” Mr Hook wrote to Akhilesh Kumar on August 26, according to several emails seen by the Financial Times. “I am writing with good news.” 

The “good news” was that the Trump administration was offering Mr Kumar several million dollars to pilot the ship — until recently known as the Grace 1 — to a country that would impound the vessel on behalf of the US. To make sure Mr Kumar did not mistake the email for a scam, it included an official state department phone number.

The remarkable outreach by such a high-ranking official was not an isolated case. Mr Hook, who heads the state department’s Iran Action Group, has emailed or texted roughly a dozen captains in recent months in an effort to scare mariners into understanding that helping Iran evade sanctions comes at a heavy price.

...

Mr Hook’s message to Mr Kumar came 11 days after the Iranian tanker was released by Gibraltar, where it had been at the centre of a stand-off between Iran and the west.

...

Mr Hook’s emails showed the US was not giving up. His offer to Mr Kumar, whose vessel is now known as Adrian Darya 1, came under “Rewards for Justice” — a 1984 programme to combat terrorism.

According to US officials, the US has recently started using the programme in its efforts to target Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and will offer rewards of up to $15m for information that helps the US disrupt Iranian illicit activities.

“With this money you can have any life you wish and be well-off in old age,” Mr Hook wrote in a second email to Mr Kumar that also included a warning. “If you choose not to take this easy path, life will be much harder for you.”

In the intervening two days, the US had watched as the Adrian Darya 1 made “doughnut” shape manoeuvres at sea that suggested Mr Kumar might have been deciding how to react. After the captain failed to respond, Mr Hook emailed him to say that the US Treasury had imposed sanctions on him. Mr Kumar did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

We're now simultaneously bribing and threatening average people because Trump had to blow up the Iran deal, which was working.

I'm conflicted -
FOX news rejects trumps altered Dorian map

On one hand, I'm glad to see FOX not coming up with some lame aplogistic explanation, or running with the "Oh my God, can you believe what those crazy leftists are making a big deal out of" attack. But on the other hand, think about it - this is Newsweek considering it newsworthy that the biggest news outlet in the country is reporting the truth rather than blindly supporting the president.

Clumber wrote:

I'm conflicted -
FOX news rejects trumps altered Dorian map

On one hand, I'm glad to see FOX not coming up with some lame aplogistic explanation, or running with the "Oh my God, can you believe what those crazy leftists are making a big deal out of" attack. But on the other hand, think about it - this is Newsweek considering it newsworthy that the biggest news outlet in the country is reporting the truth rather than blindly supporting the president.

Fox News is most definitely not the "biggest news outlet in the country." At best you can say that that they get the highest ratings among cable news outlets, but that's only because that includes their distinctly non-news primetime shows like Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham. Even then those programs are only pulling 2ish million viewers a night.

For sake of comparison the nightly news on the big three broadcast channels pull a combined 25 million viewers.

As for newspapers, The New York Times boasts 4.7 million subscribers (2.7 million of which are digital) while the the Washington Post has about half a million physical subscribers, but 1.7 million digital subscribers.

And as for Newsweek calling out Fox News you kinda have to point the finger back to Trump. Just last month Trump called Fox's Juan Williams "pathetic," "always nasty and wrong," and went so far as tweeting "The New @FoxNews is letting millions of GREAT people down! We have to start looking for a new News Outlet. Fox isn’t working for us anymore!" when Fox merely ran news stories about the Democratic presidential candidates.

And earlier in August Trump blasted Shepard Smith, who's one of the few actual journalists employed by Fox, saying "Watching Fake News CNN is better than watching Shepard Smith, the lowest rated show on @FoxNews. Actually, whenever possible, I turn to @OANN!" OANN, or One America News Network, is an even more fawning and conservative propaganda source than Fox that's masquerading as a cable news network.

Trump's criticism of Fox News exploded last month because they dared running the results of their own poll that showed him being handily beaten by every leading Democratic presidential candidate.

Trump is still tweeting (lying) about Dorian and Alabama. It's so pathetic.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Trump is still tweeting (lying) about Dorian and Alabama. It's so pathetic.

Apparently he brought a Fox news reporter into the oval office today to argue with them that he was not wrong.

https://news.google.com/articles/CAI...

Sorry for the messy link am on my phone.

Now he's talking up a tweet from the Alabama NG on 8/30 saying "#HurricaneDorian is projected to reach southern Alabama by the early part of the week. We are watching closely and #ready to act. Are you?" even though they updated it later the same day to add that the storm was likely to head east of Alabama.

While we're all still in the grips of Sharpiegate there's still other big things happening within the Trump administration.

Yesterday the Pentagon released the list of 127 military construction projects whose combined $3.6 billion budgets were being reallocated to build 175 miles of border wall Trump said Mexico was going to pay for.

$700ish million is coming from projects in US territories, with about $400 million coming from Hurricane Maria recovery projects in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Just over $1 billion is coming from construction projects in 23 states, and another $1.8 billion is coming from projects on military bases overseas.

The domestic construction projects canceled run quite the gamut--ground-based ballistic missile interceptor silos, parking structures, several replacement schools and child development centers for the children of US military personnel, at least three hazardous materials warehouses, a couple of replacement fire stations, an attack drone base and training facility, a cyber operations facility, a hospital expansion, multiple small arms training facilities, base security improvements, and much more.

Of special note, I found it kinda funny that the new Space Force Trump announced to great fanfare over the summer got the budget for building its headquarters diverted to the border wall. It looks like the Space Force won't have office space because Trump felt its budget would be best used to build less than half a mile of border wall.

The overseas construction projects cancelled are similar, but nearly $900 million of the cuts are coming from the European Defense Initiative and the European Reassurance Initiative, programs specifically set up as a response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Of special note, Trump might love having F/A-22 Raptors fly over DC on the 4th of July, but they're losing their German repair facilities and hardened shelter upgrades because of the wall.

Worse, though, Pentagon brass's expectation that Congress is just going to backfill these stolen budgets during the next appropriations cycle.

Here’s hoping that Congress doesn’t backfill those funds and makes sure that there’s more military pushback next time some tinpot dictator decides to pilfer their coffers to fund his vanity projects.

You can hope. Military gets all in the US. No congressperson would be willing to say no to funding. We worship the military.

farley3k wrote:

You can hope. Military gets all in the US. No congressperson would be willing to say no to funding. We worship the military.

Congress controls the purse. It's in the Constitution. Pelosi must lead. She needs to sell the fact that they funded the military, but Trump stole those funds. Without protections there's nothing to stop him from doing it again.

JeffreyLSmith wrote:
farley3k wrote:

You can hope. Military gets all in the US. No congressperson would be willing to say no to funding. We worship the military.

Congress controls the purse. It's in the Constitution.

Except in this case...

JeffreyLSmith wrote:
farley3k wrote:

You can hope. Military gets all in the US. No congressperson would be willing to say no to funding. We worship the military.

Congress controls the purse. It's in the Constitution. Pelosi must lead. She needs to sell the fact that they funded the military, but Trump stole those funds. Without protections there's nothing to stop him from doing it again.

The appropriations language must be cleaned up--and Congressional oversight tightened--so that it's bloody clear that any funds appropriated for one thing can't be repurposed for something else at the whim of the president.

Additionally, the Pentagon needs to be taken out to the woodshed. Part of the reason Trump's hit military construction project so hard is because he was originally looking to repurpose $2.5 billion in DOD anti-narcotic funds. Except it turned out that the account they thought they had billions in only had $85 million. (The Pentagon brass's genius idea to that problem was to ask Congress if they could drain the budgets of other programs and use that money to refill the anti-narcotics account...and then have Congress backfill the other budgets.)

That probably has something to do with the fact that the Pentagon--after 30 years of a law requiring every federal department to do so--was only able to complete its first comprehensive annual financial audit last year. It failed miserably. Which means the one department we just shove giant sacks of money at can't adequately managed those funds or even track where they go which gives Congress little accurate information as to whether its a valid national defense project or a boondoggle.

I'm sure many people are shocked that shoving money into a completely un-audited black box resulted in most of that money being embezzled out the bottom of said black box. shocked!

The Trump campaign is literally selling black sharpies on their website... what is wrong with these people?

The black markers, hundreds of sets of which sold shortly after he announced them, come in sets of five for $15.
"Buy the official Trump marker, which is different than every other marker on the market, because this one has the special ability to drive @CNN and the rest of the fake news crazy! #KeepMarkersGreat" Parscale tweeted.
JC wrote:

The Trump campaign is literally selling black sharpies on their website... what is wrong with these people?

The black markers, hundreds of sets of which sold shortly after he announced them, come in sets of five for $15.
"Buy the official Trump marker, which is different than every other marker on the market, because this one has the special ability to drive @CNN and the rest of the fake news crazy! #KeepMarkersGreat" Parscale tweeted.

Make a joke of it, change the narrative, and ‘own the libs.’ Obama should be shilling tan suits and Hillary should be selling email servers.

Crap like this is pushing me dangerously close to not caring about policy and governance and just wanting candidates who can best “own the cons”, mainly by crushing them in elections. This is not good.

Hillary in a GoDaddy commercial!

Hurricane Donny keeps getting worse.

NOAA backs Trump on Alabama hurricane forecast, rebukes Weather Service for accurately contradicting him

The NOAA is under control of Trump lackey Wilbur Ross.

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

In two-grifts-with-one-stone news, Trump might be secretly ordering Air Force personnel to stay at one of his money-losing resorts to financially prop it up as well as helping out the nearby airport that the resort depends on, which is also debt-laden and deeply in the red.

Politico wrote:

In early Spring of this year, an Air National Guard crew made a routine trip from the U.S. to Kuwait to deliver supplies.

What wasn’t routine was where the crew stopped along the way: President Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort, about 50 miles outside Glasgow, Scotland.

Since April, the House Oversight Committee has been investigating why the crew on the C-17 military transport plane made the unusual stay — both en route to the Middle East and on the way back — at the luxury waterside resort, according to several people familiar with the incident. But they have yet to receive any answers from the Pentagon.

The inquiry is part of a broader, previously unreported probe into U.S. military expenditures at and around the Trump property in Scotland. According to a letter the panel sent to the Pentagon in June, the military has spent $11 million on fuel at the Prestwick Airport — the closest airport to Trump Turnberry — since October 2017, fuel that would be cheaper if purchased at a U.S. military base. The letter also cites a Guardian report that the airport provided cut-rate rooms and free rounds of golf at Turnberry for U.S. military members.

Taken together, the incidents raise the possibility that the military has helped keep Trump’s Turnberry resort afloat — the property lost $4.5 million in 2017, but revenue went up $3 million in 2018.

“The Defense Department has not produced a single document in this investigation,” said a senior Democratic aide on the oversight panel. “The committee will be forced to consider alternative steps if the Pentagon does not begin complying voluntarily in the coming days.”

EDIT

And an article from The Scotsman earlier in the summer shows this was by no means a one-off kinda thing.

Scottish Government-owned Prestwick Airport paid £9m by Trump administration

The Scotsman wrote:

The loss making state-owned hub, which was put up for sale earlier this month by the Scottish Government, has received close to 650 orders since October 2017 for jet fuel.

Contract details drawn up by a US Defence Department agency indicate the deal could ultimately secure Prestwick’s parent company an additional £8m, while a new contract is set to extend the arrangement until autumn 2024.

The flurry of transactions - the equivalent of more than 35 a month - has reignited criticism of the SNP government for fostering close economic ties with the US military while publicly admonishing the president’s character and his foreign policies.

...

While the South Ayrshire airport has made no secret of its efforts to woo foreign military customers in recent years to counter plummeting revenue from commercial flights, neither it nor the Scottish Government have ever disclosed the extent of its windfall from the US government.

But a slew of US federal government procurement records and defence agency contracts analysed by The Scotsman show that between 3 October 2017 and 23 March this year, Prestwick has received more than £9.02m.

In all, some 64 pages of US government procurement records detail 644 separate orders placed for aviation turbine fuel by the energy division of the US Defence Logistics Agency (DLA), a Virginia-based body which manages the global supply chain for the US Army, Navy, and Air Force.

The lucrative deal with the US military is now the beleaguered airport’s single biggest revenue stream by some considerable distance. In the first three months of 2019, for instance, the DLA authorised payments to Prestwick worth £1.4m. That is more than twice the revenue generated via passenger services in the entirety of 2017/18.

The Scotsman also reported that Trump Turnberry and Prestwick airport have been working together closely since Trump bought the property.

The Scotsman wrote:

Prestwick and Trump have long had close ties predating his election. Soon after he bought the Turnberry resort in 2014, the two announced an "official partnership."

The airport subsequently said no such arrangement ever existed, but previous investigations by Scotland on Sunday have shown Turnberry and Prestwick discussed working together to win business and integrate their businesses.

Staff at Turnberry were even asked to help pitch for prospective airlines to help shore up the beleaguered airport, put up for sale earlier this year by Scottish ministers.

EDIT EDIT

And of course there's a f*cking tweet.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/RHUzbv9.png)

Where were you when you found out that Trump cancelled negotiations at Camp David with the Taliban that were scheduled to happen tomorrow, three days before 9/11?

Rat Boy wrote:

Where were you when you found out that Trump cancelled negotiations at Camp David with the Taliban that were scheduled to happen tomorrow, three days before 9/11?

I was in the middle of canceling my secret date with Scarlet Johansson that was scheduled to happen tomorrow in my apartment. I had found out she was saying some troubling things lately and no longer thought it was prudent.

Spoiler:

Now everyone must praise me twice. Once for pulling off this thing no one can confirm. And again for making the tough choice and cancelling it.