Buce Posted 14 November 2018 Share Posted 14 November 2018 7 minutes ago, bovril said: I did a pathetic trump this morning. Jubilee line commuters were less than impressed. I still take an extraordinarily juvenile pleasure in the thought that he is probably blissfully ignorant at how and why the British snigger at his name. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain... Posted 14 November 2018 Share Posted 14 November 2018 4 hours ago, Buce said: I still take an extraordinarily juvenile pleasure in the thought that he is probably blissfully ignorant at how and why the British snigger at his name. Then get yourself a Trumpy Bear Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leicsmac Posted 16 November 2018 Share Posted 16 November 2018 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46225486 He's worried, perhaps? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carl the Llama Posted 16 November 2018 Share Posted 16 November 2018 3 hours ago, leicsmac said: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46225486 He's worried, perhaps? Clearly... Seems a good time to drag this topic out of the blue again, not like there's a natural disaster wreaking havoc in his country right now and getting worse by the sounds of the latest reports. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leicsmac Posted 16 November 2018 Share Posted 16 November 2018 3 minutes ago, Carl the Llama said: Clearly... Seems a good time to drag this topic out of the blue again, not like there's a natural disaster wreaking havoc in his country right now and getting worse by the sounds of the latest reports. TBF a lot of his supporter base either wouldn't care or would actually celebrate Cali burning to the ground. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buce Posted 16 November 2018 Share Posted 16 November 2018 Judge restores CNN's White House pass: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/16/trump-white-house-cnn-reporter-jim-acosta-pass 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leicsmac Posted 19 November 2018 Share Posted 19 November 2018 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46256296 1 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buce Posted 20 November 2018 Share Posted 20 November 2018 Trump inflated importance of Saudi arms sales to US job market, report says Saudi Arabia needs the US far more than the other way round, report argues amid crisis over murder of Jamal Khashoggi. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/20/donald-trump-saudi-arabia-arms-sales-jamal-khashoggi And it's pure coincidence that Saudi block-bookings are keeping Trump's hotel chain afloat... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buce Posted 20 November 2018 Share Posted 20 November 2018 Ivanka Trump used personal email for government business – report White House adviser sent hundreds of emails last year, many in violation of federal records rules, the Washington Post reported https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/19/ivanka-trump-personal-email-account-government-hillary-clinton Crooked Ivanka, Lock Her Up! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lgfualol Posted 20 November 2018 Share Posted 20 November 2018 1 hour ago, Buce said: Ivanka Trump used personal email for government business – report White House adviser sent hundreds of emails last year, many in violation of federal records rules, the Washington Post reported https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/19/ivanka-trump-personal-email-account-government-hillary-clinton Crooked Ivanka, Lock Her Up! There will be some pretty impressive mental gymnastics from Trump supporters regarding this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carl the Llama Posted 20 November 2018 Share Posted 20 November 2018 1 hour ago, Buce said: Ivanka Trump used personal email for government business – report White House adviser sent hundreds of emails last year, many in violation of federal records rules, the Washington Post reported https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/19/ivanka-trump-personal-email-account-government-hillary-clinton Crooked Ivanka, Lock Her Up! No. Fvcking. Way. I'm sure they'll just argue along the lines of "but sheeeee did iiiiiit" and their base will fall in line because 2 wrongs obviously make a right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leicsmac Posted 21 November 2018 Share Posted 21 November 2018 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46283355 I wish I could say that this was surprising, but there's a certain satisfaction in seeing Trump admit wholeheartedly that money is more important than lives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Oxlong Posted 21 November 2018 Share Posted 21 November 2018 Well, I suppose you can’t accuse him of inconsistency. On every moral issue he gets it wrong. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buce Posted 22 November 2018 Share Posted 22 November 2018 A fascinating article for non-Americans trying to make sense of it all: At Thanksgiving, discordant Trump heads squabbling American family https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46284269 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leicsmac Posted 22 November 2018 Share Posted 22 November 2018 3 hours ago, Buce said: A fascinating article for non-Americans trying to make sense of it all: At Thanksgiving, discordant Trump heads squabbling American family https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46284269 Splendid read that. Probably the only Western country more divided than the UK along ideological lines right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest MattP Posted 22 November 2018 Share Posted 22 November 2018 Quite an interesting read about "America's dirty little secret".....some privlilege here you won't hear Obama, Bush or Clinton shouting about. Quote There comes a point in a New York expat’s life when you suddenly realise that the liberal elites that run this town have feet of clay. You have watched them joining anti-Trump marches, opening their beautiful homes for Democrat fundraising parties and noisily bidding ludicrous sums at charity auctions. Then the time comes for their children to apply to university and the whole elaborate façade comes crashing down. My wife and I couldn’t help noticing that the parents of our daughter’s American friends didn’t exactly share our blind panic as we tried to work out where she should apply for university. Why were people who usually couldn’t shut up for worrying about their children’s schooling suddenly so much more blasé about the future than we were? Their children were bright, but not that bright. The universities in their sights were among the best in the country: Harvard, Princeton, Yale and the rest of the Ivy League. What these teenagers did have and our daughter didn’t, however, were parents who had been there, too. More often than not, their parents had even met there. Their success therefore was not quite guaranteed but vastly more likely than for us poor British saps and, more importantly, for the vast majority of their fellow Americans. It’s shocking enough to learn that proudly meritocratic America is about the only country whose universities give precedence to its richest, most entitled applicants. It’s doubly dispiriting to learn that liberal colleges, parents and, frankly, children collude without so much as a blush at this outrageous exercise in hypocrisy and inherited privilege. The dark mysteries of the grandiosely titled ‘legacy preference’ system have just been laid bare in a Boston courtroom. The case concerns Students for Fair Admissions, an anti-affirmative action campaign group that is suing Harvard University on the grounds that it discriminates against Asian-Americans. The court has heard all the evidence and now awaits a judge’s ruling. It was told that Harvard’s admissions gauleiters give low ‘personality ratings’ for criteria such as courage, likeability and kindness to Asian applicants — often without even meeting them. The university insists it doesn’t discriminate against any racial groups. However, these allegations pale beside what the case has revealed about how Harvard falls over itself to ensure rich parents and alumni parents — preferably both (and in elite Harvard’s case, they usually are) — get their children accepted. Far from being a Harvard quirk, the legacy system operates at three-quarters of America’s top 100 universities, including all but one of the very smartest ones (the exception being Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Writing about the Harvard case, the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently described legacy preferences as progressive America’s ‘dirty little secret’. It’s certainly dirty but hardly much of a secret, given that nobody involved feels they have anything to hide. By clinging to the notion that the US is a meritocracy, richer Americans can always argue that whatever their rewards, they got them on their own talent. What was missing, until now, was a detailed explanation of how it works in practice. Thankfully, the Harvard court case and a cache of staff emails obtained by the plaintiffs have been very helpful. Welcome to the world of ‘ALDCs’, or athletes, legacies, dean’s or director’s interest list and children of Harvard staff. The dean’s or director’s interest list is largely composed of the children of very prominent people and wealthy donors. One imagines Malia Obama — whose parents are such doughty champions of equal opportunity — was on the dean’s interest list when she got into Harvard. It’s hard to think her formidable parents didn’t know that. Thanks to what Harvard coyly calls a ‘tip’ (what the rest of us would call a ‘leg-up’), legacy applicants are five times as likely to be admitted as non-legacies. The gap between ALDCs and the rest is even larger — they are ten times more likely to win a place. A study last year found almost the same number of Harvard students came from the top 1 per cent of America’s richest families as from the bottom 60 per cent. Meanwhile, the US’s most famous and smuggest university likes to boast about its exclusivity, annually selecting just 1,660 from 40,000 applicants. If Harvard officials weren’t squirming to hear their emails to each other on this subject read out in court, they should have been. In one, dated June 2013 and headed ‘My hero’, the then dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, David Ellwood, lavished praise on William Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s dean of admissions. ‘Once again you have done wonders,’ he gushed. ‘I am simply thrilled about all the folks you were able to admit.’ Syrian refugees fleeing Raqqa? Not exactly. He was talking about the children of super-rich donors. One donor ‘has already committed to a building’, he went on; another gave ‘major money for fellowships — before a decision from you!’ Billionaires will dole out millions to Harvard without even knowing if their child will definitely get a place. In other emails, the dean of a Harvard graduate school praised the admissions chief for accepting certain students who were ‘all big wins’. Some went into detail about applicants’ social connections with the rich and famous. Donor names were redacted in court to spare billionaire blushes. One chain of emails revealed quite how calculating Harvard can be in these sensitive matters. Offering Fitzsimmons advice on a potential student whose family had given $8.7 million, a Harvard fundraising official said the family had been generous in the past, but that more recent years had been ‘challenging’. The officer added bleakly: ‘Going forward, I don’t see a significant opportunity for further major gifts. [Name redacted] had an art collection which conceivably could come our way. More probably it will go to the [name redacted] museum.’ Universities claim the legacy system merely helps determine the choice between equally able candidates. However, the trial was shown a chart that, in the words of Judge Allison Burroughs, demonstrated that a ‘big chunk of athletes and legacies’ wouldn’t have got in without a ‘tip’. Harvard’s Fitzsimmons justified favouring rich students for financial reasons, specifically mentioning the cost of awarding scholarships. Yet that cost would barely make a dent in the annual returns of the university’s staggering $40 billion endowment. Universities also argue legacy preferences are important to keep alumni loyal and generous, but research has found that the system makes negligible difference on its own as to whether old boys and girls donate. If legacy preference only helped in getting a good education, that would be reason enough to object. However, graduating from a top US university is often just the beginning of a lifetime’s relentless networking. The average Ivy League alumni association would give the Freemasons a run for their money when it comes to mutual back-scratching. Martha Pollack, president of Cornell, recently told her university newspaper that legacy admissions help perpetuate ‘a Cornell family that goes on for generations’. She saw this as a virtue, not a fault. Critics note that the proportion of legacy students in US university admissions remains pretty constant each year, suggesting an informal quota system is operating. Legacy undergraduates remain disproportionately white as well as rich. Americans love to see Oxford and Cambridge as quaint bastions of privilege but UK universities abolished legacy preferences in the middle of the last century. Our daughter got into Cambridge and some New York friends were genuinely shocked to learn we’d advised her it was probably a bad idea to mention that her mother is an alumna at her interview. Meanwhile, Downton Abbey: The Exhibition continues to pack in the punters on its epic US tour. Americans are coming in droves to shiver with pleasure at the iniquities of feudal old Europe and its self–perpetuating ruling class. But if they really want a good dollop of hereditary privilege to gasp at, they could look much closer to home. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leicsmac Posted 22 November 2018 Share Posted 22 November 2018 8 minutes ago, MattP said: Quite an interesting read about "America's dirty little secret".....some privlilege here you won't hear Obama, Bush or Clinton shouting about. Not exactly a secret that $$$ and family name rather than ability is the key to get into the Ivy League and has been for pretty much its entire history for all wings of the political spectrum, so I'm not sure what the point of the political remark here was other than to highlight a certain hypocrisy going on? If so, fair enough. And, as an addendum, I wonder what ethnicity the vast majority of those legacy applicants are? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buce Posted 23 November 2018 Share Posted 23 November 2018 House to investigate Trump's Saudi links: “If foreign investment in the Trump businesses is guiding US policy in a way that’s antithetical to the country’s interests, we need to find out.“ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/23/house-democrats-adam-schiff-trump-khashoggi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wymsey Posted 23 November 2018 Share Posted 23 November 2018 How this guy has never been summoned to court with his countless controversies, both personally and professionally, beggars belief. As if he's immune from any possible legal lawsuit and/or punishment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leicsmac Posted 24 November 2018 Share Posted 24 November 2018 A part of the US healthcare system, folks. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leicsmac Posted 24 November 2018 Share Posted 24 November 2018 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46325168 Yes, it affects economics. It affects everything. Why the denial? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bellend Sebastian Posted 24 November 2018 Share Posted 24 November 2018 6 hours ago, leicsmac said: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46325168 Yes, it affects economics. It affects everything. Why the denial? I don't think the daft orange shite would take it seriously even when Mar a Lago is underwater Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wurmer Posted 24 November 2018 Share Posted 24 November 2018 The problem is, you can’t argue or hold a meaningful debate with intellectually challenged, stupid, blinkered, pathological liars. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leicsmac Posted 24 November 2018 Share Posted 24 November 2018 (edited) 3 hours ago, Bellend Sebastian said: I don't think the daft orange shite would take it seriously even when Mar a Lago is underwater TBH I don't think it's just him that needs to be convinced about it - he could be as eco-friendly as you like and he'd still struggle to get anything done thanks to those who don't want anything done. 3 hours ago, wurmer said: The problem is, you can’t argue or hold a meaningful debate with intellectually challenged, stupid, blinkered, pathological liars. Related to the above, at this point I think this is an issue of malice rather than stupidity. That the US isn't taking more meaningful action on this is down to people who know exactly what's going on and simply don't give a shit - because they think they'll be dead before the problems really arise, or because they think they can consolidate their power no matter how the Earth changes (and that's malicious and stupid). Edited 24 November 2018 by leicsmac Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leicsmac Posted 27 November 2018 Share Posted 27 November 2018 Hey @Bellend Sebastian, you were right! https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46351940 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts