Aides to President Donald Trump brace for new environment after the appointment of a special counsel
.. some of the president’s senior advisers have recently begun a study of the Democratic administration of former President Bill Clinton, examining how it managed to push through major, bipartisan budgets and reform bills, despite being the subject of an independent counsel’s probe for five of its eight years... Mr. Trump’s aides have also been pressing for more restraint by the president on Twitter ,and some weeks ago they organized what one official called an “intervention.”.. In that meeting, aides warned Mr. Trump that certain kinds of comments made on Twitter would “paint him into a corner,” both in terms of political messaging and legally.. A coterie of former campaign associates, including David Bossie, Anthony Scaramucci, Jason Miller and Corey Lewandowski, were spotted.. described the White House currently as a “toxic work environment.”.. “The president goes through moods where sometimes he wants to blow everything up,”.. the administration hasn’t lined up successors for the people Mr. Trump has considered firing.. The aides’ recommendation to Mr. Trump: cite the continuing investigation, then pivot to the economy, health care and taxes... Ken Duberstein, a former chief of staff to former President Ronald Reagan, said in an interview that he used to urge the GOP president not to respond to questions that reporters might throw his way involving the Iran-Contra scandal.“You can’t go off on a tangent. You can’t answer the sound bite gotcha questions,” Mr. Duberstein said.He said Mr. Trump should not “take the bait of a shouted question or the shiny silver dollar of being able to tweet. Because then the rest of the agenda gets left on the cutting room floor.”
The value of a thousand little features
Why is the Discourse codebase so big? Aren’t they just taking text and showing it on a web page?
Well, yes. But isn’t every web application ultimately just taking text and showing it on a web page? If it were that simple I think we would have packed it up a long time ago.
If you zoomed in closer on Discourse, say to the 5000ft view, you’d see that we have many big features we had to implement but might not seem obvious at first including: Sub-categories, User Groups, Theming, Moderator Tools, a Setup Wizard, etc). I think a lot of experienced developers would recognize that you’d need all that stuff as your product gets used by more people.
.. The thing that has been a great learning experience for me though, is the thousands of little features that most people don’t see.
.. For example (and this is nowhere near an exhaustive list):
- If your reply is too short, we’ll encourage you to say more. Short replies offer little value.
- If your post links to something recently mentioned, we’ll say “Hey that was already posted x replies above you.”
- If your new topic is similar to one that already exists, we link to it and tell you to check it out first before perhaps creating a duplicate.
- If you start dominating the topic by replying too much, we ask you to slow down and give other people a chance to participate.
- If you are only replying to the same person over and over, we suggest that you might be derailing the topic and perhaps should take it elsewhere like a private message.
.. Of course, a truly toxic user will find a way to be toxic regardless of how many times to discourage their bad behavior, but the vast majority of users are not toxic and will happily follow hints that lead them towards a better discussion. Many of our users will never see this work, but the ones who do will hopefully be pointed in the right direction.
Can The White House Pick Its Press
To hide the fact that he had a tumor, Cleveland, in 1893, disappeared from Washington for four days to have surgery aboard a friend’s yacht. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson, who hated the press’s fascination with his three daughters, accused “certain evening newspapers” of quoting him on things he meant to stay off the record.
.. almost every President has adopted a fruitful, if tense, mutual dependence with the press. Each needs something from the other, and both sides know it.
.. Anonymity, ritually bemoaned and practiced by both sides, endures because it allows members of government, high and low, to speak more freely.
.. anonymity allowed the Washington Post to report, on the basis of nine sources, that Michael Flynn, the national-security adviser, had discussed Obama Administration sanctions with the Russian ambassador before Donald Trump took office
.. In Washington, anonymity, as Winston Churchill said of democracy, is a lousy solution, except for all the others.
.. But under Donald Trump, the dynamic between the press and the President has turned toxic.
.. I called the fake news ‘the enemy of the people’—and they are. They are the enemy of the people. Because they have no sources, they just make them up when there are none.”
.. At one point, he posed changes that would effectively alter the First Amendment, saying, “They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name.” He added, “We’re going to do something about it.”
.. When Zeke Miller, of Time magazine, and Julie Pace, of the Associated Press—both of whom are on the board of the White House Correspondents Association—realized that organizations were being excluded, they left in protest.
.. The White House defended its actions by saying that every White House holds handpicked, off-the-record sessions, but reporters noted that this was an on-the-record briefing.
.. We don’t know if Spicer is under pressure to show that he’s being tougher with the press. We don’t know if this is another effort at manipulation to shift the topic from whether the Administration inappropriately tried to influence the F.B.I. on the Russian investigation.
.. “Senior Trump Aide Forged Key Ties to Anti-Semitic Groups in Hungary,” which focussed on Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to the Presiden
.. “I think there is a clear effort to bring the press to heel
.. a clear effort to delegitimize credible sources of information so when something happens, when we or the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post pop a story, that there’s a record of already discrediting the source.”
.. Darrell Issa .. called, on Friday, for a special prosecutor to manage the investigation into contacts between Trump associates and Russia.
.. Barring a critical press is a step that Trump’s predecessors avoided even at the depths of scandal. During Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Monica Lewinsky affair
.. He has at his disposal, and is using to full effect, something previous Presidents didn’t have: social media and a direct method of communication that bypasses the press.
.. most Presidents eventually calculate that it is a ruinous strategy that only intensifies an Administration’s isolation and deepens the public’s distrust.
.. During Grover Cleveland’s first Presidential campaign, in 1884, news broke that he had fathered an illegitimate child. He told his political aides and allies, “Whatever you do, tell the truth.” It contributed to his reputation and ultimately helped him win the White House.
Toxic Masculinity and Murder
. And one that tends to be overlooked— widely known but narrowly considered— is the simple fact that almost all mass murderers are men. As of 2014, Timecited the number at 98 percent. That makes masculinity a more common feature than any of the elements that tend to dominate discourse—religion, race, nationality, political affiliation, or any history of mental illness.
.. the most primal act a human being can take to ameliorate self-loathing is “showing one’s power over other human beings.”
.. Sociologist Lin Huff-Corzine posited that “men are more comfortable than women when using guns, whereas women are more likely to choose knives.” Criminologist Candice Batton suggested that men are more likely than women to “develop negative attributions of blame that are external,” which translate into anger and hostility toward others. Women, though, are more likely to blame some failing of their own, “directing anger inwardly into guilt and depression.”
.. “Being able to stockpile weapons and have ever bigger and scarier-looking guns is straightforward and undeniable overcompensation insecure men trying to prove what manly men they are,” writes Marcotte. “This isn’t a discussion being held on the plane of rationality, but a psychological drama about these men’s fears of emasculation.”.. The idea of toxic masculinity is—critically— not a sweeping indictment of bros or gender. It’s an admission that masculinity can be toxic at times.