{"id":3955,"date":"2017-01-09T09:26:28","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T08:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3955"},"modified":"2017-01-09T09:26:28","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T08:26:28","slug":"unsolicited-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/3955\/","title":{"rendered":"Unsolicited Advice"},"content":{"rendered":"

I remember back when I was in school, probably in the lower sixth form, I was watching a game of cricket being played on the school’s oval. \u00a0For those not familiar with cricket, when a batsman gets out he often has a quick word with the incoming batsman to share some advice regarding the pitch and the bowling. \u00a0You don’t see it so much at test levels, but at club and school cricket you do. \u00a0Anyway, I was watching this particularly inept batsman walk out to take the crease and he was hit plumb LBW first ball. \u00a0As he trudged back to the pavilion he passed the incoming batsman and stopped to talk to him. \u00a0My friend who was sat beside me said\u00a0“What possible advice could he give\u00a0the new batsman after that performance?”<\/em><\/p>\n

Now to US politics. \u00a0We’ve already had the outgoing CIA director giving interviews<\/a> to the BBC as to how he thinks Trump’s administration should handle Russia, Iran, and ISIS. \u00a0Now we have Obama giving Trump advice<\/a>:<\/p>\n

US President Barack Obama says he has advised his successor Donald Trump not to attempt to run the White House “the way you would manage a family business”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which is sound advice, but less meaningful coming from somebody who ran it like a banana republic.<\/p>\n

In an interview with ABC News, Mr Obama said that Mr Trump must “respect” US institutions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This from somebody who shat all over pretty much every institution he came into contact with.<\/p>\n

He warned that there was a difference between governing and campaigning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s nice to know Obama has finally figured this out: there’s been no sign that he’s done so in his eight years in office.<\/p>\n

“There are world capitals and financial markets and people all around the world who take really seriously what he [Mr Trump] says,” Mr Obama said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As opposed to what Obama says.<\/p>\n

Mr Obama also talked about the US intelligence agency’s report into alleged cyber-attacks by Russia and the attempt to influence the 2016 US presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

He said that he had “underestimated” the impact of such attacks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The only thing he underestimated was how useful this bullshit would be in explaining away Hillary’s defeat and the rejection of his policies.<\/p>\n

He said that a conversation had taken place with Mr Trump in which he had discussed the importance of having faith in the intelligence community.<\/p>\n

“There are going to be times where the only way you can make a good decision is if you have confidence that the process is working,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, and if that process isn’t working – for example, by giving free passes to criminal behaviour of Presidential candidates and making up shite about Russians hacking elections – then it is time to change things around.<\/p>\n

Last week Mr Trump said he was a “big fan” of intelligence agencies, after months of casting doubt on the Russian link to the security breach. But he later raised questions over how the Democratic Party had responded to the cyber-attacks.<\/p>\n

“How and why are they so sure about hacking if they never even requested an examination of the computer servers? What is going on?” Mr Trump asked in a tweet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Questions journalists should have been asking Obama instead of relaying his “advice” to Donald Trump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I remember back when I was in school, probably in the lower sixth form, I was watching a game of cricket being played on the school’s oval. \u00a0For those not familiar with cricket, when a batsman gets out he often … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20,44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3955"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3955"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3956,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3955\/revisions\/3956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}