[Winstonm]

President Dennison today has taken one more step in turning the U.S. into a third-rate country.

[PassedOut]

 Winstonm, on 2018-May-08, 11:54, said:

President Dennison today has taken one more step in turning the U.S. into a third-rate country.

The US president has the power to ruin the lives of folks all over the world. And those folks have no vote in the matter.

That's just one reason why it's disturbing that irresponsible voters elected a moron to the US presidency.

[Winstonm]

 PassedOut, on 2018-May-08, 13:25, said:

The US president has the power to ruin the lives of folks all over the world. And those folks have no vote in the matter.

That's just one reason why it's disturbing that irresponsible voters elected a moron to the US presidency.

Taking a step back and looking from a macro level we see legislatures nationwide attacking abortion, attacks on the Justice Department and FBI, assaults on free speech and democratic processes, a retreat from world leadership, and I get the sense of a step backward in time toward dark ages mentality of fear and loathing of those who are not like "us".

It is as if the Southern Baptist Convention has taken control of governments and are full throttle into Republican Jihad.

[hrothgar]

JESUS ***** CHRIST

https://www.dropbox....ummary.pdf?dl=0

[Winstonm]

 hrothgar, on 2018-May-08, 16:48, said:

JESUS ***** CHRIST

https://www.dropbox....ummary.pdf?dl=0

Wow! Now a lot of things make sense: why Cohen wasn't brought into the WH, why Dennison is so committed to Cohen, the crime family mentality of everyone associated with this administration, and the ties to Russia.

Follow the money.

[Chas_P]

 PassedOut, on 2018-May-08, 13:25, said:

That's just one reason why it's disturbing that irresponsible voters elected a moron to the US presidency.

Please tell us who appointed you as judge and jury of who's "irresponsible".

[Winstonm]

 Chas_P, on 2018-May-08, 18:50, said:

Please tell us who appointed you as judge and jury of who's "irresponsible".

If you voted for Dennison and are still in support of him, you are not irresponsible but deplorable. Is that better?

[PassedOut]

 Chas_P, on 2018-May-08, 18:50, said:

Please tell us who appointed you as judge and jury of who's "irresponsible".

It was no appointment: it was a free and fair election. You lost. Get over it.

[Chas_P]

 PassedOut, on 2018-May-08, 19:06, said:

It was no appointment: it was a free and fair election. You lost. Get over it.

LOL. HRH Hillary's in the White House? Spare me. You guys are the ones who need to get over it.

[Winstonm]

 Chas_P, on 2018-May-08, 19:59, said:

LOL. HRH Hillary's in the White House? Spare me. You guys are the ones who need to get over it.

Donald Trump is a loser, a small-minded, bitter, vindictive old crime boss who puts his own self-interests above the interests of his country.

Anyone who still supports him is either sick or stupid or both.

[PassedOut]

 Chas_P, on 2018-May-08, 19:59, said:

LOL. HRH Hillary's in the White House? Spare me. You guys are the ones who need to get over it.

Gotcha! You snowflakes are so predictable!

[awm]

It will be interesting to see the EU response to the latest Trump decisions. He’s threatened tariffs against Europe (although he keeps delaying them), pulled the US out of both the Paris climate change agreement and the Iran agreement, supported Brexit and called for other European countries to leave the EU, cast doubt on US commitment to NATO, supported anti-democratic leaders in Poland and Hungary (and candidates in France and other places) etc.

It seems like at some point the EU will have to recognize that the US is not a reliable partner. Angela Merkel has suggested as much, but I’m wondering if we will see some retaliatory tariffs, or the EU taking Iran’s side against the US in exchange for Iran keeping its commitments to denuclearization, etc.

Or maybe the EU is too busy dealing with Brexit, hard to say. Like all big bureaucracies it tends to move slowly... but once things do change, it may be tough to reverse the momentum even if the next US President is less hostile to trade and democracy.

[kenberg]

 awm, on 2018-May-09, 02:34, said:

It will be interesting to see the EU response to the latest Trump decisions. He's threatened tariffs against Europe (although he keeps delaying them), pulled the US out of both the Paris climate change agreement and the Iran agreement, supported Brexit and called for other European countries to leave the EU, cast doubt on US commitment to NATO, supported anti-democratic leaders in Poland and Hungary (and candidates in France and other places) etc.

It seems like at some point the EU will have to recognize that the US is not a reliable partner. Angela Merkel has suggested as much, but I'm wondering if we will see some retaliatory tariffs, or the EU taking Iran's side against the US in exchange for Iran keeping its commitments to denuclearization, etc.

Or maybe the EU is too busy dealing with Brexit, hard to say. Like all big bureaucracies it tends to move slowly... but once things do change, it may be tough to reverse the momentum even if the next US President is less hostile to trade and democracy.

There are many reasons for concern, but the one you address seems to me among the most serious. I don't think being a lone wolf is all that good an idea in today's world, being an unreliable lone wolf is seriously worse. When we entered the Iran deal my thoughts were "Well, I hope he [Obama] knows what he is doing". So that was skepticism. With Trump pulling out I cannot even muster up some skeptical hope that he [Trump] knows what he is doing. He just does things. The man likes to do things. And say things. Roller coasters were fun when I was 12. I'm past that part of my life.

[barmar]

 hrothgar, on 2018-May-08, 16:48, said:

JESUS ***** CHRIST

https://www.dropbox....ummary.pdf?dl=0

What happened to this? I get a 404 screen.

[barmar]

 Winstonm, on 2018-May-08, 14:02, said:

Taking a step back and looking from a macro level we see legislatures nationwide attacking abortion, attacks on the Justice Department and FBI, assaults on free speech and democratic processes, a retreat from world leadership, and I get the sense of a step backward in time toward dark ages mentality of fear and loathing of those who are not like "us".

It is as if the Southern Baptist Convention has taken control of governments and are full throttle into Republican Jihad.

They've been lurking for a while, but until Trump took the WH it was more of a fringe movement. Now they've been emboldened and they're getting their legislations pushed through.

[Winstonm]

From the Senate intelligence committee report: (emphasis added)

Quote

Russian actors scanned databases for vulnerabilities, attempted intrusions, and in a small number of cases successfully penetrated a voter registration database. This activity was part of a larger campaign to prepare to undermine confidence in the voting process. The Committee has not seen any evidence that vote tallies were manipulated or that voter registration information was deleted or modified.

The Committee has limited information about whether, and to what extent, state and local officials carried out forensic or other examination of election infrastructure systems in order to confirm whether election-related systems were compromised. It is possible that additional activity occurred and has not yet been uncovered.

I note that the states and locations that had Russian penetration of registration databases are not named. Also, the committee cannot rule out that changes were made to registration bases, which would have caused immeasurable conflicts to some voters on election day.

This once again leads to question marks about the slim margins in the 4 swing states. Did database penetration and manipulation occur in those states?

[Al_U_Card]

 kenberg, on 2018-May-09, 06:17, said:

There are many reasons for concern, but the one you address seems to me among the most serious. I don't think being a lone wolf is all that good an idea in today's world, being an unreliable lone wolf is seriously worse. When we entered the Iran deal my thoughts were "Well, I hope he [Obama] knows what he is doing". So that was skepticism. With Trump pulling out I cannot even muster up some skeptical hope that he [Trump] knows what he is doing. He just does things. The man likes to do things. And say things. Roller coasters were fun when I was 12. I'm past that part of my life.

Isn't this another part in Trump's dedication to undoing Obama's "legacy"? (Paris agreement, Obamacare, EPA secret science, and now the Iran deal) He did say, before the election, that he would do so. The Iranian situation is so strange (at least it seems so at first and second glance) that a better understanding of US/Iran dealings since WWII makes a case for why Iran might want a deal in the first place. Stephen Kinzer is a journalist and author with considerable chops in this region and this presentation kind of hits the nail on the head.

[kenberg]

 Al_U_Card, on 2018-May-09, 10:37, said:

Isn't this another part in Trump's dedication to undoing Obama's "legacy"? (Paris agreement, Obamacare, EPA secret science, and now the Iran deal) He did say, before the election, that he would do so. The Iranian situation is so strange (at least it seems so at first and second glance) that a better understanding of US/Iran dealings since WWII makes a case for why Iran might want a deal in the first place. Stephen Kinzer is a journalist and author with considerable chops in this region and this presentation kind of hits the nail on the head.

I have watched the first 36 minutes or so, I will probably watch the rest. I was aware of the general outlines of what he is saying but of course he can enlarge on it. Now I am skeptical of some of it, to put it mildly. For example, he explains that Iran was not originally to be part of the designated Axis of Evil, but someone read Bush's speech and noted that there were only two countries in it but an axis should have three, so somebody suggested including Iran and everyone said fine. I believe in being skeptical of the wisdom of our leaders, but I also believe in being skeptical of the critics. It's one thing to describe a policy as ill-judged, it's another thing to describe the people who put it together as frivolous morons.

So the general history as he describes it fits with my not well-informed understanding. I am also skeptical of the accuracy of my own general understanding.

Which gets us to the problem as I see it. There is no chance that I will become so well-informed on Iran that policy makers should come to me for advice. I want policy makers who are better informed than I am, and hopefully they are also smarter. Good judgment is a key. My role, as a citizen and a voter, is to choose those whom I hope I can at least provisionally trust. I can listen to this speech about Iran, or some other speech about Iran. On some items I will say "Yeah, I knew that". On others I will say "I didn't know that". On still others, as with the above example I will say "Uh, I doubt that". But I will never be prepared to call up the president, this one or any other, and seek an appointment with him to tell him what he should do in Iran. I hope to trust his judgment, it would make me very nervous if he chose a policy because he trusted mine.

[Winstonm]

 barmar, on 2018-May-09, 09:02, said:

They've been lurking for a while, but until Trump took the WH it was more of a fringe movement. Now they've been emboldened and they're getting their legislations pushed through.

The Republican Jihad is a serious consideration. From Yahoo:

Quote

Mark Harris, a Baptist pastor with a long history of social conservatism, won the GOP primary in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District on Tuesday night, ousting Rep. Robert Pittenger.

Pittenger is the first congressional incumbent of either party to lose a primary this cycle

Mark Harris is anti-gay marriage. The entirety of the Republican Jihad is fine irony as they want to use the power of their "small government" to enforce their religious beliefs on everyone else by claiming their Constitutional rights are violated if they are not allowed to do so, and that plus gun ownership makes them great patriots.

[PassedOut]

 hrothgar, on 2018-May-08, 16:48, said:

JESUS ***** CHRIST

https://www.dropbox....ummary.pdf?dl=0

Why do people keep showering cash on Trump lawyer Michael Cohen?

Quote

To my point that when you engage Cohen you’re doing something questionable, let’s begin with AT&T. As it happens, the company was seeking a multibillion-dollar merger with Time Warner that has to be approved by the federal government. Trump opposed the deal as a candidate, and his Justice Department has sued to stop it; the matter is currently before the courts.

AT&T already employs a small army of lawyers and lobbyists, and indeed, the company issued a statement saying Cohen “did no legal or lobbying work for us, and the contract ended in December 2017.” So they paid Cohen a few hundred thousand dollars for nothing but his “insights.” Might it be that the company saw dropping a heap of money on Cohen as a way to get an inside track to the president and win his goodwill?

What insights did Novartis want? Its biggest priority is probably to prevent the government from taking any action to reduce drug prices, as Trump has periodically claimed he wants to do. Novartis, which has been questioned about this by Mueller’s team, says it “entered into a one year agreement with Essential Consultants shortly after the election of President Trump focused on U.S. healthcare policy matters,” for which it paid Cohen a remarkable $1.2 million. Ah yes, it was seeking Cohen’s health-care expertise.

Another company, Korea Aerospace Industries Ltd, which is contending for a large Air Force contract, paid Cohen $150,000. It told The Post that “the payments were to provide legal consulting to assist in the company’s reorganization of its ‘internal accounting system’ and did not involve the Air Force deal or other lobbying.” Sure, that’s believable. Why wouldn’t a large foreign corporation hire Trump’s lawyer, who certainly isn’t an accountant, to help it reorganize its accounting system?

And what about the Russian oligarch? What was he seeking from Cohen? Columbus Nova told the Wall Street Journal that it “hired Michael Cohen as a business consultant regarding potential sources of capital and potential investments in real estate and other ventures.”

Boy, there sure are a lot of people eager to acquire Cohen’s brilliant insights.

The most benign interpretation of all this would be that once Trump got elected, Cohen put out the word that if you wanted to make sure the president heard your case on whatever matters you might have before the government, a good way to do it was to slip his “personal lawyer” a six-figure check. This would have been quite foolish on the corporations’ part, since there’s little evidence that Cohen exercises any influence over Trump now, if he ever did. But Cohen may just have been capitalizing on his newfound renown by taking this corporate money for essentially nothing.

Certainly is unusual for the owner of a tax-cab company to have so such valuable "advice" to sell across so many fields. Seems that he learned a lot from his Uncle Morty.