monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

a long Soviet history of efforts to sow discord in the internal affairs of rivals, and as a former KGB functionary, Putin himself was an active part of such efforts.

Indeed it appears to be all about supposed evil intent : something which I find quite odd in view of the many accommodations offered to Russia by the previous Administration. I think it more likely that the Russians were merely attempting to opportunistically sow discord, and the Democrats, through their own misdeeds, offered them several opportunities to do so.

WASHINGTON—Lobbing new criticism at the special counsel’s Russia investigation, U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday he feels “very badly” for former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who last week pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about reaching out to the Russians on the president’s behalf.

“I think it’s a shame,” Trump said of Flynn’s situation, adding that it’s “very unfair” and that Flynn had “led a very strong life.”

Trump tried to contrast Flynn’s treatment with that of his Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, whom he said “lied many times to the FBI and nothing happened.”

“Flynn lied and they destroyed his life,” Trump said.

The FBI didn’t conclude that Clinton lied to agents, however. Former FBI director James Comey testified last year that agents found Clinton to be truthful in her interview, telling a House committee, “we have no basis to conclude she lied to the FBI.”

Jill Filipovic‏Verified account

Hillary Clinton is apparently responsible for Harvey Weinstein, her husband, and Donald Trump. Are men ever responsible for what they do?

Politico reported on Sunday that staffers are increasingly unable to limit Trump’s ability to consume information—it is near impossible, one said, to prevent him from watching television—and Trump’s allies worry that White House lawyer Ty Cobb’s repeated promise that the probe will be over soon is “divorced from reality.” “There’s no quarterback. . . . They’re literally making it up as they go along,” a person close to the White House told Politico, describing the lack of any containment strategy. “We’re in very dangerous territory.”

Caught in the center of this Trump maelstrom is John Kelly, the former general-turned-chief of staff, brought in earlier this year to stabilize a warring West Wing and restrain the president from his worst impulses. Part of his initial strategy involved limiting the information that ended up in front of Trump, from news sources to people, even going so far as to reportedly keep Trump from entering the dining room at Mar-a-Lago. That worked—to a point. Several of Trump’s confidants outside the White House told The Wall Street Journal that now, if they wanted to get in touch with him, they simply call his wife, Melania Trump, and ask her to pass on messages to the president. “If I don’t want to wait 24 hours for a call . . . getting to Melania is much easier,” said one such confidant. Trump has also taken to asking his aides not to tell Kelly about his private phone calls (a request they declined at least once), and apparently has free reign on Twitter. “Believe it or not, I don’t follow the tweets,” Kelly said recently.

For Trump, his moves on Moore and Flynn are standard operating procedure -- illustrations of how his presidency is a sort of bizarro version of every other presidency that has come before it.


Think of it this way: Remember that "Seinfeld" episode where George decides to do the opposite of every natural instinct he has? He tells a woman he is bald, unemployed and lives with his parents -- and she is suddenly interested in him. He shouts at someone making noise at the movies and is applauded for it. He rejects her invite up to her apartment and she is intrigued. You get the idea.


(Sidenote for Millennials: "Seinfeld" was an observational comedy show in the 1990s starring the "Comedians in Cars getting Coffee" guy.)


Trump's Monday morning is a telling reminder that the driving force of his presidency is to simply do the opposite -- of what past presidents would have done in similar situations, of what political conventional wisdom suggests and of what politeness dictates.


White supremacist violence? Blame both sides! Attacked by a Gold Star family? Hit back! Not fully supported by someone in your party? Attack them! Facing allegations of sexual assault from multiple women? Deny it and call them all liars!


That desire to do the opposite -- and, in so doing, to stick a finger in the eye of the political establishment -- was an instinct Trump had before he ran for president. But it was wholly affirmed by Trump's candidacy -- in which he was first laughed at, then feared and now accepted. He did the opposite at every turn of the campaign and he won. It was proof positive for Trump that any political person who said "the right thing to do here is ..." was wrong.


Which brings us to Monday morning.


As I noted last week, Moore is -- by profile and demeanor -- Trump's kind of politician. Moore is hated by the political establishment. He's counted out. He's presumed guilty of the allegations against him. And yet, Moore persists. He refuses to bow down to the gods of political correctness. He fights.
Those traits -- coupled with the fact that Moore now looks like he may win -- is plenty for Trump to endorse him. And, of course Trump knows that his endorsement of Moore -- coming hard on the heels of a decision to schedule a campaign rally in nearby Pensacola on Friday -- will make his critics (Republicans and Democrats) crazy. It's part and parcel of why he's doing it.
On Flynn, who was so loyal to Trump, sure, he did a bad thing by lying to the FBI. But Trump views the punishment for Flynn as over the top -- and the product of an out-of-control FBI/special prosecutor who is pursuing a "witch hunt" on Russia.


Flynn, then, is not only a Trump guy but also a symbol, to Trump, of how he is being unfairly persecuted by the nameless and faceless bureaucrats who never wanted him to be president anyway.


Remember that everything -- absolutely everything -- that Trump says or does is filtered through the lens of Trump. His first-- and maybe only -- calculation is whether something is good or bad for him. Moore's plight reminds Trump of his own. So he endorses the Alabama Republican. Flynn is an example of how Trump himself has been treated unfairly and, therefore, is worthy of pity and sympathy.


Trump -- by his own admission -- sees himself as a counter-puncher. He sees what people do and then he strikes back by doing the opposite. He is, by nature, a reactive force -- someone defined by opposition to things rather than support for them.


Viewed that way, Trump's endorsement of Moore and his praise for Flynn make total and complete sense.

Up is down. Down is up. "C-A-T" spells "dog."

Even as a bored European, I can agree here ... but you just missed to write that it goes further than in 2013 or 2014 (not to speak of the 1960'/1970's cold war "fun" I'd been part of)

McConnell also appeared to backtrack his hard line against Moore. In an interview on CBS's “Face the Nation,” he declined to say that Moore should step aside or that he will definitely face an ethics investigation that could lead to his ouster. “It will be up to the people of Alabama to make this decision,” McConnell said. “And we will swear in whoever is elected and see where we are at that particular point.”

McConnell's apparent softening could have emboldened Trump to do what he has wanted to do for some time now: endorse Moore.

Israel interfering in US politics does not provide moral support for the US to interfere in theirs. It's either wrong or it's not.

It is in the strategic interests of the US to have a weak Russia, and I can not be surer that given the opportunity, our government does all it can to make this a reality. They should.

It is in the strategic interest of Russia (not to mention China, Iran and a bunch of other nations) for there to be a weak US, and yet now lefties couldn't be more outraged that Russia's government takes whatever opportunities, it is offered, to make it so.

Putin didn't introduce corruption into our system, he didn't split the nation ideologically in half, if he did anything, it was to provide one side of the partisan divide with a rallying cry (real or false) "TRUMP COLLUDED WITH RUSSIA!"

It is nice though to see a Frenchman hold America and it's political system in such high esteem that he wants it protected from its adversaries.

WASHINGTON — A Republican requirement that Congress consider the full cost of major legislation threatened to derail the party’s $1.5 trillion tax rewrite last week. So lawmakers went on the offensive to discredit the agency performing the analysis.

In 2015, Republicans changed the budget rules in Congress so that official scorekeepers would be required to analyze the potential economic impact of major legislation when determining how it would affect federal revenues.

But on Thursday, hours before they were set to vote on the largest tax cut Congress has considered in years, Senate Republicans opened an assault on that scorekeeper, the Joint Committee on Taxation, and its analysis, which showed the Senate plan would not, as lawmakers contended, pay for itself but would add $1 trillion to the federal budget deficit.

Public statements and messaging documents obtained by The New York Times show a concerted push by Republican lawmakers to discredit a nonpartisan agency they had long praised. Party leaders circulated two pages of “response points” that declared “the substance, timing and growth assumptions of J.C.T.’s ‘dynamic’ score are suspect.” Among their arguments was that the joint committee was using “consistently wrong” growth models to assess the effect the tax cuts would have on hiring, wages and investment.

The Republican response points go after revenue analyses by the committee and by the Congressional Budget Office, which scores other legislation, saying their findings “can be off to the tune of more than $1.5 trillion over ten years.”
... ... ...

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Israel interfering in US politics does not provide moral support for the US to interfere in theirs. It's either wrong or it's not.

Of course it's wrong, but geopolitics are not inherently moral.

Agreed. It appeared that you were attempting to mitigate Obama's interference. If not. OK.

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It is in the strategic interests of the US to have a weak Russia, and I can not be surer that given the opportunity, our government does all it can to make this a reality. They should.

I disagree that such is the US interest, but I agree that the US has meddled in many countries' elections, including Russia's.

Well, this isn't a thread to debate the geopolitical interests of any nation. Suffice it to say that if a nation perceives it is in its interest to work to weaken another, it will, if it can.

Quote:

It is in the strategic interest of Russia (not to mention China, Iran and a bunch of other nations) for there to be a weak US, and yet now lefties couldn't be more outraged that Russia's government takes whatever opportunities, it is offered, to make it so.

I'm not outraged at Putin. He's doing what he thinks is in his interest and he assumed he could get away with... I'm just pointing out that it is in the strategic interest of the US to resist attempts to undermine its democracy.

I wasn't necessarily specifying you as a leftie who is outraged by Putin. The vast majority of those who are are American Democrats. Of course, it's in the interest of the US to defend against any external threat. Considering the Chinese, North Korean and Russian hacking that went on under the Obama Administration, we've not been doing a good job, and I've not much confidence that we are doing any better with Trump at the helm. Hacking of government secrets is, IMO, a much greater threat than idiotic Facebook memes and tricking a Dem dunce to give up his e-mail password. Hacking our voting machines would have also been an unacceptable threat, but it didn't happen. If we're taking better precautions now, wonderful.

Quote:

Putin didn't introduce corruption into our system, he didn't split the nation ideologically in half, if he did anything, it was to provide one side of the partisan divide with a rallying cry (real or false) "TRUMP COLLUDED WITH RUSSIA!"

The plot succeeded at first, but now it's being discovered and pushed against, because it is in the strategic interest of the US to resist attempts to undermine its democracy.

The plot, such as it was, should concern US Intelligence agencies just like the aforementioned major hacks. Call me cynical, but I'm afraid I just don't believe that the Resistance's hue and cry about Russian interference is motivated much by a concern for the purity of our democratic process.

Quote:

It is nice though to see a Frenchman hold America and it's political system in such high esteem that he wants it protected from its adversaries.

We're your oldest ally and helped you secure your republic, a form of government that we share. We gave you a big green dame holding a torche over New York harbor, symbolizing freedom. We were saved by you guys at some point. We're now subject to the same attacks by the same foes. We're both in NATO, fighting alongside in Syria and the Sahel.

Therefore it is in the strategic interest of France that the US republic remains strong and democratic.

Like I said, it's nice to see.

Weak attempt to justify supporting Russia interfering in the 2016 year election regardless of any result of from it.

Trump’s move to shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by more than 1.1 million acres and more than 800,000 acres, respectively, immediately sparked an outpouring of praise from conservative lawmakers as well as activists’ protests outside the White House and in Utah. It also plunges the Trump administration into uncharted legal territory since no president has sought to modify monuments established under the 1906 Antiquities Act in more than half a century.

His decision removes about 85 percent of the designation of Bears Ears and nearly 46 percent of that for Grand Staircase-Escalante, land that potentially could now be leased for energy exploration or opened for specific activities such as motorized vehicle use.

Trump said he had consulted widely with the state’s two US Senators and been assured the step would not be controversial. “I don’t think it is controversial, actually. I think it is so sensible.”

The five Native American tribes that form the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition say legal action is likely against Trump’s decisions on monuments in Utah. Shaun Chapoose, a member of the Ute Indian Tribe business committee, told the Guardian this week Trump’s policy was “another slap in the face in the overall relationship between the federal government and the tribes, and local people”.

recognize Russia's current threats to the Baltic states and continued interest in recreating former empires (both Tsarist and Soviet).