monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

@catbeasy,

I don't really understand why Trump wanting to better relationship with russia is a bad thing. I understand Russia isn't exactly an angel country with awesome motivations, but I REALLY don't want a war with them. China doesn't seem to be our friend right now either. Actually, the US seems to be at ends with a lot of countries.

Maybe a better relationship with at least ONE of them might not be a bad idea. Also, while Obama is doing all this stuff against Russia, Russia seems to be doing everything they can at this point to maintain a decent relationship with US until Trump gets in. I am kind of agreeing with Trump's stance on this.

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@glitterbag,

Yeah, we should probably tick russia, China, and North Korea off at the same time. I'm sure if we start a war with russia then north Korea and China are going to back us up all the way.
Maybe ISIS will have our back too.

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@tony5732,

Hush now! You're going against the neocon narrative that this crew denies thoroughly, but supports absolutely.

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"Blaming Russia. Unfair!" - Donald Trump

Even before he takes office, he does advance PR for his apology tour.

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In today's "Conservative Voices From All Over" feature

Quote:

Michael Gerson
‏@MJGerson Michael Gerson Retweeted Donald J. Trump
Our next C-in-C evidently has more faith in Putin, Assange, Hannity than intel services. Dangerous beyond belief. Dangerous beyond precedent

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Remember when George W said his favorite book was Battlefield Earth?

McConnell: "The American people simply will not tolerate" Democrats blocking Trump's SCOTUS nominee

McConnell's favorite is Fascism For Dummies.

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BLM kidnaps & tortures a white kid - they make a video - 0bama says nothing.

Four black thugs questioned after ‘sickening’ video of attack on tied-up Chicago teen posted on Facebook

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@Frugal1,

It couldn't have been his kid this time.

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Quote:

Trump and Julian Assange, an Unlikely Pair, Unite to Sow Hacking Doubts
...But Mr. Assange has said in the past that, on principle, WikiLeaks does not try to investigate the provider of leaked documents and sometimes does not know a source’s identity. In this case, it is highly unlikely that anyone approaching WikiLeaks with the emails obtained by Russian government hacking would acknowledge the source, so it appears that Mr. Assange cannot be sure of the ultimate origin of the emails.

Nor did Mr. Assange mention two mysterious internet sites that, like WikiLeaks, also distributed the hacked emails. American officials believe those sites, DCLeaks.com and a blog calling itself “Guccifer 2.0,” were created by Russian agents.

And this:

Quote:

In 2010, Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and Republican vice-presidential candidate, called Mr. Assange “an anti-American operative with blood on his hands” and asked why he was not “pursued with the same urgency we pursue Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.” Her ire was all the greater because WikiLeaks had published her hacked emails.

But after hearing Mr. Assange’s latest Fox appearance, she wrote on Facebook, “Julian, I apologize,” and urged her fans to watch the interview.

LINK

Four or five days ago, whatever it was, I said this was going to happen. That I got it right isn't important but how I got it right is. This is the way Trump and his people do propaganda. And this is the way that propaganda moves into and through the right wing media universe. And this is how the modern movement conservative base gets infected with misinformation and chosen narratives.

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Sick to death of people who should know better referring to our country as a "democracy"? Do they not have access to history books?

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@tony5732,

Quote:

I don't really understand why Trump wanting to better relationship with russia is a bad thing

I don't think wanting better relations with Russia is a bad thing either Tony. The contention here isn't not wanting a better relationship with a country, for I agree that having better relations with what we consider enemies should have been and should be pursued as a matter of course..

What is at contention is: why? And another issue: Are we compromising our safety in the way we are getting that 'better relationship'? The latter is a concern for several reasons, not the least of which has to do with Trump's utter naiveté in the specifics of politics. However the first reason concerns me more which, in its wake, affects the second..

Of course the current contention is whether or not Russia was hacking into US gov't systems. If they were, then Trumps friendly overtures seem misplaced. Perhaps we should determine the truth about that before we go out on a date?

If I were cynical, which I am, I would wonder about there being money and illegal and/or unethical land/resource/power grabs at the heart of this chumming up. Tillerson adds credence to this. Your tacit assumption that 'having a better relationship' occurring as a friendly thing with the intent being an effort to avoid war I don't see.

Here, what I see as also dangerous (because it supports this 'red' tea party trump wants to convene) is the way the gov't manipulates people into thinking whatever they want us to think. Yesterday, Russia was a horrible communist beast that annexed countries and was diametrically opposed to US values. Today, for a particular US faction, hey, not so much, they're actually cool. What will it be tomorrow? This is 1984 101..

btw, fwiw not an expert by any means, but I've studied the soviet union (when it was the soviet union) a bit and I don't see that country as being the terrible country we made it out to be yesterday. They had/have issues like we do. Their gov't is much like ours, though not nearly as powerful/rich and so not as imperialistic.

There was a lot of bullshit propaganda run through the US about the former Soviet Union. They were not a saintly country (especially under Stalin!) but they weren't the devils we made them out to be, especially in light of our own sins: 'We' had no sense of our own immorality. We chastised the Soviet Union for its Gulags while we had our own apartheid and (later) destruction of SEA (including carpet bombing) that its estimated killed over 2 million civilians as well as a number of other actions that were not up to the image we presented of ourselves.

Perspective. Difficult when you want to think you are better than others..Of course Stalin killed maybe 20+ million, more than we have killed, so I guess we were better than they..!?

1 Reply

Winner of today's "Well now ain't that something!" award

Quote:

Flynn, who has shaped many of Trump's foreign policy views, was a paid consultant for Russian Today, which is effectively a Putin propaganda arm.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trumps-team-tries-to-stifle-rift-on-russia-233203

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@blatham,

Quote:

I saw them perform this live. I was on board a chemical whose designation I don't recall. It was a mostly agreeable experience.

You lucky bastard!

I did see Robby and Ray at a large venue with some other dufuses, but they disappointed. They are my favourite band and I walked out after 30 mins..

However, I did see Robbie with his kid and a couple other young 'uns playing a last minute show at a tiny club. Because it was last minute it was just nicely packed. Robby brought that little place down. Was a really good, intimate performance. Though would loved to have seen them with Morrison..

1 Reply

@newru21,

Quote:

Are you really trying to insist that no modern day president has left the office richer than when he came into office? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but what was Obama's net worth prior to his 2004 DNC debut when he was just an IL state senator?

I don't think the issue is so much the comparison with other Presidents. The greater issue surrounding this is one that posits that Trump is somehow better than or above previous presidents and 'their' mainstream politics when he is just like they are, only perhaps with a worse mouth..though one could argue that at least he presents who he is plain as day. He is a good demagogue though and so he Svengali's folks into believing he isn't what his words clearly say he is. Of course, some do see him correctly and like him because of who he is. Usually they are wearing hoods and carrying lighters and wood.

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@catbeasy,

It was classic. A young lady jumped up on stage and put her hand down Morrison's pants. Morrison did his best to fight off the body-guards.

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Trump is planning to restructure the US intelligence community to ensure that disloyal (to him) elements are removed.

Quote:

Donald Trump and his transition team are working on a plan to revamp and reduce the size of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA because the President-elect believes that the U.S. intelligence community is biased against him and has tried to undermine his election, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday evening.

Trump's national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, and his nominee to lead the CIA, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) also believe that the DNI and CIA are biased, and the two are helping devise the plan to restructure the agencies, according to the Journal.

...According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump and some of his advisers believe that "the intelligence community’s position—that Russia tried to help his campaign—is an attempt to undermine his victory or say he didn’t win."

LINK

Authoritarianism, totalitarianism, fascism - you choose the proper term. That's where this is going. And the right wing fans are going to say, "Good thinking, Donald! Bold, I like it."

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Josh Marshall at TPM asks:

Quote:

The fact that Republicans and the incoming Republican President are spending so much time insisting that Obamacare is the most horriblest, biggest failure ever is quite telling. Who do they need to convince?

As many gullible people as possible. This will be a full-on propaganda campaign with several evident goals:

1) fill up the media space with their story (truthfulness not merely unnecessary but would prove a hindrance so they'll lie about pretty much everything)

2) to try and counter the messaging from Dems and supporters of the ACA (like the American Medical Association and many others).

3) to foster in the minds of their right wing base that the ACA is so horrible and such a mess economically and as regards medical care that the base will at least for a time put up with the loss of their newly gained insurance protection.

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Because the thing modern conservatives hate most passionately and are universally principled about is the coercive reach of government into the lives of citizens

Quote:

Justifying his support for a 20-week ban on abortions, the Republican president of the Kentucky Senate asserted that women had the "choice" of whether to conceive a child and "the legislature has its ability to determine" the course of a pregnancy after that.

LINK

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@glitterbag,

glitterbag wrote:

Well, this has been interesting. I had no idea so many members were so well informed about Russia, China, North Korea and of course the United States. You can tell can't you, on how steeped in language, culture and history these members are? Why they practically have their finger on the pulse of Vlad Putin.

It appears you infer here that you are "steeped in (the) language, culture and history " of these countries in a way that the members to which you refer are not. Is that the case?

glitterbag wrote:

And of course, Russia really really wants to be our platonic buddy. We can go hunt terrorists together, we can trust them. Julian 'fu@kface' Assange trusts the Russians, and Trump trusts Julie. And ok, the Russians and the Chinese have been hacking American companies, the Military, Social Security and are heavily involved in massive identity theft, but that's our fault for not being more vigilant.

I take it you mean that Putin's Russia, and perhaps China, are our implacable enemies. Is that correct? I believe that's a possibility, and that a handful of basic factors including Russia's memories of Empire and territory under the Tsars and their Soviet successors, and their somewhat traditional semi-isolation from Europe; and in the Case of China, economic competition and it's apparent desire for dominance in South Asia ( shades of Imperial Japan in the 1930s) , are basic, continuing issues. However the world remains a complex cauldron of competing players and issues, and it would be unwise to treat any of these matters as fixed or immutable factors in an ever-changing game.

glitterbag wrote:

OK, the Russians annexed Crimea, the Chinese are building islands and airstrips near international shipping lanes, but pfft. The ocean is really really really big. Of course, the Russians don't have designs on any other territories, and even if they did, we have a massive well equipped intelligence system that will detect any threats to the people of the United States. Well, maybe right now, but you might have to kiss that goodbye on January 20th 2017.

Hard to tell what here is mere irony and what is truly meant. The Pacific ocean is indeed very large, but the South China Sea is not. Its navigable portion is even smaller, and over 1/3rd of the world's trade passes through it.

Bureaucratic rivalries and infighting have been the rule, not the exception, among our intelligence agencies since WWII. The latest major event in this saga was the addition of a new layer of bureaucracy (DNA) over the sea of warring entities. I don't have any direct knowledge of how well or badly this has gone, but prrior experience and my own instincts suggest that such bureaucratic "solutions" don't usually work that well. Very few business last for more than a couple of decades: most are culled out by the force of competition, and the survivors are usually the fittest. Bureaucracies, in contrast, go on for a long time; face little or no external competition; and need periodic stress and ovehaul to stay fit. I suspect Trump's announced intentions in this area are indeed timely and needed. How well (or badly) he does it is yet to be seen.

1 Reply

@blatham,

blatham wrote:

"Blaming Russia. Unfair!" - Donald Trump

Even before he takes office, he does advance PR for his apology tour.

A cute, but very shallow 'gotcha'. I don't think that Trump intends (or is even capable of) the self loathing apologetic stance that our happily now departing President projected to the world.

2 Replies

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