monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

How many speeches did Russians pay the Clintons for?

How many?

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Perhaps Blickers brings up the Russians and Trump because the Trump campaign (and family member) and transition team were knee deep in Russians one way or another.

If that were the truth, she might have something, but as far as we know, there is no "knee deep" with Russians, Clinton appears to have deeper ties with Russia then Trump. How many speech's have Russians paid Trump and his family for? How many speeches did Russians pay the Clintons for?

This whole Trump Insurance Policy has Obama’s stench all over it

Do you really believe that James Clapper, John Brennan, Susan Rice, Sally Yates and James Comey would implement this Insurance Policy based solely on the suggestion of the texting twosome?

A Senate panel has released documents on a June 2016 meeting between top Trump campaign aides and a Russian delegation promising political "dirt".

The 2,500 pages of transcripts include interviews with Donald Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, who met a Russian lawyer ahead of the 2016 election.

The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, denies working on behalf of Moscow.

The meeting is a part of an ongoing probe by the US Department of Justice into alleged Russia meddling in 2016.

The 2,500 pages of transcripts include interviews with Donald Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, who met a Russian lawyer ahead of the 2016 election.

It looks like one, it was a $500,000 speech and it was well above his average speaking fee.......If we are going to investigate Russia and their influence on our govt, we should be looking at every govt official and their family who received money from Russia. Centering on Trump is what makes this whole thing laughable.

SOFIA, Bulgaria — A top European Union official branded President Donald Trump selfish and capricious Wednesday as E.U. leaders met to count the likely economic damage U.S. policies might inflict on the bloc and to try to rescue the Iran nuclear deal.

In a striking rhetorical assault on the leader of Europe's biggest ally, E.U. Council President Donald Tusk said, given Trump's recent decisions, "someone could even think 'with friends like that, who needs enemies?'"

Trump has bewildered the Europeans by threatening to slap tariffs on EU steel and aluminum exports and reneging on an agreement to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, which the E.U. believes is vital to world security.

Trump has also broken with a key international principle of Middle East peace efforts by moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

Some EU leaders have made a direct link between the move and the killing of dozens of Palestinians during protests on the Gaza border.

Tusk's remarks, made before he chaired a meeting in Bulgaria of the 28 leaders whose countries make up the world's biggest trading bloc, underscored the widening gulf in E.U.-U.S. relations.

Listing Europe's traditional challenges, ranging from the expanding power of China to the belligerence of Russia, Tusk said: "We are witnessing today a new phenomenon, the capricious assertiveness of the American administration."

"Frankly speaking, Europe should be grateful to President Trump because thanks to him we have got rid of all illusions. He has made us realize that if you need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of your arm," Tusk said.

"Europe must do everything in its power to protect, in spite of today's mood, the transatlantic bond. But at the same time we must be prepared for those scenarios, where we will have to act on our own," continued Tusk, a former Polish prime minister.

At dinner talks in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, E.U. leaders were briefed on possible incentives to keep Tehran in the nuclear agreement despite a key player like the U.S. pulling out. Trump's decision means that U.S. sanctions, held in check by a presidential veto until now, could soon hit Iran and European companies doing business there.

The options being considered include new credit lines for Iran, increased energy cooperation and the use of E.U. laws to block European companies from caving in to U.S. sanctions.

The leaders also planned to discuss Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs, which could be imposed on the E.U. after June 1. Trump says the tariffs are needed for national security reasons.

Europe's leaders, most of whom govern nations that are NATO allies with the U.S., say security concerns simply are an excuse to break with the rules-based order of the World Trade Organization.

"It is absurd to even think that the E.U. could be a threat to the U.S. We need to bring back reality in this discussion," Tusk said.

A former U.S. envoy to the E.U., Anthony Gardner, told the European Parliament on Wednesday that "the broader U.S.-EU security relationship is at risk."

Trump is due to meet with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House on Thursday to discuss a range of issues.

A NATO spokesperson told NBC News that no changes have been made to Stoltenberg's schedule after the president's public schedule was released Wednesday night with no mention of a planned joint news conference with the two leaders. The meeting remains scheduled on the NATO website.

"You'd have to ask the White House about any changes to the schedule," the spokesperson said. "We'll have to see tomorrow."

"Europe must do everything in its power to protect, in spite of today's mood, the transatlantic bond. But at the same time we must be prepared for those scenarios, where we will have to act on our own," continued Tusk, a former Polish prime minister.

That's a lie, and a pretty disgusting one.

This week’s horrific violence along the Gaza border is emblematic of the chasm that exists between the two sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To listen to Israeli officials and their supporters (including the White House), the deaths of dozens of Palestinians and the injuries to thousands others is solely the fault of Hamas, the terrorist organization that governs this seemingly cursed strip of land. For pro-Palestinian voices, Israel engaged this week in a full-scale massacre of unarmed civilians peacefully protesting Israel’s policies.

The truth is far more complicated and, while neither side wants to hear this, there is plenty of blame to go around.

We need to first put to rest the notion that the demonstrations in Gaza were peaceful protests. They were not.

Only the willfully obtuse will ignore the numerous journalistic accounts — from those on both sides on the border — that make clear that while many of the demonstrators were peaceful, plenty of others flung Molotov cocktails, burned tires, laid IEDs, and flew kites with incendiary devices intended to set fires across the border in Israel.

Israel has been saying for weeks now that any attempt to breach the border fence would be met with deadly force. Nonetheless, protesters still charged the border fence with what The New York Times called “a logic-defying game of chicken.”

There’s been additional reporting that during the violence Hamas organizers urged protesters to burst through the border fence, claiming that Israel soldiers were fleeing their positions (they weren’t). Maps were available on Hamas’s Facebook page delineating the paths to an Israeli kibbutz near the border.

Even the left-leaning Israeli paper, Ha’aretz, which has been strongly critical of the Israeli occupation, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, defended the actions of the Israeli military. “After a series of visits to the border,” wrote Amos Harel, “it’s difficult to complain about the sharpshooters or their direct commanders.”

Had this been a peaceful protest intended to raise awareness of Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which has contributed to a humanitarian emergency, that would be one thing. But the name of these demonstrations is the “March of the Return,” as in Palestinians returning to their homes in Israel. That name is completely consistent with what really happened this week: a clear and unambiguous effort, orchestrated and supported by Hamas, to breach the border fence, civilian casualties be damned.

However, Israel’s supporters shouldn’t be patting themselves on the back for defending their country from terrorists. Everything that happened this week was inevitable, predictable, and at least, in part, avoidable.

As Harel points out, it’s been clear for months that Gaza’s infrastructure and economy “is in desperate straits.” Many Gazans, with no economic prospects and trapped on a crowded piece of land from which they cannot escape, feel that they have nothing to lose. Still, Israel has taken no concrete steps to alleviate their deprivation. If anything, the Israeli blockade of Gaza has become more not less capricious.

It’s also clear that Hamas is under enormous political pressure — not just from Israel, but also from Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, with whom it’s locked in a bitter political struggle. The terrorist group frequently falls back on “resistance” tactics against Israel as a way of improving its political standing among Palestinians. Yet Israel rejected recent feelers put out by Hamas for a ceasefire. That the group would eventually try to provoke a military response from Israel was practically pre-ordained.

Israel’s supporters will argue that the crippling blockade they’ve imposed on Gaza is necessary because Hamas has shown over and over again that it will take any opportunity to use Gaza as a staging ground for attacks into Israel. And they’re not wrong. Even after the devastating 2014 Israeli war in Gaza, Hamas continued to build tunnels under the border for use in attacking Israel. Anyone who argues that Hamas can be trusted to do the right thing if Israel were to weaken its siege of Gaza is fooling themselves. But that doesn’t mean Israel can wash its hands of the territory’s plight and pretend that its policies are not contributing to the sense of hopelessness among Palestinians and the inevitable, subsequent outbreaks of violence.

Moreover, if there were nonviolent ways to stop breaches of the border fence, Israel clearly did not use them. Reliance on live fire, even if intended to wound, will inevitably kill far more people than just the intended targets. It’s hard to believe that Israel couldn’t have developed non-violent tactics for quelling the protests or perhaps could have devoted greater resources to strengthening the border fence and thus making it more difficult to approach and potentially breach. Israelis like to take the position that if Hamas continues to provoke Israel (as it has), their soldiers have little choice but to respond with deadly force. That is, to say the least, a morally dubious position and and one that no democratic country should adopt.

Finally, although the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem this week was not the direct cause of the violence, it did not help. The Israeli government knew this, and its indifference to the juxtaposition of celebrating the embassy opening while Palestinians were being struck down in Gaza is hard to fathom.

Israeli government officials may not care — and one could cynically argue that Prime Minister Netanyahu benefits politically from the violence — but as usual they have put their supporters, particularly American Jews, in the position of defending the indefensible. When you combine the Gaza violence and the Israeli government’s hosting of a gaudy embassy opening (which feted a president and a group of evangelical pastors who are anathema to American Jews), it’s hard to see much evidence that Netanyahu cares about how his policies are alienating Diaspora Jews — and further isolating Israel.

There are no easy answers to the problems in Gaza today. As long as Hamas adopts a policy of complete rejection toward Israel and continues to use violence as a political tool, there is little hope for improving the increasingly desperate humanitarian situation in Gaza. But at the same time, as long as the right-wing government in Jerusalem does nothing to alleviate the suffering in Gaza, and views the periodic outbreaks of violence as a domestic political plus, more violence, bloodshed, and tragedy is inevitable. Both sides are to blame; both sides need to find an exit ramp from the current situation, and neither seems inclined to do so.

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Congratulations America, we are now into the second year of the greatest Witch Hunt in American History...and there is still No Collusion and No Obstruction. The only Collusion was that done by Democrats who were unable to win an Election despite the spending of far more money!

My asthmatic younger brother, Salah, 18, is scheduled for an urgent eye operation in Egypt, without which he might permanently lose the sight in his right eye. He’s also been awarded a scholarship to study in Algeria, and has been fighting to get out of the Gaza Strip to take up his place for nearly two years, without success.

His life is being entirely stolen from him by Israel's blockade, yet his future stares back at him just a footstep away, from behind the giant concrete walls that seal Gaza. He’s in a race against time not to lose his sight, his mind, and his life as well.

Almost every day, my brother shows up for the Gaza "Great Return March," although my mother has desperately tried almost everything to stop him from running bare-chested towards his death.

The border protests are the only place where it feels that he’s at least doing something about his own slow death, even if only to scream at the top of his lungs, telling the world "We are here!"



It’s the only place where he and all of my friends in Gaza can catch a breath of freedom, despite the stinging tear gas, even if it's just for a moment.
Salah quickly learned the "rules of engagement" and exercises extreme caution not to get hurt. "If you stand 300 meters or less from the separation fence, with a Palestinian flag and a keffiyeh, you’re liable to get shot in the legs, kneecaps or feet, and the wounded part is likely to be amputated," my brother explained. "If you hold a handful of rocks, or try to breach the fence, the snipers will aim at your abdomen, chest, neck or head."

Nonetheless, there have been Palestinians who've been wounded and killed while actually running away from the buffer zone. They were given no second chance. Even my brother, standing outside of the danger zone, fainted repeatedly because of the tear gas; he saw the kid next to him getting shot in the leg. At the hospital, my brother is always terrified that if he’d sign his name amongst the wounded, Israel will ban him from ever leaving Gaza, for having taken part in the protests.

The live–fire and tear gas that the IDF rains down on the protestors seems both arbitrary and targeted. The IDF have wounded 1600 civilians; many of whom were women, children and young teenagers, and 29 have been killed, including a young journalist whose sole dream was to step foot out of Gaza for once in his life.

In a striking rhetorical assault on the leader of Europe's biggest ally, E.U. Council President Donald Tusk said, given Trump's recent decisions, "someone could even think 'with friends like that, who needs enemies?'"

Trump has also broken with a key international principle of Middle East peace efforts by moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

Israel should find a response that's not deadly, but Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, should be widely condemned for their part in what's happening.

Israeli settlements may be obstacles to peace, but so, too, is Palestinian incitement, epitomized by these lavish incentives to commit violence. Surely this is something Trump should not be able to live with.

As you can see above, this is hardly a leftist leaning biased site against Israel.

I happen to believe the Palestinian who wrote how he helped start the "March of the Great Return" was started by ordinary Palestinians who wanted a peaceful protest to mark the struggles Palestinians have to live and die with every single day. Like he said in the article from NYT, the movement grew so big and they could not control it. Hamas has been encourging the violence we see on the Palestinian side. However, many are there because they want to be and they are caught in crossfire and innocents are getting killed.

Hamas might very well pay people to put themselves in harms way for political purposes but that does not excuse Israel gleeful killing of thousands of Palestians over the years.

Hamas plays into Israel's hands. I wish Palestianians could see that. I would imagine the last thing Israel wants is for Hamas to turn peaceful and a real settlement reached. Probably why they rejected efforts of a ceasefire. This way they can go on killing Palestinians, blame it on Hamas, and keep grabbing up land that does not belong to them.