monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Beyond even that, why would anyone doubt that this stoat of a man lied and manipulated to get out of something?

so it was already going to be longer than a single day.

Did Newsweek Indicate Liberals Are OK With Anti-Semitic Slurs?

@Newsweek

Lebron James captioned a selfie with 21 Savage lyrics about "Jewish money," angering conservative critics http://bit.ly/2Cw07hu

To “muddle along” would, of course, be entirely antithetical to Trump’s promise to Make America Great Again. It would destroy his crucial commitment to get the economy growing at 3%+ -- vastly faster than it has for the past 17 years -- which also happens to be the recipe for robust job creation and upward income mobility for workers. It also is the essential ingredient for balancing the federal budget while rebuilding our infrastructure and military.

To turn the IMF into a world central bank would, of course, be anathema to Trump’s economic nationalism. To subordinate the dollar to the IMF’s SDR would be equivalent to lowering Old Glory and replacing the American flag with the flag of the United Nations on every flagpole in America. Unthinkable under a Trump administration.

That leaves the third option, to “adopt a modernized international gold standard, as proposed in the 1960s by Rueff and in 1984 by his protégé Lewis E. Lehrman … and then-Rep. Jack Kemp” (whose eponymous foundation I advise). To this one should add, as Forbes.com contributor Nathan Lewis has shrewdly observed, the removal of tax and regulatory barriers to the use of gold as currency.

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Beyond even that, why would anyone doubt that this stoat of a man lied and manipulated to get out of something?

You are speaking about every high powered politician in this country. The girls too.

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What a bunch of cheap, selfish, smug bastards!

The smug and selfish here are the open border people. This is not just their country they want to destroy.

Surely even you can see that your president is a much more prolific liar than any other politician.

You all keep spouting that, but you can't produce ONE quote from any prominent Democrat promoting open borders.

Clinton admitted she's for 'open borders' in paid, private speech: WikiLeaks

You lie all the time, and lie about lies.

that's a total fabrication.

Your lies are apparent to everyone.

President Donald Trump incorrectly told troops in Iraq on Wednesday that he gave them their first pay raise in more than 10 years -- a falsehood he has repeatedly told.

Speaking to troops at Al Asad Air Base during his surprise visit to Iraq, Trump told troops: "You protect us. We are always going to protect you. And you just saw that, 'cause you just got one of the biggest pay raises you've ever received. ... You haven't gotten one in more than 10 years. More than 10 years. And we got you a big one. I got you a big one. I got you a big one."

In fact, military pay has increased every year for more than three decades. It was raised 2.4% in 2018 and then 2.6% in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. The 2.6% pay raise is the largest in the past 9 years.

The President and first lady quietly swept into Iraq on Wednesday to pay a holiday visit to US troops -- the first trip Trump has made to a war zone.

"They had plenty of people that came up, they said, 'You know, we could make it smaller. We could make it 3%, we could make it 2%, we could make it 4%,'" Trump told the troops about the latest pay raise. "I said, 'No. Make it 10%. Make it more than 10%.'"

"'Cause it's been a long time, it's been more than 10 years. Been more than 10 years, that's a long time," Trump said, repeating the false claim.

This is unnecessarily disgusting.

Syria’s military says it has taken control of the flashpoint Kurdish-held town of Manbij, where Turkey has threatened an offensive.

The announcement was quickly welcomed by the Kremlin, whose spokesman Dmitry Peskov called it a “positive step” that could help stabilise the situation.

There was no immediate comment from Turkey or the US, whose troops have been patrolling the town and the tense front line between Manbij and adjacent towns where Turkey-backed fighters were based.

Turkey, which views the Kurdish militia as a terrorist group, had been threatening a military operation against Manbij. Turkey and its allied fighters have been amassing troops around Manbij in recent days.

The threats triggered the US announcement it would withdraw troops from Syria. A timetable for the withdrawal has not yet been made public.

But the surprise US decision rattled allies and the US Syrian Kurdish partners, who scrambled to find new allies to protect their Kurdish-administered areas in north Syria.

The Syrian government has said it welcomes the Kurdish group returning under its authority. But government officials have stated they will not consider an autonomous area, a main demand for the Kurds.

The Syrian military declaration came shortly after the main Syrian Kurdish militia invited the government to seize control of Manbij to prevent a Turkish attack. The development signals the two sides have agreed to the new arrangement. The Syrian military said it raised the state flag in Manbij.

The Syrian military said it was responding to calls from residents of Manbij and promised safety for all living there.

Syria’s entry into Manbij comes a day before Moscow is to host top Turkish officials to discuss the crisis in Syria after the United States announced its withdrawal.

President Trump’s Dec. 23 tweet promising a “slow and highly coordinated” withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria may ease the gnashing of teeth among officials and analysts in Washington, but it won’t end the criticism of his decision. That is precisely why the president should view the hullabaloo that erupted after he announced the Syrian pullout as an opportunity to take a number of steps to make the most of his essentially correct, but widely unpopular, move.

Many observers have asserted that the withdrawal gives victory in Syria to Russia, Iran and the Syrian government. That’s absurd. Bashar al-Assad’s regime already controls about two-thirds of Syria, including all of the major cities. The portion of Syria that U.S. forces control alongside their Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) allies is mostly either desert or drought-prone plains. The oil fields there produce high-sulfur, low-value crude, and production has long been diminishing. Oil revenue made up only about 5 percent of Syrian gross domestic product before the 2011 uprising, according to the International Monetary Fund. In sum, holding northeastern Syria would not have enabled Washington to leverage any important concessions from Damascus, Tehran or Moscow.

Stability, not a deeply embattled Syrian Kurdish autonomous zone, is the vital long-term U.S. interest in northeastern Syria. Turkey can accept with conditions the return of Syrian government forces into the area, as Russia and Iran want. Ankara dislikes the Assad government, but it dislikes more the prospect of an autonomous Kurdish region along its border.

The United States’ erstwhile friends, the Syrian Kurds, have always allowed Damascus to keep its security offices open in northeastern Syria; the Kurds never closed that channel of communication. If anything, the Syrian Kurds prefer the deployment of Syrian government forces along the Turkish border to deter Ankara. Agile Russian diplomacy should be able to secure the deal for an orderly, perhaps gradual, deployment of those Syrian government forces into the region formerly controlled by the United States.

Nor will the U.S. withdrawal be a game changer for Israeli security. Already, Yaakov Amidror, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence, noted that the U.S. troops’ contribution against the Iranian forces in Syria was “marginal to zero.” If Iran tries to build a land bridge from Tehran to its allies in Lebanon, the Israeli Air Force is more than capable of interdicting those convoys.

Critics also warn that the U.S. withdrawal could lead to a resurgence of the Islamic State. This is possible, although in western Syria, which is under the control of the Syrian government and its allies, there is little visible Islamic State activity. In any case, U.S. troops can’t destroy the Islamic State ideology, and restraining future recruitment by the extremist group requires more than some infrastructure rehabilitation projects. Syrians had electricity and water when they rose up against Assad in 2011; it is Syria’s underlying societal problems that spawned the unrest and spurred Islamist extremist recruitment. Only Syrians, not U.S. troops and stabilization teams, can reverse that. We would do well to be humbler about our abilities, especially in the face of sustained, widespread regional hostility.

Going forward, the Trump administration should use the next few weeks to support SDF fighters’ efforts to capture remaining villages in eastern Syria still held by the Islamic State. Meanwhile, the administration needs to deliver three messages to Moscow.

First, it should offer Russia cooperation in smoothing the way for a deal between the SDF and Damascus that would allow Syrian troops to return to eastern Syria in a manner that meets Turkish security concerns and gives no new space to the Islamic State. Second, Washington could offer to share with the Russians actionable intelligence about the Islamic State in eastern Syria and arrange an effective hotline in case the United States decides that a strike force stationed in the region should hit Islamic State targets inside Syria.

Third, it should inform the Kremlin that the United States will support Israeli moves to counter Iranian actions in Syria that threaten Israel’s security.

Finally, the president needs to consider how his own foreign policy team got so far out ahead of him on Syria. He needs a National Security Council staff that can more clearly relay his cautions and concerns about U.S. foreign policy to the people in charge of executing it. That staff needs to make clear to officials in the departments that, while he hears various departments’ views, those departments must act on his guidance. Ensuring implementation is the NSC’s job. The president would benefit politically and, more importantly, U.S. national security would benefit from a more effective foreign policy team.