monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

I suppose we should go back to the subject of the thread though.

The age of climate panic is here. Last summer, a heat wave baked the entire Northern Hemisphere, killing dozens from Quebec to Japan. Some of the most destructive wildfires in California history turned more than a million acres to ash, along the way melting the tires and the sneakers of those trying to escape the flames. Pacific hurricanes forced three million people in China to flee and wiped away almost all of Hawaii’s East Island.

(...) “If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.”

Scientists have felt this way for a while. But they have not often talked like it. For decades, there were few things with a worse reputation than “alarmism” among those studying climate change.

This is a bit strange. You don’t typically hear from public health experts about the need for circumspection in describing the risks of carcinogens, for instance. The climatologist James Hansen, who testified before Congress about global warming in 1988, has called the phenomenon “scientific reticence” and chastised his colleagues for it — for editing their own observations so conscientiously that they failed to communicate how dire the threat actually was.

That tendency metastasized even as the news from the research grew bleaker. So for years the publication of every major paper, essay or book would be attended by a cloud of commentary debating its precise calibration of perspective and tone, with many of those articles seen by scientists as lacking an appropriate balance between bad news and optimism, and labeled “fatalistic” as a result.

(...)

US President Donald Trump's pick to be America's new UN ambassador, Heather Nauert, has withdrawn her nomination for the post.

Ms Nauert, a former Fox News presenter, said in a statement on Saturday that the decision was made "in the best interest of my family".

"The past two months have been gruelling," the statement, issued by the state department, said.

Mr Trump had announced Ms Nauert as his choice for the UN role last December.

"She's very talented, very smart, very quick, and I think she's going to be respected by all," the president said at the time.

Ms Nauert, who is currently serving as state department spokeswoman, would have replaced Nikki Haley, who announced in October that she would leave the post of UN ambassador by the end of the year.

Some had questioned whether Ms Nauert, who has been in government for less than two years and has never specialised in international relations, had sufficient experience to deal with the type of complex foreign policy issues tackled by UN ambassadors.

The role has often gone to skilled negotiators and leading names in US foreign policy - past ambassadors have been scholars, diplomats or prominent politicians.

Meanwhile, unnamed sources told US media that Ms Nauert took the decision to withdraw after the White House was made aware of an issue following a background check.

Bloomberg reported that she and her husband had employed an immigrant nanny who was in the US legally but did not have the correct work visa.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Ms Nauert had "performed her duties as a senior member of my team with unequalled excellence" and that she will "continue to be a great representative of this nation".

In addition to her state department role, the 49-year-old was also appointed acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs in March last year.

She worked for Fox News from 1998 to 2005 and, after two years away during which she worked for ABC, she returned to Fox in 2007, later becoming a presenter for Fox & Friends.

Fox News has been a consistent supporter of the president and he often cites its programmes.

Ms Nauert made headlines in June when, speaking in her state department role, she cited the World War Two Normandy landings in relation to America's "strong history" with Germany.

Time to Panic

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!
4:52 AM - Feb 17, 2019

White House adviser Stephen Miller on Sunday couldn’t name another instance of the President declaring a state of emergency in order to secure funds Congress had rejected during the appropriations process.

“Can you point to a single instance — even one — where the President asked Congress for money, Congress refused to give him that money, and the President then invoked national emergency powers to get the money?” “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace asked Miller in an interview.

Miller couldn’t.

Miller couldn’t.

MUNICH (AP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel robustly defended European nations’ decision to stand by the Iran nuclear deal in a spirited backing Saturday of her multilateral approach to global affairs, but U.S. Vice President Mike Pence promptly accused Europe of once again undermining the United States.

...“The time has come for our European partners to stop undermining U.S. sanctions against this murderous revolutionary regime,” Pence said. “The time has come for our European partners to stand with us and with the Iranian people, our allies and friends in the region. The time has come for our European partners to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.”

Now try and find any instance whatsoever of Pence or his boss making any such declaration about Russia's activities designed to undermine the US.

Trump's a ******* idiot

The immorality is that you lump human trafficking, drug trafficking, and child smuggling together with people seeking asylum and a better life.

Act I: Denial

George Stephanopoulos: “Are there any ties between Mr. Trump, you or your campaign and Putin and his regime?”

Paul Manafort: “No, there are not. That’s absurd.” — July 24, 2016

Donald Trump: “I have nothing to do with Russia. I don’t have any jobs in Russia. I’m all over the world, but we’re not involved in Russia.” — July 26, 2016

Hope Hicks: “There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.” — Nov. 11, 2016

Chris Wallace asks if there were any contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Mike Pence: “Of course not. Why would there be?” — Jan. 15, 2017

***********************************************************************

Act II: Contacts Discovered

“There were contacts,” according to a Russian official. — N.Y. Times, Nov. 10, 2016

“Trump campaign had at least 18 undisclosed contacts with Russians.” — Reuters, May 18, 2017

“Members of the Trump campaign interacted with Russians at least 32 times.” — The Washington Post, Nov. 13, 2017

“Trump and his associates had more than 100 contacts with Russians before the inauguration.” — N.Y. Times, Jan. 26, 2019

***********************************************************************

Act III: Russia’s Role

“Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election.” — U.S. Intelligence Community assessment, Jan. 6, 2017

Russian agents purchased advertising on Facebook and distributed inflammatory posts that reached at least 126 million Facebook users. The Russians published more than 131,000 messages on Twitter and uploaded more than 1,000 videos on YouTube. — Statements by the companies prepared for congressional hearings, October 2017.

Russian intelligence conspired “to gain unauthorized access (to ‘hack’) into the computers of U.S. persons and entities involved in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, steal documents from those computers, and stage releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” — Indictment of 12 Russians, July 13, 2018

**********************************************************************

Act IV: Confession

President Trump acknowledges that even as his presidential campaign was underway in 2016, his business was in discussions with Russia about building a Trump property in Moscow. — N.Y. Times interview, Jan. 31, 2019

Paul Manafort tells prosecutors on undisclosed date or dates that he had repeated talks with a Russian, Konstantin Kilimnik, who is believed to have ties to Russian military intelligence. Kilimnik flew to New York for one crucial dinner meeting on Aug. 2, 2016, while Manafort was Trump’s campaign chairman, and they discussed a peace proposal for Ukraine that would resolve the dispute over Putin’s intervention there. This issue was high on Putin’s agenda.

Manafort may also have handed over confidential polling data to Kilimnik; it’s not clear if this could have been used for Russian interference in the U.S. election.

A federal prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, says on Feb. 4, 2019, “This goes, I think, very much to the heart of what the special counsel’s office is investigating.”

Manafort and Kilimnik left the Aug. 2 meeting separately by different exits.

“I have been living in a personal and mental incarceration ever since the fateful day that I accepted the offer to work for a famous real estate mogul whose business acumen I truly admired. … It was my own weakness, and a blind loyalty to this man that led me to choose a path of darkness over light.

“It is for these reasons I chose to participate in the illicit act of the president rather than to listen to my own inner voice, which should have warned me that the campaign finance violations that I later pled guilty to were insidious. … Most all, I want to apologize to the people of the United States. You deserve to know the truth, and lying to you was unjust.” — Michael Cohen, statement to the court, Dec. 12, 2018, after earlier confessing to lying to Congress about Trump’s investment interest in Russia

***********************************************************************

To the Audience

A recent Washington Post/Schar poll found that 43 percent of Americans still are skeptical that Russia interfered with the 2016 election. That should no longer be in doubt.

What isn’t clear is the role that the Trump campaign played, if any, in that interference.

What we do know is that there were more than 100 contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign; moreover, Robert Mueller, the special counsel, has shown that four people in Trump’s orbit lied about contacts with Moscow.

Unlike a play, the stakes here are enormous: This drama is about the integrity of America’s political system. We should be careful about assuming we can predict the ending, but I keep coming back to Vice President Pence’s excellent question when he denied — falsely — that there had been any contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign: “Why would there be?”

CONFUSION: Pelosi wishes ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ — on Valentine’s Day!

‘The Trump-Russia Story’: Cue the Stage Lights