monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

I'm wondering just what will it take for the majority of "leaders" to actually connect with the situation of rather rapidly changing climate conditions. It's a fallacy to call it warming, or cooling. It's middle of Winter here, and barely cold enough to warrant a fire at night, and days are still toasty warm.

I hear Europe is experiencing hotter temps than ever recorded. A friend is in Holland, visiting rellies, and telling how they're suffering badly in places, because they've never needed air conditioning, so don''t have any.

Glad we moved to the mountains, recently, and have a virtually endless supply of water for the vege patch, but drought is literally killing off many farms in many formerly reliable growing areas.

Doesn't help that our most corrupt govt in recent history sold off water rights to foreign cotton growing interests, without a thought for anyone else.

And they had the temerity to accuse the school children of radical action, in striking to get attention to the problem.

Izzy, I resent you putting all u s citizens in the same class as Ozzie. He has his own opinions that are a minority of opinions for most people. Any one who has studied the Israeli government knows it is more Nazi oriented than democratic. And if it was to their advantage they would side with the Russians. I trust them about as far as I trust the u s senate which is not at all.

They are wasting our precious time.

You'd think with the dirt dossier he has, he'd be under surveillance 24/7, unless the PTB want his arse underground ASAP.




source

Ehud Barak is going to try to become prime minister of Israel again:
http://apnews.com/8eb8242a2a324ee49ed4fa838f547b69

His chances of success would be a lot better if the Palestinians actually showed an interest in peace. But we'll see how it goes.

What do your wishes have to do with anything?



Let's hope that is the case.



It's a good thing that I never claimed it then.



Remember the Alamo.

Actually it is the neonazis who are in the minority. Most Americans side with Israel.



Shame on you! Your antisemitism is despicable.

Who, better yet, WHY would someone BELIEVE this crap??

Treasury pick Monica Crowley spread Obama smears: 'Can he be both loyal to Islam and loyal to the United States?'
By Andrew Kaczynski and Nathan McDermott, CNN

Updated 4:11 PM ET, Thu July 25, 2019

(CNN)President Donald Trump's pick for the top spokeswoman job at the Treasury Department repeatedly spread conspiracy theories that suggested then-President Barack Obama was secretly a Muslim who was sympathetic to America's enemies.

Monica Crowley, who was appointed by Trump last week as assistant treasury secretary for public affairs, made multiple comments spreading these false claims on her personal blog and in at least one tweet between 2009 and 2015, according to a review by CNN's KFile team.

(In March 2017, Crowley joined the firm of Douglas Schoen as a part-time consultant, providing "outreach services" on behalf of Ukrainian industrialist and political figure Victor Pinchuk.n September 2015, Pinchuk donated $150,000 to the Donald J. Trump Foundation in exchange for a 20-minute video appearance by Donald Trump shown at the conference that year in Kiev. Michael Cohen solicited Douglas Schoen for the donation from Pinchuk, which was the largest outside donation the Trump Foundation received that year. Crowley registered as a foreign agent as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938.)

Crowley also endorsed a story claiming Obama was an "Islamic community organizer" trying to conform the United States to Sharia law and claimed conspiracy theories about Obama's birth certificate were "legitimate concerns." During Obama's presidency, Trump was one of the most prominent voices pushing the so-called birther conspiracy theories questioning Obama's birthplace. When he was seeking the presidency himself and under continual questioning, Trump finally admitted that Obama was born in the US but offered no apologies or explanation for the years he spent sowing doubt about Obama's origins.

Crowley, formerly a syndicated radio host, columnist and Fox News contributor, was originally chosen by Trump in December 2016 to be the senior director of strategic communications for the National Security Council. She withdrew herself from consideration for that position after CNN's KFile team uncovered extensive plagiarism in her book and doctoral thesis.

Crowley did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Treasury Department also did not respond to a request for comment.

Suggested Obama was a Muslim

Writing on her blog in August 2010, Crowley blasted Obama for supporting the right to build an Islamic community center and mosque in lower Manhattan. Some conservatives seized on the issue making it a flash-point and objecting to, at times using highly inflammatory rhetoric, building a mosque so close to the site of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Crowley wrote that Obama had loyalties to Islam and questioned if he could support both Islam and the United States.

"Maybe politics didn't have anything to do with it, but Islam certainly did. And does. Obama was born to a Muslim father, which under Islam automatically made him a Muslim. He says he converted to Christianity as an adult, which under Islam makes him an apostate," wrote Crowley. "He grew up in Indonesia, which is the most populous Muslim nation on earth. His stepfather was also a Muslim. He was steeped in Islam throughout his formative years, so it should come as no surprise that he has loyalties to Islam. During the 2008 campaign, he even slipped and claimed that the United States has '57' states, instead of 50. The number of Muslim states in the Organization of the Islamic Conference is 57."

"It may not come as a shock that he appears loyal to Islam. The question is: can he be both loyal to Islam and loyal to the United States?" she added.
Crowley added, "How could he....support the enemy?"

Called birther conspiracy theories legitimate

Writing in a blog post in April 2011 after the release of Obama's long-form birth certificate, Crowley praised Donald Trump for questioning Obama's citizenship and called concerns about the birth certificate legitimate.
"If the birth certificate were never a big deal, why did No Drama Obama wait nearly 3 years before releasing it? Why endure and stoke all of the drama? To make those raising legitimate concerns about his origins and policies look like kooks? Maybe," wrote Crowley.

"For over 2 1/2 years, questions have been raised about Obama's origins and background," she added. "He was never properly vetted by an adoring press corps, so outstanding concerns existed about his birth certificate (the long-form of which he had never released), where he grew up, his family's religious background, his parents' political beliefs, how he got into top schools such as Columbia and Harvard Law, how he paid for his education, what his grades were, etc. The questions were and are legitimate, and yet were never fully answered. In fact, anyone daring to ask them was painted as a fringe moron at best and racist at worst."

In 2011, Hawaiian officials, at Obama's request, released the long form of his birth certificate. It indicated that he had, indeed, been born in Hawaii. Conspiracy theorists continue to allege the document was a forgery.

Said Obama was on the side of terrorists

Writing about the Obama administration in June 2013, Crowley said it looked the Muslim Brotherhood was dictating American foreign policy.
"The Muslim Brotherhood is a sworn enemy of the United States. In Obama, they have found an ally. What does that say about Obama? I'm sure you can figure that one out," she wrote. "What it says about America's national security is that it looks increasingly like it's being dictated BY that sworn enemy."

Writing in a January 2009 blog post, Crowley singled out Obama for using his full name at his swearing in (presidents typically are sworn in using their full names) and decisions related to banning the use of torture and closing of the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention center as actions that raised questions about the president's sympathies.

"Barack Obama insisted on being sworn in as president with his full name, Barack Hussein Obama. One of his very first things he did as president was to order the closure of the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba," she wrote, without noting that Obama had campaigned on this issue, the facility had been a top concern for human rights defenders. "The two things he did along with that was to order a halt to the prosecutions of terrorist suspects there, including the mastermind of the September 11th attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and other top al Qaeda terrorists, like Ramzi Binalshibh. He also issued an order against the use of enhanced interrogation tactics on such terrorists, including waterboarding.

"Now comes word that he is granting his first formal television interview as president to Al-Arabiya," she added. "Tells you where his head is, and possibly, his sympathies. Just sayin'."

In February 2015, Crowley shared what she called an "important column," with the title "Obama's Two Faces of Islam." The column, written by author Bill Siegel and still available on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, argues that Obama is an "Islamic community organizer" and is "conforming US policy to Islam and Sharia."

"The administration, with Obama as Islamic community organizer, is not only placating Muslims and, in particular, our Islamic enemies; it is conforming US policy to Islam and Sharia," reads the column.

"Obama's actions may, however, actually betray a more nefarious strategy: do as little as politically possible so as to foment chaos across the region, all to the benefit of his seeming policy "companions" dedicated to promoting Sharia and Islamic statehood- the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Republic of Iran- while defanging the US's best ally in the region, Israel. Despite public pressure, resist confronting ISIS/ISIL and Bashar Assad in any truly meaningful way and turn his back on the Christian genocide exploding across the region. In addition, flood the US with Muslim immigrants while keeping it bound to foreign oil despite remarkable innovations at home that can render it virtually energy independent."

I wonder how many of those Americans that always side with Israel know of the attack on a US spy ship flying a very large American flag at the time killing 34 sailors.

Israeli like any other nation on earth will do whatever it feel is best for itself including attacking an ally ship so always being on one side or the other in other nations conflicts is stupid in my opinion.

Also in my opinion there been any numbers of times we not only hurt our self but Israeli by giving them a total free hand instead of lowering the boom when it was call for.

All of us.



They thought it was an Egyptian ship. It was collateral damage. It was pretty dumb of the US Navy to sail it into a war zone like that.



"Lowering the boom" has never been called for. Our friendship with Israel has never harmed either us or Israel.

Oralloy would have sunk the Liberty and killed all the survivors.

They thought it was an Egyptian ship. It was collateral damage. It was pretty dumb of the US Navy to sail it into a war zone like that.[/quote]

They didn't sail into a war zone you know-nothing slacker, it was a ground war and the Israelis knew we were there.....Since our wonderful partner didn't want us to know what was up, and since they knew we would report back to DC, they decided a better action was to kill American sailors. Yes, the country you think we would side with even if they attacked a US territory made the decision to obliterate American sailors instead of warning the US or the ships.

Those who care about the US military would not just shrug their shoulders, but some people have never read a history book, or done any research.

I think the whole issue with very old men being in charge of major decision-making, is that despite them having offspring, and even great-grandchildren, they themselves won't live to see the results of their major decisions.

Example in point, the federal reserve has been buying their own bonds at a loss, to prop up wall street gamblers, and the rest of the planet is aware of this fact. Those bonds don't "mature" for 30 years, meaning the actions of the fed won't have to be faced, until the dicks in charge right now, are dead and buried.

This seems to be indicative of the whole schebang, meaning endless wars funded by generations not even born yet.

And people affect surprise when candidates like Trump and Boris Johnson win the vote. We're sick to death of the bullshit of the cabal wankers, and their mindless promises and pathetic excuses, and endless conflicts.

That came out of the blue, didn't it? It might be a consequence of Barr's personal political beliefs or perhaps it is just a spill-over from the growing right wing zest for authoritarian "solutions". Or both.

I think it’s more of the same “reasoning” that causes them to take photo ops with caged brown men at the border. Showing their rabid base that they are being mean to the right people.

Russia Targeted Elections Systems in All 50 States, Report Finds

The REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE UNITED STATES SENATE is really interesting, especially, if you are able to read through the black of redacted text

it's also deflection from the Mueller report...

Yup. One constant in authoritarianism is a deep reliance on punishment. And preceding that is an even deeper reliance on severe binary framings of people and issues - "us" versus "them" being central. Nothing really fulfills both urges better than punishing those not-us folks.

That is, with this Trump guy, always a potential factor.

I expect you are as unsurprised by this as I am, Walter.

I was/am really disgusted by much of the media coverage of the Mueller hearing (eg Mueller seemed feeble) while commonly failing to concentrate on what Mueller found and said regarding Russian interference in American elections and political culture.