monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Trump Officials Had No Clue Where He Got ‘Whimpering’ Detail in His Baghdadi Raid Account

Five officials told The Daily Beast that they were perplexed watching Trump’s Sunday morning victory lap. And Pentagon officials are confused too.

Sondland and his partner in Provenance Hotels, which owns and operates several hotels in liberal Portland, signed on to host a Trump fundraiser in Seattle, but when that was reported in Portland, they expressed surprise that they were listed as co-sponsors and disavowed Trump (and said they wanted nothing to do with him). Sondland later turned around thereafter and donated $1M to the Inauguration Committee.

On top of everything else, Sondland and his wife are of course devotees of Ayn Rand and own a building downtown they have named The Galt. The Galt houses the offices of his wife’s real estate development company, Atlas Properties. I am sure you appreciate the references.

Comes now Ken Starr, responsible more than any other person on Earth for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, to tell us what a dreadful thing impeachment is.

“It just seems we need to ratchet the conversation down because of the evils of impeachment,” the former independent counsel said during an interview with conservative writer Byron York released on Monday. “Impeachment has become a terrible, terrible thorn in the side of the American democracy and the conduct of American government since Watergate. . . . Let’s at least have a reasoned and deliberate conversation about some lesser kind of response.”

These people are morally empty.

Baldimo wrote:

The left has been trying to impeach him since the day after the election.

You have evidence of this?

The only desperation is on the part of Trump's defenders

Let’s at least have a reasoned and deliberate conversation about some lesser kind of response.”

They shouldn't be holding secret impeachment hearings, that's what takes place in communist countries, not Constitutional Republics.

Lou Dobbs claims Donald Trump never talks about himself, praises Trump’s selflessness

LOU DOBBS (HOST): You mentioned the first person singular. This is a president who seldom uses the expression. I can remember State of the Union addresses by Obama in which you heard the first person singular throughout, a hundred plus times. President Trump is truly the president of 'we'. He uses that first-person plural throughout his campaign rallies and throughout his speech, in his everyday speech, if a president can have everyday speech.

DONALD TRUMP JR.: And he's doing that because he's doing this for the right reasons. He got involved with this not because he needed the job, frankly far from it. He knew what would come with it he knew the viciousness of the other side.

When Donald Trump announced the demise of ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi over the weekend, the president noted that the only injury to the U.S. Special Operations Forces was to a dog. "Our canine -- I call it a dog, a beautiful dog, a talented dog -- was injured and brought back," Trump said.

That was not, however, the only canine reference in the Republican's remarks.

Quote:

"Last night was a great night for the United States and for the world. A brutal killer, one who has caused so much hardship and death, has violently been eliminated. He will never again harm another innocent man, woman, or child. He died like a dog."

Trump repeated the "he died like a dog" phrase twice on Sunday morning, though I'm still not altogether sure how one dies like a dog.

The president went on to describe ISIS leaders as acting like "very frightened puppies."

I realize that Trump's mastery of the language is limited, but he really ought to come up with some additional points of comparison. As regular readers may recall, it was earlier this year, for example, shortly before his State of the Union address, when Trump told a group of television anchors that Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) “choked like a dog” at a press conference a few days prior.

A few weeks before that, we learned of an anecdote from Cliff Sims’ book in which Trump told then-House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), in reference to the closing days of the 2016 election cycle, “You were out there dying like a dog, Paul. Like a dog!”

It’s clearly one of this president’s favorite metaphors. Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for example, was “fired like a dog.” According to Trump, so were conservative media figures Erick Erickson and Glenn Beck.

Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak was “dropped like a dog.” Steve Bannon was “dumped like a dog.” Mitt Romney “choked like a dog.” Ted Cruz “lies like a dog.” Brent Bozell allegedly went to Trump’s office “begging for money like a dog.”

“Robert Pattinson should not take back Kristen Stewart,” the future president wrote in 2012. “She cheated on him like a dog.”

Asked why he went after Arianna Huffington’s appearance, Trump wrote, just two months before launching his presidential campaign, “Because she is a dog who wrongfully comments on me.”

After Omarosa Manigault-Newman left the White House, Trump called her “a crazed, crying lowlife,” before adding, “Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!”

Dear Trump supporters. Though you don't realize it, Trump has you out on the front lawn
in full view and he's mounted you and is giving it to you like you're a dog.

The US House of Representatives has voted overwhelmingly in favour of recognising the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War One as a genocide.

The issue is highly sensitive and comes amid deteriorating US-Turkey relations.

Presidential hopeful Joe Biden said the vote honoured the memory of victims.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the "worthless" vote, which was held on Turkey's National Day, was the "biggest insult" to Turkish people.

There is general agreement that hundreds of thousands of Armenians died when the Ottoman Turks deported them en masse from eastern Anatolia to the Syrian desert and elsewhere in 1915-16. They were killed or died from starvation or disease.

The total number of Armenian dead is disputed. Armenians say 1.5 million died. The Republic of Turkey estimates the total to be 300,000. According to the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), the death toll was "more than a million".

The resolution passed by a vote of 405 to 11. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined her colleagues "in solemn remembrance of one of the great atrocities of the 20th Century".

Mr Biden tweeted: "By acknowledging this genocide we honour the memory of its victims and vow: never again."

It is the first time in decades that the full House has considered such a measure. In the past, attempts were thwarted by concerns that it could damage relations with Turkey, a Nato ally, and intense lobbying by the Turkish government.

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, whose California district is home to a large Armenian-American population, tweeted: "The House just voted to recognise the Armenian Genocide - a vote I fought for 19 years to make possible, that tens of thousands of my Armenian American constituents have waited decades to see."

He added: "We will not be party to genocide denial. We will not be silent. We will never forget."

To become official policy, the resolution needs to be approved by both houses of Congress and then be signed by the president. But there is no vote scheduled on the measure in the Senate.

The House also voted overwhelmingly to call on President Donald Trump to impose sanctions on Turkey and some of its officials over the country's military offensive against Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.

Kurdish troops have been allied to the US in fighting the Islamic State (IS) group.

Turkey has strongly condemned the move. Speaking on television, Mr Erdogan said the Turkish parliament would respond to the House vote, saying: "This step which was taken is worthless and we do not recognise it."

Earlier, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called the vote "null and void", saying it was revenge for the offensive in Syria.

Mr Cavusoglu tweeted: "Those whose projects were frustrated turn to antiquated resolutions. Circles believing that they will take revenge this way are mistaken. This shameful decision of those exploiting history in politics is null and void for our government and people."

Turkey denies that there was a systematic campaign to slaughter Armenians as an ethnic group during World War One.

On Wednesday, the US ambassador to Turkey, David Satterfield, was summoned by the Turkish foreign minister over the vote.

The dispute about whether it was genocide centres on the question of premeditation - the degree to which the killings were orchestrated.

Many historians, governments and the Armenian people believe that they were; but a number of scholars question this.

Turkish officials accept that atrocities were committed but argue that there was no systematic attempt to destroy the Christian Armenian people. Turkey says many innocent Muslim Turks also died in the turmoil of war.

Facebook-owned WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit against Israel's NSO Group, alleging the firm was behind cyber-attacks that infected devices with malicious software.

WhatsApp accuses the company of sending malware to roughly 1,400 mobile phones for the purposes of surveillance.

Users affected included journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents, and diplomats.

NSO Group, which makes software for surveillance, disputed the allegations.

In a court filing, WhatsApp said NSO Group "developed their malware in order to access messages and other communications after they were decrypted on target devices".

It said NSO Group created various WhatsApp accounts and caused the malicious code to be transmitted over the WhatsApp servers in April and May.

"We believe this attack targeted at least 100 members of civil society, which is an unmistakable pattern of abuse," WhatsApp said in a statement.

The affected users had numbers from several countries, including Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Mexico, according to the lawsuit.

WhatsApp said it is seeking a permanent injunction banning NSO from using its service.

The firm, which was acquired by Facebook in 2014, said it was the first time an encrypted messaging provider had taken legal action of this kind.

WhatsApp promotes itself as a "secure" communications app because messages are end-to-end encrypted. This means they should only be displayed in a legible form on the sender or recipient's device.

NSO Group said it would fight the allegations.

"In the strongest possible terms, we dispute today's allegations and will vigorously fight them," the company said in a statement to the BBC.

"The sole purpose of NSO is to provide technology to licensed government intelligence and law enforcement agencies to help them fight terrorism and serious crime."

Kilmeade then doubled down on his suspicions about Vindman’s supposed Ukrainian allegiance.

“There is no doubt about it, this lieutenant colonel was born in Ukraine. He came here,” Kilmeade said

FOX NEWS’ KILMEADE LAMENTS AMERICAN IMPURITIES…. “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade probably isn’t quite sharp enough to realize why his comments this morning were a little crazy even for Fox News. It’s a shame, because if he thought about it, he might be embarrassed.

Kilmeade was reflecting on a study that found married people fare better when it comes to Alzheimer’s than divorcees. Fox News is “pro-family,” so it might seem like the kind of study Kilmeade would approve of.

Alas, no. The Fox News personality took issue with where the study was done, which he said discredited the results. Alex Koppelman, who posted the video, explains:

Quote:

Kilmeade and two colleagues were discussing a study that, based on research done in Finland and Sweden, showed people who stay married are less likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s. Kilmeade questioned the results, though, saying, “We are — we keep marrying other species and other ethnics and other …”

At this point, his co-host tried to — in that jokey morning show way — tell Kilmeade he needed to shut up, and quick, for his own sake. But he didn’t get the message, adding, “See, the problem is the Swedes have pure genes. Because they marry other Swedes…. Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society.”

Kilmeade proceeded to tell his national television audience, “In America, we marry everybody. Some will marry Italians, the Irish….”

Apparently, in context, Kilmeade believes Americans’ tendency to marry “other ethnics” and “other species” necessarily makes us less “pure.”

Must … not … violate … Godwin’s law….