monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

It's truly stunning you believe that crap.

It is on his laptop. I say you are stupid not to believe it.

Thank you, CR.

Whether the Dems would do what the Repubs did is something we can not know at this time...but I am glad we both agree that it was something worthy of contempt. (Once again, I will acknowledge it was legal...constitutional.)

I lament what we have become. I hope the needed repairs can be obtained, but we will have to see what the future holds for us.

Well, fairy tales are for children.

Ratcliffe says no proof foreign actors tied to 'Biden' laptop, but officials say FBI is probing

Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI counterintelligence chief, said it's possible the laptop was the product of a political dirty trick by domestic actors.
Oct. 19, 2020, 1:49 PM EDT
By Ken Dilanian

WASHINGTON — The director of national intelligence insisted Monday that there is no evidence the Russians or other foreign actors were behind the emails allegedly found on a laptop linked to Hunter Biden, even as officials familiar with the matter tell NBC News the FBI continues to probe that question.

John Ratcliffe, a former Republican House member from Texas who has come under heavy criticism over allegations he has politicized intelligence to help President Donald Trump, told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo that a laptop allegedly left at a Delaware repair shop "is not part of some disinformation campaign."

"Let me be clear," he said. "The intelligence community doesn't believe that because there is no intelligence that supports that."

A Democratic Congressional official familiar with the matter told NBC News the FBI was actively examining that question, confirming what two other people familiar with the matter said Friday night — that federal investigators are trying to determine whether the materials allegedly found on the laptop were the fruits of a foreign intelligence operation designed to interfere in the presidential election.

Ratcliffe acknowledged that the laptop is "in the jurisdiction of the FBI," adding, "The FBI has had possession of this," but "their investigation is not centered around Russian disinformation and the intelligence community is not playing any role with respect to that."

The FBI seized the laptop and a hard drive through a grand jury subpoena. The subpoena was later published by the New York Post, which published a series of stories last week based on emails, texts, photos and videos it said came from the laptop. The Post said it obtained the material from President Trump's attorney, Rudy Giuliani.

“There's a sloppiness here that almost seems too sloppy for Russian intelligence.”

The first Post story highlighted what it called a "smoking gun email" that suggested a meeting between Biden and a representative of a Ukrainian company that once paid Hunter Biden. The Biden campaign denies that the meeting happened, and the story was greeted with widespread skepticism.

George Mesires, attorney for Hunter Biden, said in a statement, "We have no idea where this came from, and certainly cannot credit anything that Rudy Giuliani provided to the New York Post, but what I do know for certain is that this purported meeting never happened."

Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said, "We have reviewed Joe Biden's official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place."

Since the stories have been published, conspiracy web sites have promulgated allegations that the laptop materials link Hunter Biden to criminal behavior. None of the allegations have been substantiated.

Questions have swirled around the Post's account of how it obtained the emails and other materials. The newspaper said they were found on a laptop left in a Delaware repair shop in April 2019 and never claimed. The repair shop owner then took it upon himself to access the private material, the Post said.

The Post said the shop owner, who has been identified as John Paul Mac Isaac, called the FBI, and also called a Giuliani associate. The shop owner said he believed the laptop was among equipment left by Hunter Biden, because a sticker on the laptop bore the name of the Beau Biden Foundation, a charity named after his late brother.


"Before turning over the gear, the shop owner says, he made a copy of the hard drive and later gave it to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's lawyer, Robert Costello," the Post said. "Steve Bannon, former adviser to President Trump, told The Post about the existence of the hard drive in late September and Giuliani provided The Post with a copy of it on Sunday."

It remains unclear whether the emails cited by the Post are authentic or have been doctored.

Giuliani, who acknowledged helping bring the material to light, has in the past sought to unearth information damaging to Biden with the help of a man identified by the U.S. government as a Russian intelligence officer.

Questions about the provenance of the emails led Facebook and Twitter to limit sharing of the story, prompting fierce criticism from Republicans.

In an interview published by the Daily Beast, Issac, the repair shop owner, provided shifting answers to key questions.

"Throughout the interview, Mac Isaac switched back and forth from saying he reached out to law enforcement after viewing the files in the laptop to saying that it was actually the FBI that contacted him," the Beast wrote. NBC News has reached out to Isaac but has not heard back.

The Post published a grand jury subpoena for the laptop and hard drive. The subpoena had been issued by a federal prosecutor who already had the serial numbers of the devices when they were ordered to be handed over in early December 2019, indicating federal law enforcement was aware of the specific devices they want to examine.
‘
"Other material extracted from the computer," the Post said, "includes a raunchy, 12-minute video that appears to show Hunter, who's admitted struggling with addiction problems, smoking crack while engaged in a sex act with an unidentified woman, as well as numerous other sexually explicit images."

Many commentators have speculated that the material could have been hacked from Hunter Biden's accounts and put on the laptop as a cover story to offer a plausible explanation of how the material became public.

Frank Figliuzzi, an NBC News contributor and former FBI counterintelligence chief, said it's possible the laptop was the product of a political dirty trick by domestic actors.

"We have to be careful about saying this is absolutely a Russian operation, because there's a sloppiness here that almost seems too sloppy for Russian intelligence," he said.

It is also possible it is exactly what it is. Influence peddling with Joe Biden getting a cut. Your story has nothing but ifs.

The reality is there and the facts are with it and those facts show a corrupt family cashing in on the American citizens they do not give one **** about.

Hey cj, tell us about the Bakersfield doctors again! And about the miracle drug, hydroxychloroquine, which your source told us was going to end the pandemic. Gee, you think maybe they've run out of the stuff ? I mean people are coming down with the disease in record-breaking numbers.

Trump advisers kicking themselves for last minute focus on failed Hunter Biden laptop smear: report

rawstory

I never said it, HCL. would end the pandemic. You are lying but that is what desperate people do. The doctors were censored just like the Biden story because the truth is not for the American people, big tech has spoken.

It has not failed.

Too bad it all disappeared poof in the night.

The damage is already done.

Can't you read?


Bullshit — not being epidemiologists they were mistaken, seduced by the idea of making some big headlines. Or maybe they were simply lying.

Russia is seeing a big increase in covid cases. It will be a good real world test of their vaccine.

Hate is the fuel Democrats run on. Someone has become sick and tired of it.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/michigan-councilman-hillary-supporter-endorses-trump-democrats-are-full-of-hate?%3Futm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dwtwitter

They were censored. I do not care who they are and what they said. Censorship is a tool of fascists. Nice club you belong to.

Obviously. So it's fine with you if self-serving "experts" spread life-threatening misinformation during a pandemic. Nice club you belong to.

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump
Edited by Bandy X. Lee. M.D., M.DIV.



Who Goes Trump?
Tyranny as a Triumph of Narcissism
by Elizabeth Mika, M.A., L.C.P.C.


Pp. 298-310
Part 1
Tyrannies are three-legged beasts. They encroach upon our world in a steady creep more often then overcome it in a violent takeover, which may be one reason they are not always easy to spot before it is too late to do much about them. Their necessary components, those three wobbly legs, are: the tyrant, his supporters, and the society at large that provides a ripe ground for the collusion between them.

The force binding all three is narcissism. It animates the beast...eating it alive, bringing its downfall in due time. This force and its influences, which knit the beast into such a powerful and destructive entity, remain invisible to us for reasons that are clearly hinted at but somehow continue to evade our individual and collective comprehension.
They make sure we don't recognize the tyrannies marching boots, which can be heard from miles away and months away, until they show up on our doorstep, and that's despite the fact that this very same process has repeated itself countless times in history.

Yet, despite making promises to ourselves and one another to "never forget," we seem not to remember or not to know, always with devastating consequences. Our forgetting stems partly from miseducation and partly from denial.

The Tyrant
Although the terms dictator and tyrant are used interchangeably, it makes sense perhaps to stress that not all dictators are tyrants. Tyrants are dictators gone bad. A leader may start as a seemingly benevolent dictator but turn into a tyrant as his reign progressives, becoming ruthlessly destructive with time, something we have seen repeatedly in history.

All tyrants share several essential features: they are predominantly men with a specific character defect, narcissistic psychopathy (a.k.a. malignant narcissism). This defect manifests in a severely impaired or absent conscience and an insatiable drive for power and adulation that masks the conscience deficits. It forms the core of attraction between him and his followers, the essence of what is seen as his "charisma."...Frederick Burkle observed that narcissism augments and intensifies the pathological features of a psychopathic character structure, making those endowed with it especially dangerous, not in the least because of their ability to use manipulative charm and the pretense of human ideals to pursue their distinctly primitive goals.

Impulsive, sensation-seeking, and incapable of experiencing empathy or guilt, a narcissistic psychopath treats other people as objects of need fulfillment and wish fulfillment. This makes it easy for him to use and abuse them, in his personal relationships and in large-scale actions, without compunction. His lack of conscience renders him blind to higher human values, which allows him to disregard them entirely or treat them instrumentally as means to his ends, the way he treats people.

This dangerous character defect, however, serves him well in the pursuit of power, money, and adulation. Not having the inhibitions and scruples imposed by empathy and conscience, he can easily lie, cheat, manipulate, destroy, and kill if he wants to dash – or, when powerful enough, order others to do it for him.

His lack of empathy, whether resulting from an inborn cause or narcissistic/authoritarian upbringing, would further limit development of his conscience and influence not only the child's socio-emotional development but also his cognitive capacities, resulting in what Burkle calls being smart but not bright. Dabrowski termed this as one-sided development, where intelligence and certain cognitive skills develop more or less normally but one's emotional growth remain stunted.

As Dabrowski writes;
A psychopath is emotionally rigid and narrow. He has strong ambitions and significant talents, but they remain narrow and under the influence of primitive drives.
He does not experience inner conflicts, but instead he creates external ones. He is usually deaf and blind to the problems of others, to their development and developmental difficulties. He relentlessly realizes his own goals.

We can distinguish "small" and "big" psychopaths. We find the big ones among the most notorious world criminals, and among aggressive tyrants and dictators (e.g. Nero, Hitler) who do not hesitate to sacrifice others for their own goals. Genocide or concentration camps are not a moral problem for him, but a means to an end.

Small psychopaths are miniatures of the big ones. In general, they submit to big psychopaths in the right circumstances. A small psychopath looks for opportunities to realize his own interest and to satisfy his desire to wreak havoc in society. A psychopath thinks that laws are to be broken and that they do not apply to him. He uses any circumstances to secure his position, money, and fortune, regardless of the consequences for others, without any consideration for ethical norms.

Narcissistic psychopaths turned tyrants possess the right combination of manipulativeness, self-control, and intelligence to convince others to support them long enough to put their grandiose ideas to work on a large scale. They also appear to possess skills that are seen as charisma, the most frequent of which is the ability to deliver public speeches that Inspire others to follow them. More often then not, however, this "charisma" is simply their ability to tell others what they want to hear, to make them go along with whatever scheme they've concocted for the moment.

Tyrants identify with other tyrants and find inspiration in their success, while remaining oblivious to their failures. They recognize and respect power as much as they are envious of and despise it's wielders.

This brings us to the second leg of the tyrannical beast...

The Tyrant's Supporters
The process through which the tyrant gains popularity and power usually baffles the outside observers and historians looking at it from the perspective of time... the tyrant's narcissism is the main attractor of his followers, who project their hopes and dreams onto him. The more grandiose his sense of his own self and his promises to his fans, the greater their attraction and the stronger their support.

Through the process of identification, the tyrant's followers absorb his omnipotence and glory and imagine themselves as powerful as he is, the winners in the game of life. This identification heals the followers narcissistic wounds, but also tends to shut down their reason and conscience....

The interplay of grandiose hopes and expectations between the tyrant-in-the-making and his supporters that suffuses him with power and helps propel him to a position of political authority is an example of narcissistic illusion: a meshing of mutually compatible narcissistic needs. The people see in him their long-awaited savior and a father substitute, hinting at the narcissistic abuse implicated in the authoritarian upbringing that demands obedience and worship of the all-powerful parental figure.

...Erich Fromm stressed the elements of submission to and identification with the strongman:
The highly narcissistic group is eager to have a leader with whom it can identify itself. The leader is then admired by the group which projects it's narcissism on to him. In the very act of submission to the powerful leader, which is in depth an act of symbiosis and identification, the narcissism of the individual is transferred onto the leader. The greater than leader, the greater the follower. The narcissism of the leader who is convinced of his greatness, and who has no doubt, is precisely what attracts the narcissism of those who submit to him.

The narcissistic mixture of elevated expectations, resentments, and desire for revenge on specific target and/or society in general for not meeting those expectations is what sociologist Michael Kimmel called aggrieved entitlement. Although Kimmel talked specifically about white American men in the 21st century, some form of aggrieved entitlement has been driving tyrants and their supporters as well as organized and "lone wolf" terrorists, the world over since time immemorial.

The tyrant makes many good sounding--but also openly unrealistic, bordering on delusional--promises to his supporters, and usually has no intention or ability to fulfill most of them (if any). He holds his supporters in contempt, as he does "weaker" human beings in general, and uses them only as props in his domination – and adulation – oriented schemes.

The narcissistic collusion between the Tyrant and his supporters is also driven by the ladders need for revenge, for the tyrant is always chosen to perform this psychically restorative function: to avenge the humiliations (narcissistic wounds) of his followers and punish those who inflicted them.

However, as the wounds often date to the supporters' personal ancient past and more often than not are perceived the rather than real, the choice of the object of this vengeful punishment is not based on reality. Rather, it is based on the displacement and projection characteristic of the scapegoating process that becomes an inexplicable part of the narcissistic collusion between the tyrant and his followers.

The tyrant and his followers typically choose as vessels for their negative projections and aggression members of society who are not just different but weaker. The Tyrant feels that aggression in order to solidify his power but also to deflect it from himself, shield his own narcissism, and repair his own narcissistic injuries dating to his childhood.

The tyrant's own narcissism hints at the level of woundedness in his supporters. The greater their narcissistic injury, the more grandiose the leader required to repair it. While his grandiosity appear as grotesque to non-narcissistic people who do not share his agenda, to his followers he represents all their denied and thwarted greatness, which now, under his rule, we'll finally flourish.

It must be noted that the tyrants supporters and especially sycophants within his close circle tend to share his character defect. The sycophantic echo chamber around the tyrant magnifies but also hides is pathology. His surrogates usually serve as the ego substitutes to his rampaging id, and are responsible for introducing and implementing his destructive plans in ways that would seem rational and acceptable to the public.

Their role becomes more important with time, as he psychologically decompensates, which inevitably happens to a narcissistic psychopath in positions of ultimate power. As his paranoia, grandiosity, and impulsivity grow, his aides, family members, and surrogates, fearful for their positions and often their lives, scramble to preserve an image of his "normalcy and greatness for public consumption to the very end. Their loyalty can be fierce and undying, unlike that of the tyrant himself.

(continued in part 2)

Trump merchandise outsells Biden's, China's factories say.

Forget the Polls: This Chinese Indicator Is Flashing ‘Trump’

Well, what's Biden's message?

LGBTMCS? Let's get back to my crime spree?

MAGA has a much better ring to it. Yes?

What crimes?

I mean, there have to be several of them, right? Since it’s a “spree”, and everything.

Do not talk to me about self serving people with the army of opportunists making money from hating Trump and America in general. And you or Twitter or Facebook do not determine what misinformation is. The people that hear it do that or not.

The fact that you think censorship is necessary or right is quite disturbing.