192
   

monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

 
 
blatham
 
  2  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 07:21 am
@Walter Hinteler,
Thanks Walter. You're a very handy fellow to have around. As regards what georgeob was claiming, let's look at these questions and answers and see if we can find any hint of a bright, shiny, stardusty new and exciting approach developed by Trump to correct for the abysmal failures of the prior (muslim-friendly?) administration under Obama.
Quote:
OPERATOR: Next we’ll go to Guy Taylor at The Washington Times. Please, go ahead.
QUESTION: Hi, Mark, how are you? I wanted to follow up on the ministerial meeting of the counter-ISIS coalition and see if we can kind of pull you back into that a little bit. I’m just reading through the release that State put out as the call started. Is there really anything new that the Trump administration hopes will come of this meeting? What is the administration actually hoping to achieve by doing this now or get out of hosting it, strategically?
MR TONER: Sure, fair question. So I think – look, I mean, there have been meetings of this coalition both at the small group level but as well as the entire coalition periodically throughout its existence. I think the full coalition met soon after it was founded in December 2014. It’s now at – was down at 68 – 60 partners, rather. Now it’s grown to, I think, 68 members. And this is the first full coalition meeting since it’s now at 68 members. But again, at the small group level it has also met periodically as well.
I think what sets this meeting apart – obviously, it’s the first meeting of the new administration. I think it’s an opportunity for Secretary Tillerson to lay out the challenges that are facing the coalition moving forward. I think we all recognize that we have seen progress in defeating ISIS on the ground, certainly on the battlefield. They’ve lost territory. How do we leverage that success? How do we build on that success? How do we augment our capabilities? And also, as I said, what are the next challenges? I mentioned – and cyberspace as one area that they’re going to look at – how we augment our work. But I think, again, there’s also dealing with finances, dealing with the foreign fighters. I think he wants to get a sense, working with partners on all of those issues, what are the best ways forward.
I also think that this also is an opportunity for our coalition colleagues, our coalition partners to get together and share their view, and also it’s a chance for us all to recommit ourselves to ISIS’s ultimate defeat, and also how we burden-share, how we share our capability – or how we share the costs certainly going forward, and better share our capabilities on the ground.
Next – do you have another one?
QUESTION: Mark, quick – actually, quick follow-up.
MR TONER: Yeah.
QUESTION: So the administration more than a month ago ordered all agencies to do a comprehensive review of Washington’s ISIS, counter-ISIS strategy, that I believe has been delivered to the White House from Secretary of Defense Mattis’s office. Will that review factor into this coalition meeting? Is it something that there’s going to be some new strategy that the administration is hoping to roll out for all of these partners at this meeting?
MR TONER: So you’re right. On January 28th, obviously, the President, as you mentioned, directed Secretary of Defense Mattis to work with interagency partners to develop that preliminary plan, and the State Department was involved in that process and the drafting of the plan, and it was delivered to the White House on February 27th for consideration and for broader discussion. Now, the details of that plan are still classified. I can’t really provide further information on the contents of that plan, but I think that broadly speaking, we’re going to look at how we approach this in new ways, how we augment, I think, existing capabilities and processes on the ground, as I said, to really take advantage of what’s been progress in – certainly on the battlefield with ISIS. But I just can’t really speak to what those new initiatives could look like at this point in time. Sorry. Thanks.

0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  4  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 07:24 am
@jcboy,
It is good, jcboy. thanks. Here's a snippet:
Quote:
Operating in a command climate of Trumpian instability, the most senior and public White House officials are party to profoundly destabilizing acts. The most consistent characteristic of senior officials charged with communicating the goals of the Trump administration has been a flagrant disregard for the truth, though a more charitable interpretation would be that the new policies are so dysfunctional that no one in the administration understands them. Which petrifies you more: willful lying, or gross incompetence?

The Trump White House is eerily reminiscent of a homeland version of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the disastrous initial effort to rebuild Iraq with a staff front-loaded with ideological supporters instead of technocratic
experts
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  4  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 07:40 am
To underline and add to a previous post on "deep state" and how this term is being wielded in the same manner as "fake news" - that is, duplicitously and as a propaganda move. From David Remnick at the New Yorker...
Quote:
“Deep State” comes from the Turkish derin devlet, a clandestine network, including military and intelligence officers, along with civilian allies, whose mission was to protect the secular order established, in 1923, by the father figure of post-Ottoman Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. It was behind at least four coups, and it surveilled and murdered reporters, dissidents, Communists, Kurds, and Islamists. The Deep State takes a similar form in Pakistan, with its powerful intelligence service, the I.S.I., and in Egypt, where the military establishment is tied to some of the largest business interests in the country.

One day earlier this month in Palm Beach, just after 6 a.m., the President went on a vengeful Twitter binge. Trump reads little but has declared himself “the Ernest Hemingway of a hundred and forty characters,” and that morning he levelled what the Times rightly called “one of the most consequential accusations made by one president against another in American history.” With no evidence, save the ravings of the talk-radio host Mark Levin and an account, in Breitbart News, of Levin’s charges of a “silent coup,” Trump accused President Obama of tapping his “wires” at Trump Tower. He compared the unsubstantiated offense to “McCarthyism” and “Nixon/Watergate.”

By now, Trump’s tactics are familiar. Schooled by Roy Cohn, Joseph McCarthy’s protégé, in the dark arts of rage, deflection, insult, and conspiracy-mongering, Trump ignited his political career with “birtherism,” and he has kept close by his side Steve Bannon, formerly of Breitbart, who traffics in tinfoil-hat theories of race, immigration, and foreign affairs. Together, they have artfully hijacked the notion of “fake news,” turning it around as a weapon of insult, diversion, division, and attack.

...The problem in Washington is not a Deep State; the problem is a shallow man—an untruthful, vain, vindictive, alarmingly erratic President. In order to pass fair and proper judgment, the public deserves a full airing of everything from Trump’s tax returns and business entanglements to an accounting of whether he has been, in some way, compromised. Journalists can, and will, do a lot. But the courts, law enforcement, and Congress—without fear or favor—are responsible for such an investigation. Only if government officials take to heart their designation as “public servants” will justice prevail.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/20/there-is-no-deep-state
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  2  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 07:48 am
Glenn Kessler‏Verified account
@GlennKesslerWP
50 days as president, 219 false and misleading public statements. One day with no false claims. The complete list See Here

As Jay Rosen says, "We don't have systems built to handle this".
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  2  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 08:18 am
HHS Secretary Tom Price has just said, "Nobody will be worse off" after Obamacare is repealed.

georgeob1
 
  0  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 08:53 am
@blatham,
Did you object to "if you like your Doctor, you can keep him: If you like your current Plan, you can keep it" ?????

Of course you didn't, but then it really doesn't affect you in any event,
izzythepush
 
  3  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 09:46 am
@blatham,
blatham wrote:

Quote:
Our defense department has now been given (for the first time) the mandate to defeat and destroy ISIS

They have? By whom? What differences from previously? How do you know? What magical recipe has been formulated? By whom?


By using methods that have failed time and time again.

Quote:
The US has sent 400 additional troops to Syria to support an allied local force aiming to capture the so-called Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa.

They include Marines, who arrived in the past few days. US special forces are already in Syria.

Meanwhile, US-led coalition air strikes killed 20 civilians - including children - near the city, reports say.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-39217015

Start as you mean to go on, there's no fixing stupid.
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  3  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 11:00 am
@georgeob1,
georgeob1 wrote:
Our defense department has now been given (for the first time) the mandate to defeat and destroy ISIS, and we can at least hoipe that the resolution of the even more complex associated political questions will soom begin. That's a big change from the remote detachment and episodic drone assasinations of the previous administraqtion.

blatham wrote:
They have? By whom? What differences from previously? How do you know? What magical recipe has been formulated? By whom? In how many countries? What's the projected cost in billions? What cost in US lives? What cost in other lives? What other nations are on board? What role has State been given? What increases in covert monitoring of US citizens' communications? Court approval from where? "Remote detachment" is a right wing talking point.
0 Replies
 
camlok
 
  2  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 11:14 am
@gungasnake,
Quote:
Like trying to starve all the bigger kids and athletes to death (Mike Obunga's infamous school lunch program, sort of like a US version of the Holodomor in Ukraine).


Or a US version of the Holodomor in Cuba, the north of Korea, Vietnam, ... .

All these crazy lil **** conservatives pointing fingers at everyone else all the while letting huge corporations reap obscene profits from providing munitions to the US, paid for by these same lil **** conservatives taxes, to bomb the hell out of kids around the world who get no phucking' lunch or breakfast or supper.

How deeply immoral/amoral can you get, sitting around whining about how Americans are so hard done by when it is you that is causing all the grief and horror around the world. [no question mark because it is rhetorical given that you are too cowardly to address these things.]
0 Replies
 
camlok
 
  1  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 11:26 am
@layman,
Quote:
Treaties are agreements, not law. A law without a remedy is not worthy of the name "law."



=====

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby

http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html
=============

A commentator without the requisite knowledge, which is so easily available, knowledge that had to have been part of the fifth grade curriculum, ... "is not worthy of the name "commentator", "citizen", does not even rise to the level of "doofus, nincompoop, nitwit, mooncalf, fool, ninny, ninnyhammer, simpleton, halfwit, ..." .

0 Replies
 
gungasnake
 
  -2  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 11:27 am
@blatham,
Quote:
Anyone who imagines that the present GOP led congress is going to proceed with investigations of Trump/Russia or Trump and anything else and do so with integrity is not operating in the real world.


That's correct, and the reason for that is simple enough, there's nothing there to investigate other than the minds of deluded/demented snowflakes and ideologues. The investigations which are about to begin will involve real gangsterism and, hopefully, will end up with some very large number of real gangsters either in prison or, along with HDK (Hildeabeast Dindu KKKlintler), breaking rocks in the hot Arizona sun and singing "BUH, AH, BUH, AH, O don't you know, that's the sound, of the men (and at least one woman), working on the CHAIN GA-A -ANG....."

blatham
 
  4  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 11:31 am
@georgeob1,
The difference in these two things ought to catch your attention. It looks likely that many millions will lose their coverage. That's not the whole story on how insurance will be degraded but that's the key one.

Now compare that to whatever number of previously insured had to alter their plans or doctors.

The second, where it happened, was probably an inconvenience. The first will mean many will die and many will be bankrupted and suffer in the process. This is a level of cruelty which disgusts anyone with a moral sense.
georgeob1
 
  -2  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 11:55 am
@blatham,
You don't speak for everyone "with a moral sense", though it often appears that you believe in your omniscience, and you don't vote in this country, though it often appears that you imagine you do.

Insurance and medical care are different things. Obamacare raised the cost, and degraded the quality of medical care for most recipients. It also caused the closing and consolidation of many hospitals and clinics. It turns out the real world doesn't always follow the plans of bureaucrats and paid academic consultants ( who in the case of Obamacare oddly concluded that they could reduce the supply of medical caregivers; raise the demand for their services; and lower the cost through their superior wisdom. Sadly it hasn't worked out that way. Medicaid for the poor will be largely unaffected.
camlok
 
  0  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 12:05 pm
@georgeob1,
Quote:
You don't speak for everyone "with a moral sense",


And you think you do, george?
0 Replies
 
revelette1
 
  2  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 12:06 pm
Quote:
McCain to Trump: Retract wiretapping claim or prove it

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) called Sunday for President Trump to either prove his claim that President Barack Obama tapped the phones in Trump Tower during last year’s election campaign or drop the accusation.

“The president has one of two choices, either retract or provide the information that the American people deserve,” McCain said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I have no reason to believe that the charge is true, but I also believe that the president of the United States could clear this up in a minute.”

McCain is one of several top lawmakers in Congress to call on Trump to provide evidence of his unsubstantiated claim that Obama ordered Trump’s communications monitored. The senator’s call for more information follows a request from two leading members of the Senate Judiciary Committee for “copies of any warrant applications and court orders — redacted as necessary … related to wiretaps of President Trump, the Trump Campaign, or Trump Tower.”

Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) formally requested the information last week in a letter to FBI Director James B. Comey and acting deputy attorney general Dana Boente. Trump administration officials have not provided any evidence to back up the president’s claim from earlier this month.

McCain avoided directly criticizing Trump for using Twitter to spread unverified information, but the senator said a serious charge, such as accusing a former president of illegal wiretapping, should not be handled lightly.

“If the allegation is left out there, it undermines the confidence the American people have in the entire way that the government does business,” McCain said.

Several lawmakers, including McCain and Senate Rules Committee Chairman Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), have pointed out that Trump could directly ask intelligence officials to corroborate his claim but instead has asked Congress to investigate.

“The president actually could himself ask that question,” Blunt said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Not all Republicans have been so quick to put the burden of proof on Trump. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) agreed with Trump that Congress should take control of the investigation to safeguard sensitive intelligence.


whole article at WP
camlok
 
  -1  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 12:15 pm
@georgeob1,
Quote:
Our defense department has now been given (for the first time) the mandate to defeat and destroy ISIS,


One branch of government gives the go ahead to create the "terrorists" and then that same branch of government gives a later go ahead to destroy the "terrorists".

Nice shtick you got going here, george. How long has this "[a] usually comic or repetitious performance or routine" been going on?

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't that the same shtick you guys did with the "commies"?

"defense" department - now that is hilarious!

0 Replies
 
camlok
 
  -1  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 12:20 pm
@gungasnake,
An American conservative using Sam Cooke, singing "Chain Gang", to illustrate their point.

Oh, the irony!
revelette1
 
  3  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 12:22 pm
@blatham,
Quote:
Anyone who imagines that the present GOP led congress is going to proceed with investigations of Trump/Russia or Trump and anything else and do so with integrity is not operating in the real world.


The really sad part is we in the US are the ones who voted these jokers in their positions to ruin our country and we don't have the excuse of being misled.

Fortunately I think there are some ethical republicans in the senate and the house who will not just go along with anything, particularly if it is really bad for our country to do so. I mean, they might with health insurance but that is a regular conservative/liberal basic ideological disagreement, so is energy and environmental issues and the like. But this Russia stuff is something else entirely, so is the general way the Trump runs his office, with wild accusations to stifle dissenting views and point fingers away from him. Some of those more sane republicans might have to fight their own party, but I believe they will if they have to, however they have to do it.
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 12:25 pm
@revelette1,
True. We are our own worst enemy. We elect a racial bigot, liar and scammer, and think he's going to make our country "great again." It's already great. All Trump can do is make us UN-great.
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  2  
Sun 12 Mar, 2017 12:33 pm
Attend to this guy
Quote:
Steve King‏Verified account
@SteveKingIA
Steve King Retweeted Voice of Europe
Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies.

Aside from all else in this lunatic's tweet.... "restore"?
0 Replies
 
 

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