monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

the manifold error of their way

the blinkered, philistine pig ignorant deniers who infest this site

when I could have ben binge watching "farscape" instead.

Unless we somehow gain intelligence that a nuclear strike by NK is imminent, I don't see the US hitting them first and so everyone is sitting around with their fingers crossed that Kim is not insane enough to put his own fat ass, not to mention his whole nation, in mortal danger by doing something everyone believes is insane. If Seoul, Tokyo or Juno are reduced to lakes of molten slag it will be small consolation that Kim, his flunkies and millions of his oppressed subjects are wiped of the face of the earth. Despite what some folks here would like to see happen, all we can do is hope and pray that the situation and a few major cities don't blow up.

In the meantime, every thuggish strongman in the world is even more convinced that it is essential for him to develop or obtain at least two nukes. One to use in a test to prove he has them and the other to enable God knows what acts of aggression. The West couldn't even hold strong and derail Iran's efforts. A great many people in this country and throughout Europe actually believe the absurd notion that Obama's deal with the mullahs is going to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear power and threat.

giujohn wrote:

How about Hillary Huma and Tony (among others) violating title 18?

I'm not familiar with this. Is it something to do with the emails?

So Trump has the legal authority to disclose the information.

The information, related to the use of laptops on aircraft, came from a partner of the US which had not given permission for it to be shared with Russia, says the Washington Post.

The U.S. in general has escaped quite a number of major hurricanes – 27 in a row have formed and either missed the U.S. entirely or made landfall below major-hurricane strength.

When the World is Led By a Child

At certain times Donald Trump has seemed like a budding authoritarian, a corrupt Nixon, a rabble-rousing populist or a big business corporatist.

But as Trump has settled into his White House role, he has given a series of long interviews, and when you study the transcripts it becomes clear that fundamentally he is none of these things.

At base, Trump is an infantalist. There are three tasks that most mature adults have sort of figured out by the time they hit 25. Trump has mastered none of them. Immaturity is becoming the dominant note of his presidency, lack of self-control his leitmotif.

First, most adults have learned to sit still. But mentally, Trump is still a 7-year-old boy who is bouncing around the classroom. Trump’s answers in these interviews are not very long — 200 words at the high end — but he will typically flit through four or five topics before ending up with how unfair the press is to him.

His inability to focus his attention makes it hard for him to learn and master facts. He is ill informed about his own policies and tramples his own talking points. It makes it hard to control his mouth. On an impulse, he will promise a tax reform when his staff has done little of the actual work.

Second, most people of drinking age have achieved some accurate sense of themselves, some internal criteria to measure their own merits and demerits. But Trump seems to need perpetual outside approval to stabilize his sense of self, so he is perpetually desperate for approval, telling heroic fabulist tales about himself.

“In a short period of time I understood everything there was to know about health care,” he told Time. “A lot of the people have said that, some people said it was the single best speech ever made in that chamber,” he told The Associated Press, referring to his joint session speech.

By Trump’s own account, he knows more about aircraft carrier technology than the Navy. According to his interview with The Economist, he invented the phrase “priming the pump” (even though it was famous by 1933). Trump is not only trying to deceive others. His falsehoods are attempts to build a world in which he can feel good for an instant and comfortably deceive himself.

He is thus the all-time record-holder of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the phenomenon in which the incompetent person is too incompetent to understand his own incompetence. Trump thought he’d be celebrated for firing James Comey. He thought his press coverage would grow wildly positive once he won the nomination. He is perpetually surprised because reality does not comport with his fantasies.

Third, by adulthood most people can perceive how others are thinking. For example, they learn subtle arts such as false modesty so they won’t be perceived as obnoxious.

But Trump seems to have not yet developed a theory of mind. Other people are black boxes that supply either affirmation or disapproval. As a result, he is weirdly transparent. He wants people to love him, so he is constantly telling interviewers that he is widely loved. In Trump’s telling, every meeting was scheduled for 15 minutes but his guests stayed two hours because they liked him so much.

Which brings us to the reports that Trump betrayed an intelligence source and leaked secrets to his Russian visitors. From all we know so far, Trump didn’t do it because he is a Russian agent, or for any malevolent intent. He did it because he is sloppy, because he lacks all impulse control, and above all because he is a 7-year-old boy desperate for the approval of those he admires.

The Russian leak story reveals one other thing, the dangerousness of a hollow man.

Our institutions depend on people who have enough engraved character traits to fulfill their assigned duties. But there is perpetually less to Trump than it appears. When we analyze a president’s utterances we tend to assume that there is some substantive process behind the words, that it’s part of some strategic intent.

But Trump’s statements don’t necessarily come from anywhere, lead anywhere or have a permanent reality beyond his wish to be liked at any given instant.

We’ve got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar.

“We badly want to understand Trump, to grasp him,” David Roberts writes in Vox. “It might give us some sense of control, or at least an ability to predict what he will do next. But what if there’s nothing to understand? What if there is no there there?”

And out of that void comes a carelessness that quite possibly betrayed an intelligence source, and endangered a country.

So, what kind of person backs Trump's candidacy, even votes for him, knowing what everyone knew about him, before the election, hightor?

In the last election, people who really didn't like Hillary Clinton. Didn't you pick up on that? It was in all the papers.

Kinda strange that, for all their self-proclaimed tolerance, love of diversity, and love for the fellow man, these cheese-eaters don't do anything but spew hate 24/7 for anyone who doesn't subscribe to their lame dogma, eh?

Can't wait to hear the tapes of that so we all know they aren't really cheap shot dickheads preaching to their sycophantic choir of adoring fans who wait with baited breath and tongues out like pilgrims waiting for their daily splooge of truth to reach their tongues.

No, it's not strange at all. They see Trump as promoting religious discrimination, opposed to basic rights, a tool of the evangelicals...

... run-of-the-mill political criticism...

So you hate anyone who doesn't toe the the commie atheist line, that what it boils down to?

Yeah...and stop with the childish personal attacks...I know it's difficult for cheese heads.

you hate anyone who doesn't toe the the commie atheist line

According to the same Israeli sources,U.S. intel 'warned Israelis' against sharing this info with Trump admin in January already.