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Post by jcurio on Mar 6, 2017 13:39:42 GMT -6
π.
(smart lady. Just didn't know how I could post a "smile" and people know that the smile is ONLY for the smart lady.)
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Post by swamprat on Mar 6, 2017 15:21:11 GMT -6
Hmmm.... That looks Suspiciously like a Russian smile.... ____ _____
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Post by swamprat on Mar 7, 2017 18:34:48 GMT -6
Interesting Facebook post, excellent perspective....
I don't care who you voted for, at all! But this... this is what bothers me so badly: I keep seeing people post on how they are terrified, or scared? Well.. what are you scared of exactly? War? Because that's happening. School shootings? Because that's happening. Pipeline? That's been happening. Terrorism? Definitely alive and well. Going broke due to health insurance? Mm yes. Corruption throughout the system? Already there. Police officers being murdered? Yep, that's happening. Bullying? Check. Loss of jobs? We've got that on lock. A tanking economy. Yep. Being discriminated against for your religion, political views, sexual orientation, race? That's been going on. Rape, murder, violence, riots.. all going on and has been.
So tell me, what are you scared of that is not already happening basically everywhere? This isn't a Trump problem, this is a people problem. Y'all need to reevaluate your own selves..
Maybe America is a little too scared and a little too easily offended.
Quit being scared, crying around, offended by everything.. step up and do your part as an American, no, as a human being. Treat others with respect, help and encourage one another, raise your kids right & teach them right from wrong, tell the truth, be a contributing member of society. Make sure your hands are clean, that's your job. Burning the American flag? Get out of here with that, how about you do your job to make it a better place?!
But right now, all I see is hate. It's disturbing, and the ones with the most hate are being exactly what they claim to be against.
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Post by jcurio on Mar 7, 2017 21:18:20 GMT -6
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Post by jcurio on Mar 7, 2017 21:18:51 GMT -6
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Post by jcurio on Mar 7, 2017 21:23:03 GMT -6
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2017 11:47:45 GMT -6
Actually my fears are more about what I don't see than what I can see. The world is as it is and people are not likely to improve...that is a personal choice. To be filled with hate and distrust or to walk through life doing the best you can each day for those you care for. We put our trust in leaders to solve the 'world' problems..sometimes that works..sometimes it doesn't. We're always on the brink of war..closer now it seems than ever before..a lot of unrest. As individuals the only way we can influence that or try to is by the leaders we choose..and a lot of racial bigots and hatred chose this one I believe. That won't change no matter who is in office..there will always be racial bigots and hatred. More will die..more will not be able to handle 'it' and commit suicide..kill their families. That seems to be the latest..Dad so worried for his family that he kills them all and himself. We can only be the very best that we personally can be...try to be proud of the kind of person we are..try not to judge others who have the right to be as they are.
There isn't anything going on it the world that 'scares' me for myself. I have no fear of dying. I'm thrilled my kids haven't had kids that I sit and worry for..I still worry about my adult kids...and that's plenty..I worry for my chronically ill husband and that's not a worry..it's an occupation.
I am more concerned with spiritual feelings..and differences I sense ..I've been talking a lot about that lately...and that's something I can't really explain ..yet.
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Post by jcurio on Mar 8, 2017 21:36:34 GMT -6
Excuse me. This will be lengthy. I will also have to come back and post "where I got this".
Emphasis in article is mine. ******
What other officials are saying: The most pointed refutation of this claim came from Clapper on Sunday. Asked whether he would be aware of any wiretapping of Trump's phones or any FISA Court order authorizing it, Clapper told NBC's "Meet the Press" he "absolutely" would "know that." Then asked whether he could confirm or deny that Trump's phones were wiretapped, Clapper said, "I can deny it." He continued that "not to my knowledge" was there any FISA Court order of anything at Trump Tower. A statement from Obama did not deny any wiretapping of Trump's phones β denying only that the White House "ordered" it or "interfered" with any Justice Department investigation. ~~ !?! Former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau highlighted that distinction, tweeting, "I'd be careful about reporting that Obama said there was no wiretapping. Statement just said that neither he nor the WH ordered it." ~~ !?!
What we don't know: Clapper has denied any "wiretap activity" against Trump from "the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw" but admitted he "can't speak for other Title III authorized entities in the government or a state or local entity." Neither Obama nor any current Department of Justice official has unequivocally denied that there was any wiretapping. And because any wiretap would be protected under the highest levels of classification, it's not clear how many officials would be in a position to know about it. However, multiple former senior intelligence officials told ABC that in almost every circumstance, Trump would have the authority to ask and find out if he had been wiretapped. ~~ !!! The only real circumstance in which he might not be privy to that info is if a warrant was focused on him. ~~!!
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Post by jcurio on Mar 8, 2017 21:42:46 GMT -6
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Post by skywalker on Mar 8, 2017 21:55:49 GMT -6
If trump is demanding a congressional investigation it would be to find out who did the wiretapping and whether or not it was legal. I seriously doubt he would be raising hell about it if it wasn't true. Then again, with trump you never really know what crazy words are going to come out of his mouth.
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Post by jcurio on Mar 8, 2017 23:47:59 GMT -6
Ahhhh.
Another person who "gets me" (my angle of thinking). π
Lately, there's very much an "Either this, OR .... ". π
Obamas' spell - checker?? (Whoops... LOL). and, hey! what's that "clause" about having a president who suddenly comes down with dementia?
π
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Post by jcurio on Mar 8, 2017 23:49:32 GMT -6
(If dementia IS ruling, shouldn't be hard to prove π)
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Post by Deleted on Mar 9, 2017 12:23:24 GMT -6
Or he's just raising a smoke screen to deflect from the Russia thing. He's not a politically minded person and he has always been mouthy and outspoken..what idiots ever figured he would become different by being president? He is what he is..what has been seen on tv and in social media..etc. He's a multi millionaire megalomaniac..and that comes with the peculiar personality disorder of 'I don't give a dam'. Didn't anyone ever watch the apprentice? He wasn't acting. Dementia? Nah that's his personality LOL Still..he probably would call Kim a fat twerp and get away with it. This is a lengthy article but something to think about regarding the grand poopah in office www.yahoo.com/news/is-trumpism-an-existential-threat-100032958.html
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Post by jcurio on Mar 10, 2017 13:38:58 GMT -6
But Obamaβs answer was different, and immediate β clearly heβd thought about it. He said terrorism would rise to the level of an elemental threat only when we responded to some eventual attack, as a culture, by turning against each other and betraying our own ideals. I think he used the word βoverreacting,β though I canβt be sure. ********
Thanks Jo. I read the article yesterday and again today (without viewing any "news" in between).
I don't know if 10 years down the road Obamas ACTIONS will be viewed in a different way, but his WORDS (to me) were "very hopeful" about a world community.
And I remember thinking that his seeming overatures to a certain faith, would lead us into a horrible war. Maybe he was just trying to deflect from the blatant "fear-mongering" that happened after elevennine- but (imo) our culture was already on a downward spin...... and part of that was definitely not to trust our government.
Only SOME people will be "satisfied" with just the words "we're going to make it through this Ok".
MOST people need a plan of action and team spirit.
All the "over-reacting" was happening after a "terrorist event" happened on our home turf. You can't just try to shut that down, and hopefully it will go away.
This article writers' comments that we HAVE BEEN more careful about our borders, etc., I could easily prove wrong.
If anything, we started feeling "safe" again, and maybe a bit lazy.
We erroneously think that "everybody should love us". Especially if we make that extra effort to embrace them?
It's a childish thought. We can have those thoughts, but ACT like we are adults in an adult world. Adults are supposed to protect these children that are too idealistic.
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Post by swamprat on Mar 10, 2017 14:41:01 GMT -6
A Marine's View of what is really going on.
This young man is articulate & has a flare for colorful language, & descriptive prose. Itβs a great letter, a must read for every American citizen.
From a Recon Marine in Afghanistan: >From the Sand Pit
It's freezing here. I'm sitting on hard cold dirt between rocks & shrubs at the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains, along the Dar'yoi Pamir River, watching a hole that leads to a tunnel that leads to a cave. Stake out, my friend, & no pizza delivery for thousands of miles. I also glance at the area around my rear every ten to fifteen seconds to avoid another scorpion sting. I've actually given up battling the chiggers & sand fleas, but the scorpions give a jolt like a cattle prod. Hurts like a bxxxxxx. The antidote tastes like transmission fluid, but God bless the Marine Corps for the five vials of it in my pack.
The one truth the Taliban cannot escape is that, believe it or not, they are human beings, which means they have to eat food & drink water. That requires couriers & that's where an old bounty hunter like me comes in handy. I track the couriers, locate the tunnel entrances and storage facilities, type the info into the hand held, and shoot the coordinates up to the satellite link that tells the air commanders where to drop the hardware. We bash some heads for a while, and then I track and record the new movement.
It's all about intelligence. We haven't even brought in the snipers yet. These scurrying rats have no idea what they're in for. We are but days away from cutting off supply lines and allowing the eradication to begin. But you know me; I'm a romantic. I've said it before and I'll say it again: This country blows, man. It's not even a country. There are no roads, there's no infrastructure, there's no government.
This is an inhospitable, rock-pit sxxx-hole ruled by eleventh century warring tribes. There are no jobs here like we know jobs. Afghanistan offers only two ways for a man to support his family, join the opium trade or join the army. That's it. Those are your options. Oh, I forgot, you can also live in a refugee camp and eat plum-sweetened, crushed beetle paste and squirt mud like a goose with stomach flu, if that's your idea of a party. But the smell alone of those 'tent cities of the walking dead' is enough to hurl you into the poppy fields to cheerfully scrape bulbs for eighteen hours a day.
I've been living with these Tajiks & Uzbeks, & Turkmen & even a couple of Pashtu's, for over a month-and-a-half now, & this much I can say for sure: These guys, are Huns, actual, living Huns. They LIVE to fight. It's what they do. It's ALL they do. They have no respect for anything; not for themselves, their families, or for each other. They claw at one another as a way of life. They play polo with dead calves and force their five-year-old sons into human cockfights to defend the family honor. Just Huns, roaming packs of savage, heartless beasts who feed on each other's barbarism. Cavemen with AK-47's. Then again, maybe I'm just a cranky young bxxxxxx. I'm freezing my axx off on this stupid hill because my lap warmer is running out of juice, and I can't recharge it until the sun comes up in a few hours.
Oh yeah! You like to write letters, right? Do me a favor, Bizarre. Write a letter to CNN & tell Wolf & Anderson & that awful, sneering, pompous Aaron Brown to stop calling the Taliban "smart". They are not smart.
I suggest CNN invest in a dictionary because the word they are looking for is "cunning". The Taliban are cunning, like jackals, hyenas, and wolverines. They are sneaky and ruthless, and when confronted, they are cowardly. They are hateful, malevolent parasites who create nothing and destroy everything else.
Smart? Bullxxxt! Yeah, they're real smart, Most can't read, but they've spent their entire lives listening to Imams telling them about only one book (and not a very good one, as books go). They consider hygiene and indoor plumbing to be products of the devil. They're still trying to figuring out how to work a Bic lighter. Talking to a Taliban warrior about improving his quality of life is like trying to teach an ape how to hold a pen. Eventually he just gets frustrated and sticks you in the eye with it.
OK, enough. Snuffle will be up soon, so I have to get back to my hole.
Please; I tell you and my fellow Americans to turn off the TV sets and move on with your lives. The story line you are getting from CNN and other news agencies is utter bullxxxt and designed not to deliver truth but rather to keep you glued to the screen so you will watch the next commercial. We've got this one under control. The worst thing you guys can do right now is sit around analyzing what we're doing over here. You have no idea what we're doing, and you really don't want to know. We are your military, and we are only doing what you sent us here to do.
From a Jack Recon Marine in Afghanistan, Semper Fi.
"Freedom is not free, but the U.S. Marine Corps is paying most of your share".
God Bless America.
PS: Why would any civilized country want to bring these barbarians into their cities or states. To do so is total suicidal insanity!
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Post by jcurio on Mar 10, 2017 15:12:37 GMT -6
One thing left out in the introduction:
TRUTHFUL.
One thing left out in the body of the article:
Getting on with our lives? Yes, but preparing for you to come home. Always having you, on our minds. Not everybody at once, but you need to know that you have a good place to come home to, a place you look forward to some "R and R".
A place that makes you feel it is worth doing what you are doing.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2017 15:13:50 GMT -6
And sad as all get out that we're putting men into such situations..into countries that for the most part don't want us there. Sure they want what we have..what they need..food..water..supplies of medicines..but us? Nah they hate us. And that same young marine could wind up one night with his throat cut..in that lonely cold place. Those people in those countries were born and bred to and live a way of life we can never EVER understand and God spare us from ever having to know that. By our standards..they are brutal and barbarians and we're trying to civilize them? We're not so civilized ourselves at times...we're just more 'entitled' and devious and politically correct in our approach. Well unless we're out on the freeways in the midst of road rage or the object of a drive by shooting or someone beating, killing and raping children..then we don't seem so civilized either and perhaps a bit closer to understanding the 'sand pit' way of thinking. We think we are so much better. We are Christians or at least some other God fearing religious souls..we are also spoiled rotten by the standards of any 3'd world country..we throw away daily the food they could survive on for a week. A minimum wage job would seem like a fortune to a lot of people the world over...but we whine and complain and figure the world should be happy to have us trying to civilize them.
I'm sad for the soldier sitting there..doubting he'll make a difference. He can bash all the heads that come his way and more will come..Helluva way to live a life.
Read an article this morning about a 'tribe' (for lack of a better word..cult maybe) in India. Off the beaten path..boy are they. They eat brains..(don't say who's) and their own feces and they like to make love to the dead. This makes them feel closer to God..brings them closer to God. And you sure don't want to swim in the Ganges River..they dump bodies in there so they can be sanctified because it's a holy thing. People celebrate God in all ways..some we could never ever hope to understand..but we had the good fortune to be born here..in the magical kingdom of the USA. We need to practice not judging others.
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Post by randy on Mar 17, 2017 21:44:23 GMT -6
Cheer up it is coming to you soon so you dont have to leave town to enjoy social change. In spain they just confiscated over 10,000 fire arms including AA guns on the way to the rest of Europe. Also included were grenades and shells for IEDs. Swedem is having daily grenade attacks that are not reported much here Mean while back at the ranch turkey is threatening to release 2,000,000 more invaders into Europe and is predicting jihad there soon. Our law schools are teaching there is no real need for congress as judges can create and enforce laws without regard to the peoples will. Judges are ineffect petty kings to rule the people. hence the current battle with Trump and Judges, It is a bid for real power by the Judge If a petty judge can out rule the President then there has been a coup in effect
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2017 15:12:56 GMT -6
Well..in this case if a judge hadn't over-ruled Trump...American citizens would probably still be trying to get back into the US. We cannot be profiling everyone based on some possibility of them being a terrorist or as I suspect, a Muslim because..when Mohammed Ali's son was detained..(and he was born here) they kept asking him if he was a Muslim. People are going to be screaming civil rights violations all over the place thanks to these lunatic policies...AND probably suing the government over it. Better to sue the Donald..he has more money. Yes..the world is completely full of unrest..it has been building for some time. Little North Korean snot saber rattling..has nothing on what China could do to us or any one of the other unhappy campers out there and again..the Donald wouldn't even shake hands with Germany's chancellor and we NEED Germany in our corner.
With horizons full of unrest we cannot afford for him to be offending all of them (except Russia..Russia likes Donnie)
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Post by randy on Mar 19, 2017 23:51:29 GMT -6
Alis son was probably a black muslim like Ali which is a whole different thing from classical muslem. The American black muslims have odd beliefs that the more white you are the more evil you are and the white race was created a thousand years ago by an evil black wizard. This type of unique view on things is mashed up with classical muslim beliefs. I read the black muslim news paper in college to try to make sense of things regarding them. They are very strong in prison as a religion and I have read top secret police only files on them and other groups. A lot of the data I dont think I should relate here and it probably would not be believed anyway. when I had my own corp I delt with moslem buyers and we talked alot and they had a flip side which some times came out about chopping heads off. That was a little over the top for a business meeting, I view a little off the top as a hair cut not something else. I am interested in what happens in Europe but Germany and other countries are not the great powers they could be France under Napolean was mighty force now it is a shadow of what was. Spain was once mighty as was England. All ghosts of their once mighty empires. its leadership pure and simple Merkel is not a great leader she dances to the tune of others and cares not a wit about the people of Germany their culture, history or religion All expendable to her nothing worth fighting for.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 20, 2017 11:48:09 GMT -6
Mohammed Ali was a good man..his beliefs or those of his son have not a thing to do with the fact that he has been an American citizen since birth. We need to get past the racial BS. A person's religion is their own to embrace according to OUR constitution..as I recall...freedom of worship was one of the main reasons for leaving merry old England in the first place. OR..we need to be fair about it..if we pick on Muslims this week..we pick on Catholics the week after..then the Baptists..Episcopalians..Lutherans..and so forth..we should equal it up. Because...if we start picking on one religion..making it intolerable..it's just a short trip to the next one..and so on. It doesn't stop once it starts. I don't give a fig what color a person is..or what religion they adhere to..I do care about the kind of person they are..how humanitarian..how good a parent..how good to their parents..to me those are the things that matter.
I don't recall saying Merkel is great...but we do need Germany as allies not an enemy and we need the Donald to NOT offend others in the process of turning America into a game show.
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Post by swamprat on Mar 23, 2017 10:21:10 GMT -6
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Post by jcurio on Mar 23, 2017 19:06:14 GMT -6
"In one of the ironies of the incident, a Trump administration ally circulated a claim Thursday by ex-NSA contractor and fugitive Edward Snowden, who said in a tweet from Moscow that Nunes had a point. βRight or wrong, if a spy agency β via any method β intercepts, copies, or otherwise reviews your communications, they have spied on you,β tweeted Snowden, whom Trump has previously called a βterrible traitor.β
(And suddenly I can't find the 'Net article that I posted this from- it was an article about Nunes' apology about .....)
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2017 22:26:52 GMT -6
Oh Swampy...THAT is perfect!!!!!
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Post by swamprat on Jun 17, 2017 9:15:26 GMT -6
Trump's Russian Connections
*Remember when Donald Trump was business partners with the Russian government and his company got 53 million from the Russian government investment fund called Rusnano that was started by Vladimir Putin and is referred to as "Putin's Child"? Oh wait, that wasn't Trump-- it was John Podesta.*
*Remember when Donald Trump received 500 thousand for a speech in Moscow and paid for by Renaissance Capital, a company tied to Russian Intelligence Agencies? Oh wait, that was Bill Clinton.*
*Remember when Donald Trump approved the sale of 20% of US uranium to the Russians while he was Secretary of State which gave control of it to Rosatom the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation? Oh wait, that was Hillary Clinton.*
*Remember when Donald Trump lied about that and said he wasn't a part of approving the deal that gave the Russians 1/5 of our uranium, but then his emails were leaked showing he did lie about it? Oh wait, that was Hillary Clinton and John Podesta.*
*Remember when Donald Trump got 145 million dollars from shareholders of the uranium company sold to the Russians? Oh wait, that was Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation.*
*Remember when Donald Trump accepted millions in donations from Russian Oligarchs like the chairman of a company that's part of the Russian Nuclear Research Cluster, the wife of the mayor of Moscow, and a close pal of Putins? Oh wait, that was the Clinton Foundation.*
*Remember when Donald Trump failed to disclose all those donations before becoming the Secretary of State, and it was only found out when a journalist went through Canadian tax records? Oh wait, that was Hillary Clinton.*
*Remember when Donald Trump told Mitt Romney that the 80's called and it wanted its Russian policy back. The Cold War is over? Oh wait that was President Obama.*
*Man... Trump's ties to Russia are totally disgusting."*
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Post by swamprat on Aug 28, 2017 9:57:57 GMT -6
Page 1 of 2
Bringing the business meme into the White House
Drain the Swamp? You need a hatchet man. Chaos or strategy? by Mack Secord
"Apparently, liberals and never-Trumpers are so isolated in their political circles that they have no concept how things work in the real world of business and corporate America. For example, they completely fail to grasp the concept of the "hatchet man." Allow me to explain:
Say you are a business tycoon. You just successfully completed a large-scale acquisition and merger, bringing together multiple smaller companies into one conglomerate. After the merger, you want to put your own people in charge of everything. However, all those smaller companies had their own executives - and, at least for the short term - you need to keep many of them around the keep things running. So, you keep many of those executives around, and let them retain their own senior staff. You even appoint one of them - the head of the largest of the companies you acquired - to be the CEO of the conglomerate, and he pledges to get all the departments working together harmoniously.
After a transition period, some of them are doing fine in the new conglomerate - but others are clearly causing trouble. In fact, the one you appointed CEO is clearly a disaster. The newly merged departments are working against each other.
Furthermore, you have good suspicion he is dealing in insider trading - nothing you can take to a prosecutor, but there is a lot of circumstantial evidence building up. Worse, he is not only doing his own dirty dealing, but it appears he may even be leaking intellectual property to your competitors, helping them take market share from you.
Clearly, he has to go - and go now.
Problem is, many of the senior employees in your conglomerate are loyal to him. If you just fire him and put in your own chosen CEO, you know you could get a lot of backlash from disgruntled employees. And in your business, there is such a small profit-margin that you really can't afford anything at all that threatens performance. So what do you do?
In comes the hatchet man.
The hatchet man is someone you bring in for sole purpose of slashing the problems and shaking things up over a very short period of time - but doing it in a way that deflects any blame or blowback away from you. As soon as the problems are hacked away, the hatchet man leaves - taking the ire and resentment with him, and leaving you free to bring in your new team for a fresh start.
This happens in the business world all the time. And Donald Trump is a businessman. He knows this. He has lived this. We've seen him do it on "The Apprentice." We've read about it in his books. This is not a surprise to anyone. Except for liberals and never-Trumpers.
Enter Scaramucci.
Liberals and never-Trumpers see the past two weeks as proof of a Hitler-clown-circus spectacle, as evidence that Trump is unhinged and our government is in the hands of madmen. Anyone who understands the business world and Donald Trump fully understands that what we just witnessed was a perfectly executed hatchet man maneuver.
When Trump won the election, he essentially performed the political equivalent of an acquisition and merger. He brought together different political factions - establishment Republicans, conservatives, tea party, religious right, moderates, independents, cross-overs - into one winning political coup. For some, it was a hostile takeover - and if they were going to be dragged in against their will, they would sure as hell resist.
This is where Reince Priebus came in.
Priebus, as the then-chairman of the Republican National Committee, was hired as White House Chief of Staff to be a sort of post-merger CEO. It was his job to bring all these political factions together and get them to work harmoniously. But he failed. Worse, there is ample evidence to suggest he not only failed, but worked against Trump and the Trump agenda Look at the leaks. Look at all the chaos. Look at all the bureaucracy continuing to work at odds with the president. Priebus - and a number of other people around him - had to go.
Back to Scaramucci.
Donald Trump has known for some time that Priebus was a disaster. He was going to give him his six-month trial period - that's a fairly common thing in the private sector. After that, heads were going to roll. But Trump himself doesn't want to be the hatchet man. He needs to be able to lead after the bloodbath. So what does he do? He turns to an old friend he has known for many years - someone with nothing to lose, someone who can step in with a hatchet and hack away, someone who can then just walk away from it all and leave the slate clean He turned to Scaramucci.
So what does Scaramucci do? He comes in swinging. He fires a few people to make a quick example. He tells others they can "resign" right now if they want to - but if not, they will be fired. Others see what is going on and just up and quit of their own accord.
That problem CEO, Priebus? Oh, the new "structure" of the organization puts Scaramucci in direct competition with Priebus - and Priebus throws up his hands and says "fine, I'm out of here." And Scaramucci does it all in a way that is spectacularly visible to draw all the fire from Trump critics.
So how does it all end? It ends with Trump putting in his new CEO - the one he probably wanted from day one, but held back - and the new CEO says "OK, Scaramucci - you are no longer needed here."
See Next Post for Page 2
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Post by swamprat on Aug 28, 2017 9:59:50 GMT -6
Page 2
Gen. Kelly now has a clean slate to start fresh - and Scaramucci takes all the heat. Where the left and never-Trumpers see a circus freak-show, realists from the business world see a perfectly executed post-merger hatchet-man job.
The political wonks see Kelly taking command as the first sane thing to happen in this administration. They don't realize they've been played, and played perfectly. And soon we will likely see some other changes that move the Executive Branch further towards what Trump has wanted from day one. And then watch the real swamp-drainer get to work. It sucks to be Hillary Clinton right now...
Oh, and Scaramucci? He gets a sweet deal out of all this - no doubt, he and his friend Donald Trump talked it all out first.
Scaramucci was already facing a nasty divorce that would result in the liquidation of his business to divide assets. A little-known law allows people who are legally required to sell a business as a condition of employment in the Executive Branch (to prevent conflicts of interest) to defer the taxes on their profits from the sale.
Scaramucci was going to have to sell his company anyway due to his pending divorce. Now he and his soon-to-be ex-wife just saved $80 million in taxes. So don't think for a moment all this was an unplanned mess that went awry. Scaramucci and Trump knew exactly what they were doing.
All of this was planned - and foreseen. Scott Adams wrote before Trump was inaugurated that, to his critics, the first year of Trump would be a play in three acts:
Act One - Trump is literally Hitler.
Act Two - Trump is not literally Hitler, but Trump is incompetent.
Act Three - Trump is not incompetent, but we don't like his policies.
We've seen this play out. From election night up through the first 100 days, the left was out rioting and acting as though Trump taking office was literally the end of Western Civilization.
But after 100 days, when Trump had failed to do evil-dictator things like round up all the brown people and put the gays into camps and force women to stay home and have babies, it became farcical to continue the "Trump is Hitler" narrative.
And so from that 100 day point up until now, it has been the "Trump is incompetent" game. Look at all the chaos. Look at all the leaking. Look at all the tweets. Now, we begin Act Three. With Priebus out and Kelly in, things will settle down. Pretty soon, all the left will have to say is "we just don't like Trump's policies."...Act Three.
And once that happens, the left is dead. Because, Trump's policies are policies that most Americans actually agree with. We should put America first. Build back our economy. Create jobs. Strengthen the military. Protect the border. Outside a few densely-populated liberal strongholds like New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and - of course - Washington, D.C., Americans in general agree with all of this. So when all the left has to say is "Trump's policies are wrong," the left will literally be telling most of America, "you people are stupid."
Trump should win 47 states in 2020. The left will be scratching their heads and wondering what the h*** happened. And you'll be able to look back and say, "hey, some of us told you all this back in 2017."
-Mack
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Post by auntym on Sept 23, 2017 13:49:32 GMT -6
www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/russiagate-dominoes-are-starting-to-fall-w504200 Russiagate Dominoes Are Starting to FallFormer Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is facing indictment, according to a new reportBy Bob Dreyfuss / www.rollingstone.com/contributor/bob-dreyfuss9-20-2017 Paul Manafort / Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg/Getty Images The first big, fat domino in Donald Trump's Russiagate scandal is about to topple over: Robert Mueller, the special counsel appointed to investigate whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia's hack-and-leak attack during the 2016 election, has told Trump's 2016 campaign manager that he's going to be indicted, according to The New York Times, in a blockbuster front-page story. "Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it," a Trump associate wrote last year And not only that: CNN, with a blockbuster of its own, reports that the campaign manager, Paul Manafort, has for years been subject to a court-ordered wiretap, allowing federal agents to listen to his conversations, both before and β shockingly β after the 2016 election. It's even possible that the agents recorded conversations this year between Manafort and Donald Trump after he took office, says CNN. What's more: "Some of the intelligence collected includes communications that sparked concerns among investigators that Manafort had encouraged the Russians to help with [Trump's] campaign," reported the outlet. Since the start of the Russia investigations β which now include not only Mueller's high-powered team of prosecutors and criminal justice officials, but an FBI investigation and inquiries by the House and Senate intelligence committees and the Senate Judiciary Committee β Manafort has been the weakest, most vulnerable part of Team Trump. In late July, a team of FBI agents conducted a stunning pre-dawn raid into Manafort's home in Alexandria, Virginia, scooping up documents, electronic records and other evidence. Now we know, thanks to the reporting by The Times, that the agents who raided Manafort's home were so concerned that Manafort might try to destroy evidence that they were armed with an unusual no-knock search warrant that allowed them to stealthily enter his home by picking the lock, surprising Manafort while he was in his bedroom, presumably sleeping. The FBI also conducted a secondary raid, breaking into a storage facility that belonged to Manafort, according to CNN. Let's be clear about what all this means: First, it means Mueller and the FBI convinced a federal judge sufficient evidence existed that Manafort was guilty of a crime, or that he was an agent of a foreign power, or both. Second, it raises the possibility that the feds have tapes that could contain direct evidence of Manafort, and possibly President Trump, talking about collusion with Russia. And third, it means Manafort now has every incentive to cooperate with Mueller rather than face criminal charges. Manafort, of course, was already a leading subject of the Mueller investigation because, along with Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, Manafort famously took part in the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with a group of Russians who'd promised to deliver dirt on Hillary Clinton to the Trump campaign. That meeting is at the very heart of both Mueller's inquiry and the investigations by Congress into whether the campaign colluded or coordinated with Moscow last year. So who, exactly, is Paul Manafort, and why is he so important? A longtime aide and adviser to Trump, Manafort in enmeshed in a tangle of connections to Russia, various Russian oligarchs, pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians and businessmen, and a host of financial and real-estate deals involving Russian and Ukrainian billionaires, going back more than a dozen years. Manafort is a veteran of more than four decades' worth of political chicanery, and he founded one of Washington's most notorious influence-peddling firms, Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly β in which one of the named partners was Roger Stone, the giddily pro-Trump political bomb-thrower. Back then, Manafort and his partners lobbied for some of the world's worst dictators, including Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines. In the 2000s, through a successor firm, Davis Manafort Partners, Manafort built close ties to Russians and pro-Russian Ukrainians. An exposΓ© in The Wall Street Journal last month reported that Manafort's ties to this Russian-Ukrainian network centered on Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch worth more than $5 billion who is intimately tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin. From 2004 until 2015, Manafort did political work for Deripaska and other pro-Russian interests in Ukraine, Georgia and other countries in the Russian orbit. In looking at Manafort, Mueller can also profit by examining a series of payments allegedly made to Manafort by pro-Russian pols in Ukraine. Last year, The New York Times broke the story that Manafort allegedly received millions of dollars in under-the-table and unreported payments from the Russian-allied Party of Regions led by Viktor Yanukovych between 2007 and 2012, a revelation that led Manafort to resign as chairman of Trump's campaign. (He was replaced by Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway.) This year, in the midst of Russiagate, Manafort belatedly amended his disclosure filings, admitting that his firm, Davis Manafort, had pocketed $17 million from Yanukovych and Co. It isn't known whether or to what extent Manafort's work drew the attention of U.S. intelligence agencies, which were undoubtedly keeping track of the activities of many of Manafort's clients after 2004. What is known, however, is that in 2014 Manafort fell under the FBI's scrutiny, and the bureau started following Manafort. According to CNN's new report, that investigation was launched by an order from a secretive court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 2014, suspended in 2016, and then restarted again that same year, continuing into 2017. In case anyone might miss the point, CNN added: "Sources say the second warrant was part of the FBI's efforts to investigate ties between Trump campaign associates and suspected Russian operatives." (And: "It's unclear whether Trump himself was picked up on the surveillance," the outlet noted.) By executing the search warrant, by issuing subpoenas for several of Manafort's aides and attorneys, and by warning Manafort that he's a target of the special counsel's investigation and likely to be indicted, it's possible Mueller isn't really interested in Manafort at all. Instead, he could be trying to get Manafort to "flip" β that is, to cooperate with investigators, telling them everything he knows in order to avoid a prison sentence. As the always reliable Lawfare Blog reports, if Manafort does flip, it'll open doors for Mueller into other parts of Russiagate β but if he doesn't, Mueller can lower the boom. "Note that if Manafort cooperates, we may not see anything public for a long time to come. Delay, that is, may be a sign of success," according to Lawfare. "But in the absence of cooperation, the fireworks may be about to begin." One thing is certain: namely, that Mueller is playing hardball. Jimmy Gurgle, a professor of law at Notre Dame and himself a former federal prosecutor, marveled to The Times about Mueller's tactics. "This is more consistent with how you'd go after an organized crime syndicate," he said. And Simon L. Weisenberg, a prosecutor involved in the Ken Starr investigation that led to Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, added, "They are setting a tone. It's important early on to strike terror in the hearts of people in Washington, or else you will be rolled. You want people saying to themselves, 'Man, I had better tell these guys the truth.'" www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/russiagate-dominoes-are-starting-to-fall-w504200
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Post by jcurio on Sept 23, 2017 21:35:22 GMT -6
campaign manager, Paul Manafort, has for years been subject to a court-ordered wiretap, allowing federal agents to listen to his conversations, both before and β shockingly β after the 2016 election. It's even possible that the agents recorded conversations this year between Manafort and Donald Read more: theedgeofreality.proboards.com/thread/6102/running-office?page=15#ixzz4tZ0V7Mvh******** Has.... for years? Then WHY is he allowed in the circus? Wait! I know! He's a trap-ease artist!
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Post by auntym on Sept 24, 2017 18:12:17 GMT -6
www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-madness-of-donald-trump-removal-25th-amendment-w504149 The Madness of Donald Trump The pressures of the presidency have pushed Trump to the edge, but is he crazy enough to be removed from office?By Matt Taibbi / www.rollingstone.com/contributor/matt-taibbi9-20-2017 Illustration by Victor Juhasz for Rolling StoneEvening, August 22nd, 2017, a convention center in Phoenix. It's Donald Trump's true coming-out party as an insane person. It looks like the same old Trump up there on the stage: same boxy blue suit, same obligatory flag pin and tangerine combover, same too-long reddish power tie swinging below his belt line like a locker-room abomination. Earlier this year there were efforts to make Trump stop wearing his suit jackets open β designer Joseph Abboud said buttoning up was a "very visible way of showing he knows how serious the job is" β but Donald Trump doesn't take advice, not even the gently benign kind. That makeover was undone just as quickly as it was done, leaving the Donald with the same old tie-on-bulging-duodenum look from the campaign. He even sounds the same now, kicking off the event with a go-to favorite: "What a crowd!" he shouts. (A week from now, he will shout, "What a crowd, what a turnout!" from atop a truck in Corpus Christi, Texas, on the occasion of a deadly hurricane.) But the embattled president who takes the stage tonight is a different man from the barnstorming revolutionary who ripped through the American political process a year ago. That Donald Trump enjoyed himself, to an obscene degree. Watching Trump lean over a podium on the road to the presidency was like watching a stud boar hump a hole in the wall. Illustration by Victor Juhasz for Rolling StoneHe said monstrous things and lied with stunning disinhibition, and when the civilized world recoiled in horror, he seemed to take sadistic pleasure in every minute β win or lose, the run was pure glory for him, a Sherman's March of taboo politics and testosterone fury that would leave a mark on America forever. There was one more thing. Candidate Trump may have been crazy, but it was craziness that on some level was working. Even at his lowest and most irrational moments β like his lunatic assault on the family of fallen soldier Humayun Khan, in which he raved to the grieving Gold Star parents about how it was he, Trump, who had "made a lot of sacrifices" β you could argue, if you squinted really hard, that it was strategy, a kick to the base. Or even if he wasn't doing these things on purpose, he must have been able to feel their impact, as the revolutionary force of his campaign demolished the 160-year-old Republican Party and barreled toward the gates of Barack Obama's White House. Now, it's different. Now, he just seems crazy. And it's his own administration that is crumbling, not any system. After a disastrous and terrifying August, which among other things saw him defend the "very fine people" among neo-Nazi protesters in a Charlottesville, Virginia, march, it's Trump's mental state β not his alleged Russia ties, nor his failure to staff the government or pass any major legislation β that has become the central problem of his presidency. Is this man losing his mind? And if so, what can be done about it? We've had some real zeros in the White House before, but we've never had a chief executive who barked at the moon or saw ghosts β at least, not one who was so public about it. In Phoenix, which is technically a campaign event, the idea seems to be to surround the chief with an enthusiastic audience to boost his spirits after the fiasco of Charlottesville. Put him on the stump in the heart of MAGA country, let him feel that boar-with-a-boner high again. It doesn't work. The crowd is big and boisterous enough, maybe 10,000 Sheriff Joe-lovin', Mexico-hatin' 'Muricans, but Trump looks miserable. He's not the insurgent rebel anymore but a Caesar surrounded by knives. He's got a special prosecutor crawling up his backside, and there are numerous prominent politicians, including at least two in his own party, who are questioning his sanity in public amid growing whispers of constitutional mutiny. Moreover, after shrugging off a thousand other scandals, Trump seems paralyzed by the Nazi thing. He can't let it go. Say one nice thing about Nazis, and it's like people can't get over it. Unfair! He plunges into a 77-minute rant on this subject, listing each offending news outlet by name. In a nicely Freudian twist, he starts with The New York Times, which incidentally is the same paper that nearly a century ago identified "Fred Trump of 175-24 Devonshire Road" β the president's late father β as a detainee from a 1927 Ku Klux Klan rally in Queens. Back then, "native-born American Protestants" were railing against "Roman Catholic police" β essentially the dirty-immigrant Irish, last century's Mexicans. Not much changes in this country. Maybe the father of the 2072 Republican nominee is here tonight in a MAGA hat. That old family shame might be why the president, who's always denied Fred Trump was a Klansman ("Never happened"), is having such a hard time with Charlottesville and race. He rails against the "Times, which is, like, so bad," moves on to the "Washington Post, which I call a lobbying tool for Amazon" and winds up with "CNN, which is so bad and pathetic, and their ratings are going down." CNN's ratings aren't down. The network's second-quarter prime-time viewers just cracked a 1 million average, its most-watched second quarter ever, largely due to the blimp wreck of the Trump presidency. It's the one incontrovertible achievement of this administration. The network tweets as much shortly after Trump says the line. The Phoenix audience doesn't care. "CNN sucks!" they chant. "CNN sucks!" I was late to the event and actually standing outside the press pen, so when the crowd turns to scream and hiss at the media, I'm on the angry-zombie side of the line. A man taps my shoulder. "*bleep* those people!" he shouts. I smile, zip up my jacket to hide my lanyard, then turn around to give him a thumbs up. The crowd escalates: "Tell the truth! Tell the truth!" Trump goes on, raging against "very dishonest media" and trying to rekindle the spirit of the campaign. He self-plagiarizes a little, reviving the "little Marco" dig for "little George" Stephanopoulos. The audience seems into it for a while. But it goes on too long. During the campaign, Trump was expert at keeping a hall buzzed with resentment for an hour or so. But he hits weird notes now. He goes off on a tangent about his enemies, it's not clear which ones. "They're elite?" he says. "I went to better schools than they did. I was a better student than they were. I live in a bigger, more beautiful apartment, and I live in the White House, too, which is really great." Polite applause. "You know what?" he goes on. "I think we're the elites. They're not the elites." No one is counting fingers, but you can tell people are having trouble making the math work. We're elite because you have a nice apartment? Campaign Trump bragged endlessly about his wealth β "I have a Gucci store that's worth more than Romney" was a classic line β but back then he was selling a vicarious fantasy. Trump's Ferrari-underpants lifestyle was the silent-majority vision of how they would all live once the winning started. But candidate Trump was never dumb enough to try to tell debt-ridden, angry crowds they were already living the dream. At one point, Trump ends up standing with a piece of paper in hand, haranguing all with transcripts of his own remarks on Charlottesville. To prove that he's been misquoted or misunderstood, he goes through the whole story, from the beginning. It gets quiet in the hall. It's an agonizing parody of late-stage Lenny Bruce. The great Sixties comedian's act degenerated into tendentious soliloquies about his legal situation (he had been charged with obscenity). Bruce too stood onstage in his last years for interminable periods, court papers in hand, quoting himself to audiences bored to insanity by the spectacle. This is exactly Trump. Even his followers are starting to look sideways at one another. In a sight rarely seen last year, a trickle of supporters heads for the exits. Then Trump cracks. "The only people giving a platform to these hate groups is the media itself, and the fake news," he says, to tepid applause. He stops and points in accusing fashion at the press riser. "Oh, that's so funny," he says. "Look back there, the live red lights. They're turning those suckers off fast out there. They're turning those lights off fast." We reporters had seen this act before. On October 10th of last year, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, at one of the most massive rallies of the campaign, Trump accused CNN of shutting down the feed because he was criticizing their debate coverage. In that case, a camera light really did flicker, but CNN was actually turning the live feed on, not off. That was possibly an honest mistake. Possibly also it was Trump just pulling the media's tail, tweaking us with a line of bull, as he had with countless other provocations. The general consensus of attendant journalists that night was that Trump was messing with us. Phoenix is different. Trump seems to believe what he's saying. He really thinks that not just CNN, but all of the networks are shutting down their feeds, overwhelmed by the power of his words. "Boy, those cameras are going off," he says, coming back to the subject. "Oh, wow. Why don't you just fold them up and take them home? Oh, those cameras are going off. Wow. That's the one thing, they're very nervous to have me on live television..." The president of the United States is seeing things. He might as well be shooing imaginary ants off his suit. His followers still love him, but even they're starting to notice. They come for the old standards, but this new Trump material gets mixed reviews. Outside, a fan gives the speech a half-hearted thumbs up. "I liked 'Lock her up,'" the man says with a shrug. "They did that for a little while." "[He's saying] 'I don'tβ¨ promote racism, that'sβ¨ just the media trying toβ¨ *bleep* with me,'" says Richβ¨ Yukon, a biker from a Tempe-based club called the Metalheads. "But he gets a little out of hand here and there, he says some *bleep*." After the event, Trump tweets, "Beautiful turnout of 15,000 in Phoenix tonight!" Later, he reportedly fires the organizer of that same "beautiful" event, longtime aide and RNC contractor George Gigicos, apparently for not delivering a terrifyingly massive enough crowd. Sources told Bloomberg that Trump saw open floor space in TV shots before he took the stage, and this put him in a "foul mood" from which he never recovered. Trump has never had much use for facts, or decorum, or empathy, or sexual discretion, or any of the hundred other markers we normally look at to gauge mental wellness. But he's never been like this. This guy is lost, and as he flails for a clue, he keeps struggling violently against the conventions of his own office. The presidency has become a straitjacket. CONTINUE READING: www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-madness-of-donald-trump-removal-25th-amendment-w504149
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