BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

Bombs are dangerous, but no one blames the victims for being so blow-uppable. But women are only dangerous because men are stupid and let themselves be manipulated.

It might even be the case that women can also be seduced like this. But there haven't been that many women in positions where such influence would be useful.

On the other hand, there have been some, yet I can't think of any stories of them being taken advantage of sexually. I'm pretty sure we're the "weaker sex" in this equation.

Bombs are dangerous, but no one blames the victims for being so blow-uppable. But women are only dangerous because men are stupid and let themselves be manipulated.

It might even be the case that women can also be seduced like this. But there haven't been that many women in positions where such influence would be useful.

On the other hand, there have been some, yet I can't think of any stories of them being taken advantage of sexually. I'm pretty sure we're the "weaker sex" in this equation.

The weird thing (well one of the weird things) about this is that if DT had said "If Ms Danieals wants to discuss what she did in bed ten years ago that's up to her. Now I want to discuss the economy." I think many people would see the sense in that.

After Kennedy was shot is seemed that half the women in the country in the age range of 20 to 45 were claiming that they once slept with him.

Hmm, sort of an interesting revelation that the Podesta emails were published by wikileaks an hour after the pussy-grabbing access hollywood story came out. If this raid on Cohen has that as a potential target of the investigation, it is not unreasonable to wonder if the Trump camp reached out to their Russia/wikileaks contact and coordinated the timing of that.

Much of my speculation recently has been sort of more conspiracy-oriented than I'd generally like. But again, if the pieces seem to fit together, the possibilities are worth being aware of. To further reinforce the tinfoil hats, I'm curious if our intelligence is surveilling Assange or someone close to him and are using that as the basis for an otherwise uncommon raid. Perhaps Roger Stone. But regardless I suspect the evidence surrounding this must be substantial and significant.

I am fully aware that, more than any other occupant of that office, this president* is capable of creating a sturdy bubble in which he is the indomitable and wise master of the universe, all objective evidence to the contrary. But, ever since the FBI dropped by Michael Cohen’s office, it seems that this might be the event that shatters the bubble for good.

I understand the reluctance to give conspiracy-theory ideas credence. I simply think about these guys as James Comey is said to have described Trump in his upcoming ABC interview: as a mobster. Once you think of this as a crime family, conspiracy is pretty tame.

The weird thing (well one of the weird things) about this is that if DT had said "If Ms Danieals wants to discuss what she did in bed ten years ago that's up to her. Now I want to discuss the economy." I think many people would see the sense in that.

After Kennedy was shot is seemed that half the women in the country in the age range of 20 to 45 were claiming that they once slept with him.

A decade ago, Paul Ryan, who was then a member of the House Budget Committee, introduced a tax-and-spending bill called the Roadmap for America’s Future Act of 2008. With the Democrats in control of the Senate, there was no immediate prospect of the bill being put into law. Rather, it was a political manifesto, which Ryan updated in 2010. The original version contained all the essentials of Ryan’s brand of fiscal conservatism. It began in this way:

Quote

The bill went on to outline a series of proposals to reduce entitlement spending by cutting future increases in Social Security payments and introducing personal investment accounts into the public retirement system, converting Medicare to a competitive “premium subsidy” model, and transforming Medicaid into a state-level program supported by federal block grants. On the revenue side, the bill proposed a personal flat tax and the replacement of the corporate income tax with a value-added tax on consumer spending. While these measures alone wouldn’t balance the budget in the short term, Ryan claimed that, over time, they would lead to a substantial decline in the national debt as a percentage of G.D.P.
In the wake of Ryan’s announcement on Wednesday that he intends to retire from the House of Representatives at the end of this year, a number of economic commentators pointed out that his grand plans came to naught. At Bloomberg View, Justin Fox noted that the nation’s debt-to-G.D.P. ratio has risen sharply over the past twenty years, and the budget deficit is now close to five per cent of G.D.P. even though the unemployment rate is just 4.1 per cent. At Politico, Michael Grunwald pointed out that Ryan, despite his talk about reducing the debt, consistently supported tax cuts and spending bills that raised the deficit. (In 2020, the excess of spending over revenue is projected to top a trillion dollars and stay there for the indefinite future, according to a new Congressional Budget Office report.) These huge deficits will be Ryan’s “greatest legacy,” Grunwald argued.
That is true. As Paul Krugman pointed out back in 2010, Ryan is a flimflam man: his arithmetic has never added up. But what hasn’t been emphasized enough is that Ryan wasn’t merely a purveyor of snake oil and a front man for the conservative billionaires and other wealthy interests whose money has flooded the Republican Party in recent years. He was also a failure on his own terms.

To all appearances, at least, Ryan genuinely believes that the growth of spending on the social safety net presents an existential threat to the United States. In his press conference on Wednesday, he again singled out entitlement reform as the area where “more work needs to be done.” He also praised himself for “normalizing” the idea of entitlement reform.
But this patting of his own back was unjustified. Far from making entitlement reform more likely, Ryan’s actions, particularly his championing of the recent Republican tax bill, have rendered the entire subject utterly toxic for the foreseeable future. With Congress and the Trump Administration having just handed out huge tax cuts to wealthy people and major corporations, there is now no prospect whatsoever of the general public or the Democratic Party acceding to benefit cuts for middle- and low-income retirees. (Even Donald Trump might well balk at the idea.)

To be sure, some Republicans like Ryan, with the support of some conservative economists, are still calling for big entitlement cuts, citing the rising national debt as their justification. But even they surely know that this abominable argument won’t work politically. According to the new C.B.O. report, the G.O.P. tax bill will add $1.9 trillion to the debt over the next ten years. Every time a Republican tries to bring up the debt or reforming Social Security and Medicare, this figure will be thrown in their faces, and rightly so.
Ryan’s failure on his own terms doesn’t end there. In the U.S. system of government, the only realistic way to reform programs on the scale of Social Security or Medicare is by doing so on a bipartisan basis. That’s what happened in 1982 and 1983, when Ronald Reagan appointed a bipartisan commission, led by Alan Greenspan, to tackle the looming insolvency of the Social Security system, and Congress enacted a series of unpopular measures, including raising the retirement age and payroll taxes.

In 2010, President Barack Obama created another bipartisan body and tasked it with identifying policies that would shore up the nation’s finances over the long run: the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which was led by Alan Simpson, a Republican, and Erskine Bowles, a Democrat. It is sometimes forgotten now, but Ryan was a member of this commission. In its final report, which came out in December, 2010, it recommended cutting federal spending by about two trillion dollars over ten years; raising about a trillion dollars in new tax revenues; and making further reforms to Social Security, including raising the retirement age again and cutting back future benefit increases for medium- and high-income workers.

Although it didn’t go as far as Ryan’s “Roadmap,” it reflected the view that rising debt levels were a critical threat, that entitlements were at the root of the matter, and that corporate tax rates were too high. For years, Ryan had been making these very arguments. But, instead of supporting the Simpson-Bowles plan, he distanced himself from it. In March, 2012, he voted against a bipartisan bill in the House that incorporated many of its recommendations.

The bipartisan effort to reform entitlements petered out, and today it is hard to see how it could ever be resurrected. Indeed, the next move on entitlements may well be a big expansion. If the Democrats take control of Congress this fall, calls within the Party for some form of Medicare-for-all policy will increase, and whoever becomes the Democratic candidate for President in 2020 will likely also be pressured to endorse such a proposal.

By then, Ryan will be long gone from Congress. In promoting highly dubious fiscal plans, turning his back on bipartisan initiatives, enabling Trump, and championing a costly and inequitable tax-reform bill, he let down the country. But he failed by his own lights, too.

From John Cassidy's take on the failed career of Paul Ryan:

So the best and brightest guy in the Republican Party turns out to be a con man too. Now what?

WASHINGTON
The Justice Department special counsel has evidence that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a retired British spy’s report that Cohen strategized there with a powerful Kremlin figure about Russian meddling in the U.S. election.

Syrian Oil And Gas: Little-Known Facts on Syria’s Energy Resources And Russia's Help
By David Kashi @David_Kashi
09/04/13 AT 6:00 AM

As the situation in Syria deteriorates with a threatened U.S. airstrike over President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons, the Damascus regime still controls one of the largest conventional hydrocarbon resources in the eastern Mediterranean.

Syria possessed 2.5 billion barrels of crude oil as of January 2013, which makes it the largest proved reserve of crude oil in the eastern Mediterranean according to the Oil & Gas Journal estimate.

But after two and a half years of war, exploration is at a standstill since international oil companies once operating in Syria have abandoned their operations as the violence escalates and sanctions target Syria’s energy sector.

Russia, the chief backer of the Assad regime, is the only remaining international partner still helping develop Syria’s oil and gas resources in the past year.

A Congressional Research Service report found that Syria was still in discussion with Russia and China over offshore exploration in April, but few details are known.

Syria also has oil shale resources with estimated reserves that range as high as 50 billion tons, according to a Syrian government source in 2010.

This may explain one of the reason’s Russia has a huge stake in Damascus as its state-owned energy companies have been profiting off the despotic Assad regime.

In a recent interview, Assad said, “From a purely economic perspective, there are several agreements between Syria and Russia for various goods and materials. As for a loan from Russia, this should be viewed as beneficial to both parties; for Russia it is an opportunity for its national industries and companies to expand into new markets.”

U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, in a testimony to Congress in March, said Russia's support for Assad includes selling Syrian oil on world markets.

Any friend of Russia is an enemy to the United States especially when that sovereign interferes with our petrodollar hegemony.

Always follow the oil & gas reserves and areas of commodity competition.
Syria is no different!

http://www.ibtimes.c...as-help-1402405

I understand the reluctance to give conspiracy-theory ideas credence. I simply think about these guys as James Comey is said to have described Trump in his upcoming ABC interview: as a mobster. Once you think of this as a crime family, conspiracy is pretty tame.

April 16, 2018 MOSCOW — Last month, Vladimir V. Putin was re-elected as Russia’s president in a plebiscite-like ceremony with all other candidates essentially decorating the ballot’s margins. Years of aggressive campaigning, tinkering with electoral rules and eliminating competition had long prepared the field for an easy win.

The tough part now, for Mr. Putin, is to deal with the consequences of 18 years of being able to do whatever he pleases. His fourth term (fifth if we count the eight years of Dmitri Medvedev’s presidency as what they were, a Putin regency) is off to a tumultuous start.

Russia is facing a coordinated, if symbolic, retaliation by the West against Moscow’s alleged chemical attack in Britain. American sanctions against Russian oligarchs have wiped out billions of dollars of their wealth and weakened the ruble. Russia’s economy is stagnant. And Russians are recovering from the shock of 64 people, including 41 children, dying in a fire at a shopping mall in the year 2018. The shock has deepened as the realization sets in that Russia is one of a few countries in the world in which these horrific, preventable tragedies are still common. Russia’s rate of deaths by fire is 7 per 100,000 residents a year. Brazil’s is 0.56 and China’s is 0.6.

Yet there is a sphere where progress has been steady throughout the Putin years — in spreading acceptance of the principles that underlie his rule. For years, Russia watchers, and Russians themselves, have asked to what extent the Kremlin is driven by an ideology, or at least by a consistent value system. Is it nationalism, isolationism, irredentism, judo?

Far from any belief or ideology, the principles form an ethos, something you must “get” to make progress in the society. Russia’s rulers no longer bow to any ideology. But they do follow some basic working rules.

First: A disaster, natural or man-made, makes the state vulnerable. After an explosion, flood or fire, enemies of the state can try to hold the authorities accountable. How an emergency is covered in the news is as important as how it is resolved. This is why the Kremlin rushed to place all federal television channels under control immediately after the early disasters of the Putin era (the submarine Kursk sinking in 2000 and the 2002 terrorist siege at a Moscow theater). One consequence of this view is a conviction that all information disseminated through channels outside state control, including social media, is damaging and foreign-funded. A few days ago, the Russian government moved to block the popular messenger and social network Telegram after its owner refused to give the secret police access to the network’s user data.

Second: A threat originates only from an external or foreign source. That is why laws and rules regulating foreign companies, foreign-funded nongovernmental organizations and religions and ideologies considered “fringe” have proliferated. Wild hints that big foreign interests are behind a given problem is the first trope on state-run media after any disaster or potentially damaging episode. It follows that all grass-roots activism not authorized by the state has a foreign origin and is foreign-funded.

Third: A civil servant is accountable only to his or her superior, not to the public. It follows that a subordinate can be held accountable but the superior standing at the very top can be seen only as a savior, not responsible for any wrong. You do not blame President Putin for anything; you only appeal to him for justice. From this, it also follows that, in Mr. Putin’s view, there is no right to resist or to overthrow a government, no matter how terrible or murderous it is. That is why Bashar al-Assad of Syria stays in place.

Those are the laws Mr. Putin has followed domestically and internationally during most of his rule.

The destruction of real accountability, the never-say-sorry attitude and the rejection of grass-roots activism are widely accepted as realities in Russia, if not as universal truths.

Whenever President Putin is touted as the world’s most powerful or influential politician, I feel puzzled. The rules that Mr. Putin follows are technical. He is no philosopher of government; he is a skilled practitioner. These rules are simply ad hoc mechanisms for holding onto power in a dangerous environment. And the Kremlin political managers are skillful plumbers who deal with old leaky piping and loathe the idea of replacing it.

Do other nations really have anything to learn from them?

I would argue that perceived similarities between President Trump’s thinking and Mr. Putin’s do not necessarily mean that Mr. Trump has been learning from Russia’s president. When your objective, like Mr. Trump’s, is surviving in power, you arrive, on your own, at pragmatic rules that work for you. The extent to which President Trump values survival is unique among Western leaders. Mr. Putin has been fighting for survival for years, and he has become a grandmaster of that dark art.

But playing this game has consequences. Just as the Kremlin has ad hoc rules, most Russians have some, too. They “get” what it takes to prosper in their system: Pretend you are loyal, tell the interviewer you approve of the president, mark the right box and there you go. Freedom!

This doesn’t sound heroic, but heroes are a rare breed. The Russian people and the Russian state cohabitate, each minding its own business.

Disasters and tragedies are occasions when state and people meet. Sparks of conflict start to fly because both sides realize they’ve been fooling each other. The Kremlin and its viceroys have pretended to manage, and the people on the ground have pretended to be loyal. There’s a crisis of loyalty, if you will. It’s not that loyalty is lacking; it’s that there’s too much loyalty, and it’s all fake. And that brings a moment of truth, when everyone realizes that Russians would jump at any opportunity to turn their relationship with the state back on its feet.

But all of that goes away quickly because it bumps up against precisely what the Kremlin is there for: to close down the pockets of normalcy. Any attempt at holding the president accountable is made so costly for the people, and the propaganda of the opposite view is so relentless, that Russians put up with all of this just to stay out of trouble and have a normal life.

The principles recounted above are not the sort in which you choose to believe; they must be imposed. And by the time you recognize that a system like this is around you, it is probably too late to resist. You will have to learn the Putin creed or something similar.

So, really, there is no rush to learn from him.

Macron Says He Changed Trump’s Mind on Syria
French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday he “convinced” President Trump to stay in Syria before the United States, United Kingdom and France launched strikes against targets at three sites Friday night, CNN reports.

Said Macron: “Ten days ago, President Trump said the USA’s will is to disengage from Syria. We convinced him that it was necessary to stay.”

Declassified French government report presents evidence of Syrian chemical attacks
A declassified report by the French government presents evidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical attack against civilians last week, The Hill reported.

According to the report, the government of President Bashar al-Assad carried out several chemical strikes in the Damascus suburb of Douma on April 7.

What is the evidence?
The report stated it is based on “multiple media sources, the reported symptoms experienced by victims, videos and images showing two assessed barrel bombs from the attack, and reliable information indicating coordination between Syrian military officials before the attack.”

At least 42 men, women and children died in the attacks and dozens of others were injured, according to published reports. Medical crews reported that victims experienced skin burns, suffocation, breathing problems and other symptoms related to exposure to chlorine gas. Symptoms were also consistent with exposure to Sarin, a deadly nerve agent.

“Reliable intelligence indicates that Syrian military officials have coordinated what appears to be the use of chemical weapons containing chlorine on Douma, on April 7,” the report released by the French Foreign Ministry said.

According to the report: “Syrian government has carried out a number of chemical weapons strikes since April 4, 2017 — the same day a chemical attack in Syria’s northern Idlib province left more than 80 civilians dead.”

The U.S. government has also pointed to the Syrian government’s role in alleged attacks in Douma.

Russia has criticized the U.S. and its allies by saying they have produced adequate proof that Syria carried out the chemical attack.

France and the U.S. made their assessments hours after leaders from Washington, Paris and London authorized “precision strikes” on targets in Syria that are believed to be “associated with the country’s chemical weapons arsenal,” The Hill reported.

Russia has accused the U.S. and its allies of failing to produce adequate evidence of the Syrian government’s role in the chemical attack.

What have Syria, Russia and Iran said?
Syria, Russia and Iran have all denied that Assad’s government used chemical weapons. They blame militant groups and “foreign actors” for staging the alleged attacks in Douma.

U.S. leaders have said the attacks were designed to take out Syria’s chemical weapons supply.

Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, director of the Joint Staff, said Saturday damage was done to Syria’s chemical arsenal, but they may be able to rebuild it through elements that were left behind.

President Donald Trump and other U.S. leaders have indicated further action is possible if Assad’s regime takes any additional action.

From A Guide to Getting Along in Putin’s Russia by Maxim Trudolyubov who edits The Russia File, a blog published by the Kennan Institute in Washington:


Four more rare steaks please.

I am reluctant to give James Comey any credence.

He is a lawyer who served as the 7th Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

I've reduced your post down to facts, removing everything unsupported by those facts. Enjoy!

HILLARY CLINTON WAS GOING TO WIN ELECTION, COMEY WRITES, AND THAT’S WHY HE ANNOUNCED HIS EMAIL PROBE
Former FBI Director James Comey believed Hillary Clinton would defeat Donald Trump in the 2016 election. So much so, that Comey wrote in his new book that he worried the FBI, Justice Department and Clinton’s potential presidency would face intense criticism if he hadn’t announced the reopening of her private email server probe less than two weeks before the election.

Fired by Trump in May, Comey has launched this week the media tour for his new book, A Higher Loyalty, with excerpts and quotes scattered across news outlets. Most of them have been damning accusations or insults about Trump's White House, but the book also reportedly delves deep into his handling of the Clinton investigation, The Guardian reported Friday.

Comey was worried that the country’s top law enforcement agencies would suffer if the public later discovered the FBI had obtained new emails in the Clinton probe. But he said he also believed Clinton would still prove victorious.

He wrote: “Assuming, as nearly everyone did, that Hillary Clinton would be elected president of the United States in less than two weeks, what would happen to the FBI, the Justice Department or her own presidency if it later was revealed, after the fact, that she still was the subject of an FBI investigation?”

Comey famously told lawmakers in a letter on October 28, 2016—11 days before the election—that the FBI had “learned of the existence of emails that appear be pertinent to the [Clinton] investigation.” That revelation came more than three months after Comey said at a press conference that the FBI would not be charging Clinton.

Since losing the election, Clinton has blamed Comey, in part, for her loss.

Trump, who has accused Comey of leaking information to the press and lying about their interactions, initially praised Comey at a campaign rally in Michigan on October 31, 2016. "That was so bad what happened originally, and it took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had where they’re trying to protect her from criminal prosecution," Trump said. "It took a lot of guts."

Comey said in his new tome that he would have made different choices regarding the email probe. “Hindsight is always helpful, and if I had to do it over again, I would do some things differently,” he wrote.

Specifically, Comey pointed to the verbiage he used at that July 2016 press conference to describe Clinton’s actions while she was secretary of state. Comey wrote: “More important, I would have tried to find a better way to describe Secretary Clinton’s conduct.... My use of ‘extremely careless’ naturally sounded to many ears like the statutory language—‘grossly negligent’—even though thoughtful lawyers could see why it wasn’t the same.”

Since then, the so-called “suicide letter” has occupied a unique place in the history of American intelligence — the most notorious and embarrassing example of Hoover’s F.B.I. run amok. For several decades, however, only significantly redacted copies of the letter were available for public scrutiny. This summer, while researching a biography of Hoover, I was surprised to find a full, uncensored version of the letter tucked away in a reprocessed set of his official and confidential files at the National Archives. The uncovered passages contain explicit allegations about King’s sex life, rendered in the racially charged language of the Jim Crow era. Looking past the viciousness of the accusations, the letter offers a potent warning for readers today about the danger of domestic surveillance in an age with less reserved mass media.

I see Newsweek is now a $hitty source?
Source: http://www.newsweek....in-email-885140


It's high time you check YOUR reality of facts. . . which is built on a very specious bubble.

And it's a fact the FBI sent a vicious "suicide note" with racially charged language to MLK (please refer to the NY Times article which found the FBI letter unredacted in the National Archives of all places!)
https://www.nytimes....lk-reveals.html



Long story short. .. absolute power corrupts absolutely!

The current F.B.I. director, James Comey, keeps a copy of the King wiretap request on his desk as a reminder of the bureau’s capacity to do wrong.