[jogs]

 Winstonm, on 2017-May-16, 06:09, said:

Did you even read the exchange before butting in? 100% blind loyalty to an individual is both stupid and dangerous. There is no point to discussion with zealotry of that magnitude.

You have pretty much described yourself.

[jogs]

 awm, on 2017-May-15, 15:34, said:

I'm not sure what you expect a president to do. Obama accomplished all the following:

1. Big increase in jobs; accompanied by a drop in unemployment.

The participation rate is near an all time low. Low unemployment is due to the method used to determine the unemployment rate. The moment one is dropped from unemployment insurance that person is no longer counted as one looking for a job.

Quote

2. Continued the downward trend in crime rates.
3. Managed to slightly reduce the US incarceration rate, despite no help from congress.

This is due to the aging of the population.

Quote

4. Drastically reduced the percentage of Americans without health insurance.

Employer based health insurance is mostly good for the public.
Obamacare exchange health insurance isn't access to healthcare. The public pays insurance premiums and still must pay a deductible before the insurance kicks in. Americans without health insurance before Obamacare are worst off today than in 2008. Under Obamacare 44% of all insurance payouts is due to the sickest 1%. Healthy Americans are being ripped off. They are forced to pay for the sick.
Most health insurers have dropped out of the exchanges. They can't make money.
Obamacare is collapsing. The dimms wont admit it.

[Winstonm]

The Washington Post May 19, 2017:

Quote

White House adviser close to Trump is a person of interest in Russia probe

Of course, Trump fans will claim the tag never happened, that gouging is illegal, and Trump has nothing hiding in his trunks.

[RedSpawn]

 Zelandakh, on 2017-May-19, 09:35, said:

No, that is not how it works. If someone comes to your house and removes the entire contents, would you tell the police that their investigation can wait because there are murders and other more serious crimes in the state? I suspect not. Selling state secrets to enemy governments is amongst the most serious crimes possible, so I think holding off on an investigation in that area, even if the chances are very high that it will not result in quite that level of collusion, is more than justified.

On to the 6.5 trillion figure. I have looked into this and it is highly misleading. The way it works is this - suppose I buy a million tins of spam for the 104th Airborne. it costs, say 2 million dollars but I mislay the receipt, or perhaps it gets lost in the post, or it is scanned into the computer system and the file later deleted - whatever. That is a $2 million accounting mistake, right? Well yes, except that the way the army books work is that that 2 million gets written on in to several other accounts and each mistake is accounted separately. So instead of a $2 million error, it is reported as $20 million, or perhaps $200 million. This is ultimately the reason for the $6.5 trillion figure. The actual amount of cash missing is orders of magnitude lower.

I think it would probably be a useful exercise to find out how much actually is missing really. Unfortunately the DoD is racing to get ready for a full audit in September and is already behind, so chances are that that is not going to happen anytime soon. Perhaps the information will come out during the audit process itself. In the meantime this $6.5 trillion figure is going round the web as if an actual amount of cash that is missing. And that is patently and obviously untrue as soon as one spends a few minutes looking into the matter.

I agree but I think this will be more than "a useful exercise". This will be an "overdue exorcism" on the Department of Defense--given the leadership's intransigence to resolving this situation. This problem has been around for at least 15 years, yet the DoD hasn't resolved the problem MATERIALLY (notice I didn't say completely but materially). The year-end accounting adjustments just appear to get larger and more insidious over time. The problem was just $2.3 trillion back-in-the-day (2002). See link below from CBS News that talks about the $2.3 trillion "GRAND PLUG" -- (in layman terms --"We don't know what this amount is and we can provide no support for the number-- we just add this amount here to balance our disheveled accounting records").

http://www.cbsnews.c...e-war-on-waste/

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was trying to sound the alarm back in 2001 about this grandiose problem but it got lost in the 09/11 news cycle.

This is how I read the problem. And it's not of the sensational variety. This is from Reuters which I consider to be a reputable business news source.

http://www.reuters.c...y-idUSKCN10U1IG

The DoD is fudging or cooking the books from an accounting standpoint and have an excessive number of unsupported accounting entries at year-end to even know if the entries they are posting to the accounting records make sense. And when the internal auditors won't opine that the consolidated financial statements fairly represent the financial condition of the U.S. government, we should be sounding alarms. When auditors are disclaiming opinions--not even giving a qualified opinion--but completely disclaiming, we should be even more upset.

NOTE: Wall Street usually dumps the stocks of companies that have horrible internal control structures and routinely practice accounting shenanigans of this scale and scope -- especially for over 15 years!

[PassedOut]

 RedSpawn, on 2017-May-19, 14:19, said:

The DoD is fudging or cooking the books from an accounting standpoint and have an excessive number of unsupported accounting entries at year-end to even know if the entries they are posting to the accounting records make sense. And when the internal auditors won't opine that the consolidated financial statements fairly represent the financial condition of the U.S. government, we should be sounding alarms. When auditors are disclaiming opinions--not even giving a qualified opinion--but completely disclaiming, we should be even more upset.

I doubt that anyone disagrees that poor accounting is a problem, and there are lots of other problems with US military spending too. But why should that mean other problems should be swept under the rug? When you start by exaggerating the accounting problem by two orders of magnitude, you don't give the impression that you're looking for a serious discussion.

[cherdano]

I've got to say this is the funniest line in the WC in a while.

 RedSpawn, on 2017-May-17, 17:04, said:

Trillions (with a T) missing from Department of Defense This is from FOX news in 2016 which is right-leaning!

Hmm, let's see, who is ultimately responsible for ensuring the executive branch functions properly? Where does the buck top? Oh, the president? And who was president in 2016? Oh, a Democrat, you say? Wait, are you suggesting Fox news would tend to err on the side of criticising a Democratic president?

[RedSpawn]

 cherdano, on 2017-May-19, 15:09, said:

I've got to say this is the funniest line in the WC in a while.

Hmm, let's see, who is ultimately responsible for ensuring the executive branch functions properly? Where does the buck top? Oh, the president? And who was president in 2016? Oh, a Democrat, you say? Wait, are you suggesting Fox news would tend to err on the side of criticising a Democratic president?

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was trying to sound the alarm back in 2001 about this grandiose problem but it got lost in the 09/11 news cycle.

George Bush was the president when I first heard about it in 2001 when the problem was $2.3 trillion. See link below:

http://www.cbsnews.c...e-war-on-waste/

However, I don't see this as a Republican or Democratic issue. The "divide and conquer" mentality allows the DofD to avoid fixing the underlying problem when we try to color this as a political issue.

This $6.5 trillion fiasco is a major internal control and financial reporting problem. It is also a serious mismanagement problem that is indicative of the type of leadership in the Department of Defense (DoD). In fact, it's the lack of leadership in the DoD and its seemingly impervious empire-like culture that is preventing this problem from being resolved FIFTEEN years after Donald Rumsfeld sounded the alarm.

I want to be clear, the scale and scope of this problem is much larger than partisan politics.

I am sure Zelandakh had a healthy level of professional skepticism when I first said $6.5 trillion and I don't blame him for asking for a more credible source to substantiate this figure (which I happily supplied).

[Winstonm]

I posted earlier that I couldn't understand the mind of the Trump fan; I think I now have a better grasp.

The Trump fan, it seems to me, is the faith-based personality; Faith must be maintained, regardless of facts, in order to retain whatever illusion the believer originally bought.

Faith is the belief in one some-thing rather than accepting and acknowledging the world is comprised of everything.

[Winstonm]

This, from the Washington Post, may well be why Trump seems to be coming unhinged in his efforts to stop the investigation:

Quote

Although the case began quietly last July as an effort to determine whether any Trump associates coordinated with Russian operatives to meddle in the presidential election campaign, the investigative work now being done by the FBI also includes determining whether any financial crimes were committed by people close to the president.

[PassedOut]

 Winstonm, on 2017-May-19, 17:44, said:

This, from the Washington Post, may well be why Trump seems to be coming unhinged in his efforts to stop the investigation:

Quote

Although the case began quietly last July as an effort to determine whether any Trump associates coordinated with Russian operatives to meddle in the presidential election campaign, the investigative work now being done by the FBI also includes determining whether any financial crimes were committed by people close to the president.

Looks like ISIS has infiltrated the FBI to stop Jared Kushner from straightening out the situation in the Middle East.

[Winstonm]

 PassedOut, on 2017-May-20, 06:45, said:

Looks like ISIS has infiltrated the FBI to stop Jared Kushner from straightening out the situation in the Middle East.

I thought Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Nixon epitomized corruption but I was wrong; they were simply political sleeze. Those occupying the WH at this time are darker, more corrupt, and much more dangerous because of their sole interest in self enrichment - like characters from a Mario Puzo novel.

Quote

According to Reuters, during the transition period, Flynn and Kislyak discussed “establishing a back channel for communication between Trump and [Putin] that could bypass the U.S. national security bureaucracy, which both sides considered hostile to improved relations.”

What positive could you be up to if you were acting in concert with a known adversarial country but wanted to hide that action and information from the U.S. intelligence agencies? Whose idea was it to develop this back channel?

[jogs]

Obama is stubbed by the Saudis while Trump is given the red carpet.

[PassedOut]

 jogs, on 2017-May-20, 11:48, said:

Obama is stubbed by the Saudis while Trump is given the red carpet.

Any idea why?

[rmnka447]

 Winstonm, on 2017-May-18, 14:14, said:

Of course, the other point here is that it is now a criminal investigation.

Nice try.

Plenty of people have cited potential criminal charges that could have been brought against Sec. Clinton related to the mishandling of classified information. So, that was clearly a criminal investigation. It needed outside management by an independent counsel to remove any taint of the "fix is in".

The investigation into the Trump campaign hasn't yielded any criminal charges as yet. Some may be forthcoming or not. The counsel was put in place to help make the result of the investigation to be beyond reproach whatever it finds.

Most of what has been reported so far has been smoke rather than fact. Most of it is attributed to "unnamed sources" which amounts to unconfirmed allegations not facts. Yet those tenuous assertions are repeated and treated as dead certain fact by the left.

Sorry, but former Director Mueller is a "Special Counsel" to independently manage the investigation, find the truth, and take it where that leads. He's not a "Grand Inquisitor" like you'd like him to be.

[rmnka447]

 PassedOut, on 2017-May-20, 11:56, said:

Any idea why?

Obama's idea of foreign policy was to ignore and punish our friends while trying to suck up to our enemies.

So, it isn't surprising that a new administration which says to our friends and allies "We've got your back" and means it would be treated far differently.

BTW, isn't it interesting that the great "Islamophobe" Donald Trump is being feted by the Saudis while the great "Islamophile" Barack Obama was given short shrift by them?

You'd think that if Donald Trump remarks about "radical Islamic terrorists" were very offensive to them that they'd treat him no differently or worse than Barack Obama.

[RedSpawn]

With the respect to Trump media coverage, say it isn't so?

Please click the link below.

https://heatst.com/c...ump-media-bias/

Interestingly, FOX news (coincidentally under new management and leadership without the late Roger Ailes) is the only one news channel sampled that even had anything close to an allegedly balanced coverage of the President.

Fascinating.

[PassedOut]

 rmnka447, on 2017-May-20, 14:04, said:

Obama's idea of foreign policy was to ignore and punish our friends while trying to suck up to our enemies.

So, it isn't surprising that a new administration which says to our friends and allies "We've got your back" and means it would be treated far differently.

Or, maybe there's a better explanation: The Saudi Obama Snub: A Positive Sign

Quote

Saudi Arabia’s king declined to meet President Obama when he arrived at the airport in Riyadh, capital of the oil kingdom. That’s good.

Saudi Arabia has been one of the most destructive forces in the Islamic world. It has financed violent jihad groups, radical preachers and inflammatory satellite TV shows all to promote its intolerant Wahhabi brand of Islam. Wahhabi adherents sanction the killing of infidels, Christians included, as well as persecuting Muslims who don’t adhere to its intolerant Medieval ways. The Saudi monarchy, nurtured by British imperial policy and sustained by the obeisance of successive American presidents, has flown under the wing of six decades of U.S. Middle East domination to spread its influence.

Could it be that with a weak president like Trump, one very susceptible to flattery and with no concept of reality, the Saudis are thrilled to know that they are free to misbehave? I don't look forward another Saudi planned, financed, and executed 9/11 attack on the US. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

[RedSpawn]

 PassedOut, on 2017-May-19, 14:53, said:

I doubt that anyone disagrees that poor accounting is a problem, and there are lots of other problems with US military spending too. But why should that mean other problems should be swept under the rug? When you start by exaggerating the accounting problem by two orders of magnitude, you don't give the impression that you're looking for a serious discussion.

???

How did I exaggerate the problem? It is a $6.5 trillion problem now. It was a $2.3 trillion problem then in 2001. This is not just a "fix the computer" type of situation. The entire internal control structure at DoD contains so many material weaknesses that internal auditors are rendering disclaimers of opinions over our consolidated US government financial statements. The internal auditors specifically call out DoD as the "serious" offender.

Government Accountability Office Report -- Inspector's General Report

http://www.gao.gov/p...cts/GAO-15-341R

Quote

Certain material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting and other limitations on the scope of its work resulted in conditions that prevented GAO from expressing an opinion on the accrual-based consolidated financial statements as of and for the fiscal years ended September 30, 2014, and 2013. About 32 percent of the federal government’s reported total assets as of September 30, 2014, and approximately 19 percent of the federal government’s reported net cost for fiscal year 2014 relate to three Chief Financial Officers Act agencies that as of the date of GAO’s audit report, either received disclaimers of opinion on their fiscal year 2014 financial statements or had not issued their audited fiscal year 2014 financial statements.

Three major impediments prevented GAO from rendering an opinion on the federal government’s accrual-based consolidated financial statements: (1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense (DOD), (2) the federal government’s inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal entities, and (3) the federal government’s ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements. Efforts are under way to resolve these issues, but strong and sustained commitment by DOD and other federal entities as well as continued leadership by the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) are necessary to implement needed improvements.

Material weaknesses, including those underlying these three major impediments, continued to (1) hamper the federal government’s ability to reliably report a significant portion of its assets, liabilities, costs, and other related information; (2) affect the federal government’s ability to reliably measure the full cost as well as the financial and nonfinancial performance of certain programs and activities; (3) impair the federal government’s ability to adequately safeguard significant assets and properly record various transactions; and (4) hinder the federal government from having reliable financial information to operate in an efficient and effective manner.

This is a nice way of saying that the Department of Defense, which gets some of the largest federal budget appropriations, can not issue reliable financial statements (including balance sheets) which will help it to reliably report a significant portion of its assets, liabilities, and costs. If you can't reliably report what assets you truly own, then how can you take a legitimate detailed physical inventory of them? I don't even want to see how DoD manages the cash accounts it has at the Treasury, if it can't even handle its own inventory and property, plant, and equipment accounts.

Again, list one company on the stock exchange that could perform this kind of accounting alchemy over 15 years and still be in business? Sure, the U.S. government and its subsidiaries are sovereign entities (which is different than corporate business entities), but both entities need decent internal controls to function properly. And to call it a problem of the size of $6.5 trillion in adjustments when our debt is about $19.8 trillion just shows you how "out of control" the problem is emanating from ONE department. The scale and scope of this problem is simply undeniable.

I am not anti-military. I am, however, anti-mismanagement, anti-graft, anti-corruption, and want to see reasonable internal controls in our DofD. This will help the DoD provide meaningful reports that Congress, internal auditors, and the public at large can review to determine if the DoD is efficiently and effectively managing resources to conduct "the people's business".

This is what our forefathers wanted. It is supposed to be part of the checks and balances system that makes our government the envy (and not the laughing stock) of other nations.

Stay tuned.

[cherdano]

 rmnka447, on 2017-May-20, 14:04, said:

Obama's idea of foreign policy was to ignore and punish our friends while trying to suck up to our enemies.

So, it isn't surprising that a new administration which says to our friends and allies "We've got your back" and means it would be treated far differently.

BTW, isn't it interesting that the great "Islamophobe" Donald Trump is being feted by the Saudis while the great "Islamophile" Barack Obama was given short shrift by them?

You'd think that if Donald Trump remarks about "radical Islamic terrorists" were very offensive to them that they'd treat him no differently or worse than Barack Obama.

Come on, you are better than that. These kind of superficial arguments don't prove anything.

Just imagine President Hillary Clinton would get this kind of reception in Saudi-Arabia. Wouldn't you consider it proof that the Saudis think their 10 million $ Clinton Foundation donations are paying off as investment?

[Winstonm]

 rmnka447, on 2017-May-20, 14:04, said:

Obama's idea of foreign policy was to ignore and punish our friends while trying to suck up to our enemies.

So, it isn't surprising that a new administration which says to our friends and allies "We've got your back" and means it would be treated far differently.

BTW, isn't it interesting that the great "Islamophobe" Donald Trump is being feted by the Saudis while the great "Islamophile" Barack Obama was given short shrift by them?

You'd think that if Donald Trump remarks about "radical Islamic terrorists" were very offensive to them that they'd treat him no differently or worse than Barack Obama.

The Saudis have done their homework. They know to own Trump all you have to do is lavish him with praise.