[RedSpawn]

Winstonm, on 2017-May-17, 20:21, said:

This thread is about Trump, his campaign, and its consequences. Your should start your own conspiracy thread if that is your cup of tea. But don't bring your claptrap to this thread, por favore.

Fair enough.

Here are my thoughts and yes it includes some supposition but I'm okay with that.

The Washington D.C. establishment:

• Guffawed when Trump announced his Presidency for the United States of America.
  
• Predicted he would not last the entire 2016 Presidential campaign season and would drop out early in the campaign cycle after abysmal poll results.
  
• Asserted that he did not understand retail politics at either the national or local level, had no charismatic public speaking skills, and no rudimentary understanding of foreign policy or how the U.S. government works.
  
• Predicted that he would not defeat the other 12 or so Republican Presidential candidates who seemingly had better political pedigrees than him.
  
• Insisted that he would not become the Republican nominee for President of the United States since he lacked the political infrastructure ($$$) to make that a political reality.
  
• Said that Trump would not be elected without catering his platform to a significant portion of the Latino and African-American electorate.
  
• Insisted that Trump had overestimated how his name brand recognition, celebrity status, and yes, even Twitter account, would influence the voting populace.
  
• Predicted that Trump would get slaughtered by Hillary Clinton in the Presidential Debates and would ultimately lose the election to her.

Trump, the maverick, has proven all of his naysayers wrong on so many levels. He has effectively changed the national political game and rewritten the rules of what it takes to get into the White House. And let's face it everyone. The Washington D.C. establishment is acting childlike and throwing a temper tantrum about a new power dynamic they are not used to.

Politicians are supposed to be going to Trump Tower and asking him for donations for THEIR campaigns, not calling him President Trump and listening to him deliver a State of the Union address!

The D.C. establishment is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at Trump to test his Presidency and return the power base back to what they are accustomed to. And yes, they will even create a false narrative about this Russia/Trump collusion with leaks to the media to do it. I think the industry calls this propaganda--information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.

https://www.nytimes....putin.html?_r=0

I am sure that Speaker Paul Ryan and Representative Kevin McCarthy, the two highest ranking House Republican members would love for Trump to be forcibly removed from office, especially since Paul Ryan would then become Vice President of the United States by default without having to endure an entire political campaign season. Didn't Paul Ryan run for Vice President of the United States along with Mitt Romney in 2012 and ultimately lost to Obama on November 6, 2012? And didn't Paul Ryan begrudgingly and reluctantly accept the Speaker of the House position after John Boehner resigned at the end of October 2015?

It seems to me that it would be politically expedient for Speaker Ryan and his House "friends" to want Trump's downfall because they get an instant political promotion without much effort.

And this special counsel, Robert Meuller, is just horrible political kabuki theatre! UGH!

[awm]

It's no surprise that some foreign countries prefer Trump to Obama, whereas others feel the opposite. Think for a moment about which countries those are:

Countries whose leaders seem to get along better with Trump:
Saudi Arabia
Russia
Turkey
Phillipines

Countries whose leaders got along better with Obama:
Mexico
Germany
United Kingdom
France (might have been different if Le Pen won)
Canada
Sweden

Countries where the jury is still out AFAIK:
Israel (initially excited about Trump, seems less so after the intelligence leak incident and reversal on embassy move to Jerusalem)
China (initially leery of Trump with his "currency manipulator" talk and early call to Taiwan, now seems to be getting along better)
Syria (initially thought Trump would be effectively pro-Assad, now who knows WTF is going on)

If you look at these, the common pattern is that the countries which prefer Trump have all been accused of serious human rights violations and have leaders whose democratic election is at least somewhat dubious. These countries were unhappy with Obama because he included human rights (and women's rights) as a factor in our foreign policy, and was critical of such regimes (as well as implementing sanctions in some cases). Trump seems to overflow with compliments for the leadership of such nations and seems much more interested in how much money he can get from these leaders (often for his own businesses, sometimes for the country) than their human rights record.

The countries which prefer Obama are typically upset with Trump's crazy-seeming comments (imagined terrorist attacks, demands to help build a wall, threatening to cancel trade agreements) along with his eliminating climate change from our priorities in policy.

Anyway, if improving our stature among the dictators and human rights abusers of the world (at the expense of our reputation with our western allies) sounds good to you, I agree Trump is your guy. I'd prefer a president who wasn't welcome by the leaders of a country where women have basically no rights, and whose primary exports are oil and money for terrorism.

[ldrews]

Winstonm, on 2017-May-20, 15:48, said:

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

You would think Democrats would take note.

[Winstonm]

umbering added:

rmnka447, on 2017-May-20, 13:41, said:

Nice try.

1) 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".

2) 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.

3) 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.

CBS explains the Special Cousel:

Quote

Under Justice Department regulations, a special counsel has all the authority of a U.S. attorney, including the ability to initiate investigations, subpoena records and bring criminal charges. One difference, however: Special counsels get to choose whether they inform the Justice Department what they're up to.

It is clear the Special Counsel is not just window dressing for appearance sake. He is for all purposes - the Justice Department in regards to his tasked duties.

1) The Clinton investigation was handled by the FBI so it was a criminal investigation that found no reason to bring charges.
2) No, the Trump investigation is early. I agree that Mueller was brought in to fend off any charges of partisanship - to a point. But Mueller is not tasked with looking into counter-intelligence matters nor to report to the American people those things that happened that were not technically criminal but should be known for a democracy to function - such as attempts at back channel communications link to Putin. Mueller was brought in because it appeared the Justice Department could not on its own conduct an investigation unencumbered by partisanship.
3) Here, you are clearly wrong. Sources have all sorts of very good reasons for not having their names published. The thing that matters is the integrity of the reporters and editors and news organization releasing the information gathered. I know of no - zero - reliable news organizations that accept single source stories as reliable. Stories require at least two confirmations and usually more. In the Trump case, competing news organizations have confirmed almost all of the initial reports through their own sources. Keep in mind, once a story leaks the first time and is in the newspapers, there is much less pressure on sources to continue to deny the story.

But, we of little faith do not believe Trump. We think he is corrupt and incompetent. So I am biased against him and his administration.

[Winstonm]

ldrews, on 2017-May-20, 15:58, said:

You would think Democrats would take note.

We have - we have a giant sucker for him and a pair of disposable diapers. We poor people can't afford giant gold baubles to amuse him.

[diana_eva]

I found the Harvard study linked by RedSpawn quite interesting TBH.

[y66]

From Donald Trump, Establishment Sellout by Ross Douthat:

Quote

WHICH side are you on? Are you with Donald Trump, or with the Washington insiders who want to undo his election? Do you favor the legitimate president of the United States, or an unelected “deep state” — bureaucrats, judges, former F.B.I. directors, the media — that’s determined not to let him govern? Are you going to let a counterrevolution by elites bring down a man who was elevated to the White House precisely because the country knows that its elite is no longer fit to govern?

This is how the debate over Donald Trump’s mounting difficulties is being framed by some of my fellow conservatives, from Sean Hannity to more serious pundits and intellectuals.

The problem is that the framing doesn’t really fit the facts. Yes, there are real elites in American politics: There is a Republican establishment (well, of sorts), a media-industrial complex, and a bipartisan consensus around certain areas of social and economic and foreign policy. Yes, many of these elites have made terrible mistakes over the last 15 years without seeming to learn anything. Yes, Trump won in part because, unlike Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton, he promised a new synthesis, a populist alternative, on domestic issues and foreign affairs alike.

But Trump is not actually governing as a populist or revolutionary, and the rolling crises of his first four months are not really about resistance to an “America First” or “drain the swamp” agenda, no matter what his fund-raising emails insist.

In fact, the various outsider groups that cast their lot with him — from working-class ex-Democrats to antiwar conservatives to free-trade skeptics to build-the-wall immigration hawks to religious conservatives fearful for their liberties — have seen him pick very few difficult fights on their behalf.

To working-class voters he promised a big infrastructure bill and better health insurance than Obamacare. But his legislative agenda has been standard establishment-Republican fare — spending cuts to pay for upper-bracket tax cuts, rinse, repeat.

To critics of American military adventurism he promised an end to Libya and Iraq-style interventions, a rebalancing toward Moscow, perhaps even a shake-up of NATO’s architecture. But he’s mostly handed foreign policy over to his military advisers (a pretty deep-state group, as such things go), which means that so far it resembles Obama’s except with more cruise missiles and saber-rattling.

Religious conservatives got Neil Gorsuch because he was a pedigreed insider. But they aren’t getting anything but symbolism on religious liberty, because Trump doesn’t want to pick a fight with the elite consensus on gay and transgender rights. And then go down the longer list and the establishment keeps winning: Planned Parenthood was funded in the budget deal and the border wall was not, the promised NAFTA rollback looks more likely to be a toothless renegotiation, Trump’s occasional talk about breaking up the big banks is clearly just talk, we haven’t torn up the Iran deal or ditched the Paris climate accords, and more.

Trump might still like to do some of the things he talked about on the campaign trail (his pining for a détente with Russia remains, um, palpable) and a few of them might actually still happen (some sort of wall-like structure will eventually go up, I assume).

But on most issues Trump’s promised war with the establishment has been fizzling almost from day one.

So in his escalating clashes with Beltway institutions, what we’re watching is not the “deep state” trying to reassert control over policy and bring a tribune of the people low. If so I would be more often on Trump’s side (as I welcomed Brexit and entertained the case for Marine Le Pen), because populism needs a seat at the table of power in the West, and the people who voted for our president do deserve a tribune.

But Trump is not that figure. As a populist he’s a paper tiger, too lazy to figure out what policies he should champion and too incompetent and self-absorbed to fight for them.

So he’s not being dogged by leaks and accusations because he’s trying to turn the Republican Party into a “worker’s party” (he isn’t), or because he’s throwing the money-changers out of the republic’s temples (don’t make me laugh), or because he’s taking steps to reduce America’s role as policeman of the world (none are evident).

No, he’s at war with the institutions that surround him because he behaves consistently erratically and inappropriately and dangerously, and perhaps criminally as well.

Or perhaps not: All of this may still not rise to the level of impeachable offenses. But the conservatives rising to his defense need to recognize that there is no elite “counterrevolution” here for them to resist, because there is no Trump revolution in the first place.

You don’t want to sell him out to the establishment; I get it. But open your eyes: He’s already been doing that to you.

[Winstonm]

This is troubling:

Quote

Given the choice, democratic citizens will not seek out news that challenges their beliefs; instead, they will opt for content that confirms their suspicions. A BuzzFeed News analysis found that the top 20 fake-news stories “outperformed” the top 20 real-news stories on Facebook in the three months before the election, meaning they generated more shares, comments, and reactions.* A follow-up survey suggested that most Americans believed fake news after seeing it on Facebook. When held to the laissez faire editorial standards of Facebook, the market of ideas fails.

Source: The Atlantic

[Vampyr]

Is the sentence for treason automatic capital punishment?

[jogs]

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

Any idea why?

Iran. Iran is the most dangerous enemy to Saudi Arabia. No one believes Obama's Iran deal will deny Iran the bomb.

https://townhall.com...vealed-n2317349

Trump is against the deal.
..............
Trump has just signed a trade deal favorable to both the US and Saudi Arabia.

[jogs]

awm, on 2017-May-20, 15:52, said:

Countries whose leaders got along better with Obama:
Mexico
Germany
United Kingdom
France (might have been different if Le Pen won)
Canada
Sweden

Obama told the UK if they voted for Brexit the US would put UK on the bottom of the trading queue.
Trump said if the EU punishes the UK for Brexit, the US would put UK on top of the trading queue.

Yet the UK loves Obama and hates Trump. Makes no sense to me.

[Winstonm]

Reports state that Trump plans to give an address today encouraging Saudi Arabia to join the fight against "Islamic terror" - when, in fact, Saudi Arabia is home to the Wahhabism, itself an extreme form of Islamic beliefs that the Saudis export to all parts of the world.

From Frontline, PBS:

Quote

For more than two centuries, Wahhabism has been Saudi Arabia's dominant faith. It is an austere form of Islam that insists on a literal interpretation of the Koran. Strict Wahhabis believe that all those who don't practice their form of Islam are heathens and enemies. Critics say that Wahhabism's rigidity has led it to misinterpret and distort Islam, pointing to extremists such as Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Wahhabism's explosive growth began in the 1970s when Saudi charities started funding Wahhabi schools (madrassas) and mosques from Islamabad to Culver City, California.

However, because they buy Trump properties, these guys are now O.K.?

[PassedOut]

jogs, on 2017-May-21, 06:05, said:

Iran. Iran is the most dangerous enemy to Saudi Arabia. No one believes Obama's Iran deal will deny Iran the bomb.

Iran is more democratic than Saudi Arabia and Rouhani just won a landslide victory in Iran over hardliner Raisi by campaigning on granting more freedom to the people and on working to end Iran's international isolation. In contrast, the state-sponsored school text books from Saudi Arabia are so radical that they're used in ISIS schools.

[Winstonm]

PassedOut, on 2017-May-21, 10:58, said:

Iran is more democratic than Saudi Arabia and Rouhani just won a landslide victory in Iran over hardliner Raisi by campaigning on granting more freedom to the people and on working to end Iran's international isolation. In contrast, the state-sponsored school text books from Saudi Arabia are so radical that they're used in ISIS schools.

You're wasting your time trying to engage a Trump apostle - their faith sustains them.

[Winstonm]

Here is what Obama Trump Obama Trump Obama - Barrack Trump said in his Saudi Speech.

Quote

“This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects, or different civilizations. This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it. This is a battle between good and evil,” Trump said

As with most bullies, when confronted he backs off.

[Winstonm]

This WaPo article suggests the enemy is not "radical Islam" but "radical wealth inequality" that drives worldwide terrorism.

Quote

If you can’t draw a straight line from radical Islam to terrorism, what might be driving extremism in the Middle East? The answer is complicated, but since the 1970s, study after study suggests that socioeconomic factors — not religion or ideology — lay the groundwork for violence.

The vast majority of young people in places like the Middle East and North Africa face a bleak socioeconomic future. Youth unemployment in the region hovers around 30 percent, which is expected to skyrocket as economies struggle to create enough jobs to keep pace with a massive demographic youth bulge. In 2000, the World Bank estimated that those regions would need to create about 100 million new jobs to keep pace, and it’s nowhere near to closing the gap.

[RedSpawn]

Winstonm, on 2017-May-19, 16:21, said:

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.

I am not a Trump fan, and I know all of the bullets I presented make it seem that way, but I know a red herring and diversionary tactic when I see one.

Also, I am very cognizant of the amount of corruption, graft, and malfeasance that goes on in Washington D.C. outside of the Presidency, a lot of which never even makes the news cycle. The D.C. establishment is full of well connected, alpha-male, codgers who are very adept at pulling the levers of our American government political machine and media outlets to produce outcomes they desire.

They also know how to use propaganda and sway public opinion which is why a good number of them are career politicians.

What we are watching is a power grab at the Presidency and a test of the Presidency.

http://www.pbs.org/w...igence-failure/

Let us not forget who is providing us the Trump/Putin scandal==>Our intelligence services, right?

Is this the same intelligence service that provided us very bad intelligence that President Bush and his administration used as a basis for the Iraq War?

Please read this very interesting story from PBS Frontline interviewing Colin Powell about the "weapons of mass destruction" intelligence failure that led to the Iraq War. I think we can all agree that Colin Powell has a very strong political pedigree.


http://www.pbs.org/w...igence-failure/

Quote

You have to remember that at the time I gave the speech on Feb. 5, the president had already made this decision for military action. The dice had been tossed. That’s what we were going to do. The Congress had passed a resolution three months before that speech that essentially gave the president the authorization to do it. Overwhelmingly they voted for it, and it was on the basis of that National Intelligence Estimate. The president had been using these very significant points about biological vans and chemical weapons in his speeches and in the State of the Union address. There was really nothing in my speech that hadn’t already been covered in the State of the Union or other speeches.

The reason I went to the U.N. is because we needed now to put the case before the entire international community in a powerful way, and that’s what I did that day.

Of course walking into that room is always a daunting experience, but I had been there before. And we had projectors and all sorts of technology to help us make the case. And that’s what I did. I made the case with the director of central intelligence sitting behind me. He and his team had vouched for everything in it. We didn’t make up anything. We threw out a lot of stuff that was not double- and triple-sourced, because I knew the importance of this.

When I was through, I felt pretty good about it. I thought we had made the case, and there was pretty good reaction to it for a few weeks. And then suddenly, the CIA started to let us know that the case was falling apart — parts of the case were falling apart. It was deeply disturbing to me and to the president, to all of us, and to the Congress, because they had voted on the basis of that information. And 16 intelligence agencies had agreed to it, with footnotes. None of the footnotes took away their agreement.

My point being it's the intelligence community that can "own" America and pull strings because they can provide information to the President and to Congress that is false (whether intentional or unintentional) and this becomes the basis for a very costly and bloody war that we are still fighting (in a different permutation). Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction despite what information the intelligence community was supplying. True, the President has to do his own due diligence and review this intelligence for bias and inaccuracies and discuss this matter with his Cabinet, but still it is a very powerful "presentation" the CIA and other intelligent services provide.

Please do not downplay the intelligence communities ability to provide a false narrative to produce outcomes (wars) they want. Wikipedia sets the cost of the Iraq War at $1.1 trillion, but I am willing to negotiate the cost downwards, but either way you cut it, this is a very expensive intelligence failure. Any information the intelligence community supplies about scandals should be viewed with a grain of salt because they are human just like anybody else.

[rmnka447]

cherdano, on 2017-May-20, 15:34, said:

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?

Well, we'll never know as President Hillary Clinton didn't happen.

When Harry Truman was President, he had a sign on his desk saying "The buck stops here." If Obama would have had a similar sign, it would have said "What buck?" Likewise, Hillary's sign would have said "How many bucks?"

The donation to the Clinton Foundation to worry about would have the one the Russians made to get access to US uranium. Proof of a clear cut quid pro quo (Clinton Foundation donation for approval by Sec. Clinton of the uranium sale -- clear bribery) held by the Russians would have seriously compromised her as President.

If she would have continued President Obama's policies toward our Middle Eastern allies her reception would likely have been the same as his. Obama kept talking about a coalition, but didn't provide leadership to make it a reality. It was just talk on his part.

[Winstonm]

rmnka447, on 2017-May-21, 13:49, said:

Well, we'll never know as President Hillary Clinton didn't happen.

When Harry Truman was President, he had a sign on his desk saying "The buck stops here." If Obama would have had a similar sign, it would have said "What buck?" Likewise, Hillary's sign would have said "How many bucks?"

The donation to the Clinton Foundation to worry about would have the one the Russians made to get access to US uranium. Proof of a clear cut quid pro quo (Clinton Foundation donation for approval by Sec. Clinton of the uranium sale -- clear bribery) held by the Russians would have seriously compromised her as President.

If she would have continued President Obama's policies toward our Middle Eastern allies her reception would likely have been the same as his. Obama kept talking about a coalition, but didn't provide leadership to make it a reality. It was just talk on his part.

If Clinton or Obama had committed crimes, they should have been charged. Same holds true for Donald Trump.

[Winstonm]

The Atlantic gets it:

Quote

Trump Turns Politically Correct in Saudi Arabia
Peter Beinart
The president says wildly offensive things when the objects of his derision aren’t around, but crumples when he actually meets them.

https://www.theatlan...a-islam/527547/