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U.S. Politics 2017 (split fm US Election: 2016)

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From Foreign Policy Magazine. Re-printed under the usual caveats of the Copyright Act.


Trump Knows the Feds Are Closing In on Him

The president’s recent tweets aren’t just conspiratorial gibberish – they’re the erratic ravings of a guilty conscience.

BY MAX BOOT MARCH 6, 2017

Immediately before and after his well-received speech to a joint session of Congress on Feb. 28, President Trump curtailed his use of Twitter. “For precisely four days, eight hours and five minutes, Trump refrained from tweeting anything inflammatory,” the Washington Post noted. “That’s 6,245 consecutive minutes!”

That self-restraint began to break down on the evening of March 2, just two days after his big speech, when Trump accused Democrats of having “lost their grip on reality” and engaging in a “total ‘witch hunt.’” Just before 1 p.m. the next day, he tweeted a picture of Vladimir Putin and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) having coffee and donuts, lifted directly from the Drudge Report, accompanied by the mock demand for “an immediate investigation into @SenSchumer and his ties to Russia and Putin. A total hypocrite!” Then a few hours later came a picture of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in 2010 underneath the caption: “I hereby demand a second investigation, after Schumer, of Pelosi for her close ties to Russia, and lying about it.” (It took the president with the “very good brain” three tries to spell “hereby” correctly, having first tried “hear by” and “hearby.”)

The presumption behind those tweets was that there was some kind of ethical or legal equivalence between the public meetings that Democratic lawmakers held with Russian leaders and the lies — in Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s case under oath — that Trump aides told about their own private meetings with Russian representatives while Putin was intervening in the presidential election to help Trump. This notion can only be credible to the most purblind Trump partisans — the same people who would take seriously Trump’s even more sensational allegations, soon to come.

At 6:35 a.m. on Saturday, March 4, the president of the United States tweeted from his weekend getaway, Mar-a-Lago: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” A few minutes later: “Is it legal for a sitting President to be ‘wire tapping’ a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!” Followed by: “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” (“Tapp”? “Hearby”? Doesn’t Trump’s phone have a spell-checker?)

Having supposedly uncovered a scandal comparable to Watergate, what did the president do next? He took a respite from Twitter for more than an hour, until 8:19 a.m., when he sent out an insult against the actor who replaced him on The Celebrity Apprentice: “Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t voluntarily leaving the Apprentice, he was fired by his bad (pathetic) ratings, not by me. Sad end to great show.” (So much for Trump’s premature claim to Congress on Tuesday night that the “time for trivial fights is behind us.”) And then he headed out for a nice round of golf.

It was left to Trump’s aides, the news media, and members of Congress to answer the “Huh??? What???” questions. Had Trump actually gotten his hands on classified information that the FBI had wiretapped him during the Obama administration? There are only two ways this could have occurred: Either the FBI had presented a court with evidence that Trump was engaged in criminal activity or was an agent of a foreign power, or Obama had ordered an illegal wiretap. Either conclusion would be scandalous. But after a frantic weekend of fact-checking, no evidence whatsoever was presented by the White House to support Trump’s allegations, which were denied by everyone from Obama’s spokesman to James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, and FBI Director James Comey.

It’s possible that Trump aides were wiretapped as part of a broader FBI probe into the connections between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin or were simply recorded, as had been the case with former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, during the routine monitoring of Russian officials. But there is no reason to think that Trump himself had been a target of the wiretapping, nor that Obama interfered in the lawful workings of the FBI. It appears that Trump had gotten his information not from a top-secret briefing but from a Breitbart article long on innuendo and short on verifiable facts.

One would be tempted to say that the president’s reliance on “alternative facts” to smear his predecessor is the real scandal here were it not for the fact that an actual, honest-to-goodness scandal — one that may conceivably rival Watergate — is at the bottom of this ruckus. Why, after all, did Trump have a midweek meltdown that dashed pundits’ hopes that he would act in more sober fashion? The answer is as obvious as it is significant: On the evening of March 1, the day after his lauded speech, major new revelations emerged about the mysterious links between the Trump camp and the Kremlin.

The New York Times was first out of the gate that evening with a story reporting: “American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing meetings in European cities between Russian officials — and others close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump, according to three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence. Separately, American intelligence agencies had intercepted communications of Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Trump associates.”

The Times story would have been big news were it not almost immediately overshadowed by a Washington Post article with an even more alarming finding: “Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Justice Department officials said, encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign and representatives of Moscow during Sessions’s confirmation hearing to become attorney general.”

Smaller but still significant revelations followed the next day. The Wall Street Journal reported that Donald Trump Jr. “was likely paid at least $50,000 for an appearance late last year before a French think tank whose founder and his wife are allies of the Russian government in efforts to end the war in Syria.” (What could Trump Jr. say that would possibly be worth $50,000?) J.D. Gordon, Trump’s national security advisor during the campaign, admitted that, contrary to his earlier denials, he had directly intervened at Trump’s instigation to remove the language in the 2016 Republican platform which had called on the United States to arm Ukraine against Russian aggression. And campaign advisor Carter Page admitted that, contrary to his earlier denials, he had met with the Russian ambassador at the Republican National Convention. It is hard to imagine why so many people would lie if they didn’t have something pretty significant to cover up.

Out of all of these revelations it was the news about Sessions — which may open him to perjury charges — that was the most significant. In response to the Post report, the attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Kremlingate inquiry, much to the fury of President Trump, who was not consulted about this decision. This is what led to Trump’s wild-eyed rants on Twitter, designed to distract from the real scandal and to convince his more credulous followers that he is the victim of a plot by his predecessor.

But why would Sessions’ recusal make Trump so unhinged? The president must have felt relatively confident that the “Kremlingate” probe would go nowhere as long as it was in the hands of Trump partisans such as Sessions, Rep. Devin Nunes of the House Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Richard Burr of the Senate Intelligence Committee. But with Sessions out of the picture, the way is now clear for the deputy attorney general — either the current placeholder, career Justice Department attorney Dana Boente, or Trump’s nominee to replace him, Rod Rosenstein, another career government lawyer — to appoint a special counsel because of the “extraordinary circumstances” surrounding this case.

A special counsel would not have the same degree of autonomy as the independent counsels who in the post-Watergate era probed executive-branch misconduct until the law authorizing such appointments expired in 1999. Independent counsels were appointed by, and answerable to, a three-judge panel; special counsels can be appointed, and fired, by the Justice Department. But a special counsel would be expected to investigate much more aggressively than the White House would like, and firing a special counsel would only aggravate the scandal. In addition to a special counsel, Congress could and should appoint a joint select committee to look into Kremlingate and issue a public report, but a special counsel would be likely to conduct a more professional investigation and, unlike lawmakers, would possess the power to indict, which may help loosen the tongues of suspects.

There is a good reason why Trump and his partisans are so apoplectic about the prospect of a special counsel, and it is precisely why it is imperative to appoint one: because otherwise we will never know the full story of the Kremlin’s tampering with our elections and of the Kremlin’s connections with the president of the United States. As evidenced by his desperate attempts to change the subject, Trump appears petrified of what such a probe would reveal. Wonder why?

Article Link
 
Retired AF Guy said:
From Foreign Policy Magazine. Re-printed under the usual caveats of the Copyright Act.


Article Link

Nothing said about whether or not these were "politically" motivated or "business" motivated meetings with Trump associated.  Trump does have a large international business empire, after all. 

At the same time, nothing is said about Hillary Clinton; again the Clinton Foundation has received infusions of cash from Russian interests.  Where any of them "politically motivated" or "business/charity motivated"?

I don't think, that in this small world we have today, that either party, and the political Party they represent, has NOT had some dealings with foreign interests, including the Russians, in some shape or form.
 
How about Clinton selling US uranium to Russia and getting a two million kickback to the Clinton Foundation because of it. and Slick Willie got a speaking engagement in Russia that paid him 1/2 million. If Russia was backing anyone in the last election, it was Clinton.
 
George Wallace said:
Nothing said about whether or not these were "politically" motivated or "business" motivated meetings with Trump associated.  Trump does have a large international business empire, after all. 

At the same time, nothing is said about Hillary Clinton; again the Clinton Foundation has received infusions of cash from Russian interests.  Where any of them "politically motivated" or "business/charity motivated"?

I don't think, that in this small world we have today, that either party, and the political Party they represent, has NOT had some dealings with foreign interests, including the Russians, in some shape or form.

True, the meetings were probably innocuous, but then why deny them? After all, the meetings took place at the Republican National Congress, not in some shady hotel room, so there is nothing really to hide.

The problem is that the Trump people have repeated denied any contact with Russian officials during the campaign, and now it comes out otherwise. So if they lied about this, did they lie about other contacts?

May be if they had told the truth at the beginning, they wouldn't be in the predicament they are in now.
 
Boot's error in trying to make Sessions' meetings with the Russian ambassador look sinister, and to make the two stupid questions posed during the confirmation meaningful, are your tip-off that nothing he wrote should be trusted.  If a reporter can't get basics correct and deliver them in proper context, he's not providing information - he's providing propaganda.

"Your denial of the importance of objectivity amounts to announcing your intention to lie to us. No-one should believe anything you say." - John McCarthy
 
Todays Wikileaks dump revealed Vault #7  basically CIA's full arsenal of dirty tricks from the ability to mimic Russian url's for example,to the ability to remotely take control of a plane or car to perform a hit. Pretty much evidence that the CIA could have eavesdropped on anyone they wanted. Now the FBI has launched another mole hunt to find the source. Of course you could end up like Obama critic Michael Hastings. This would make for the next Bourne movie. Deep State vs Trump I dont think we can permit the Deep State to prevail.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/03/wikileaks-reveals-cia-ability-hack-cars-assassinations/

michael-hastings-car-575x323.jpg
 
Irrational Trump over malleable Clinton. I can't believe the Russians actually preferred the first over the second.
 
ModlrMike said:
Irrational Trump over malleable Clinton. I can't believe the Russians actually preferred the first over the second.

I see that you have accepted the meme the newsmedia is trying to construct. Thats not the view of Trump's supporters. The constant attacks by the democrats and their allies in the media will not help their cause. But Mike put yourself in Trump's chair you have few political allies,the party you defeated will stop at nothing to drive you from office. Throw in the #NeverTrumpers and you might be feeling the heat. The man we voted for will hit back,thats why he got elected. All of the leaks so far are felonies and are transcripts of recorded phone conversations. The democrats arent even denying it. Even Robby Mook Hillarys campaign manager admited it in a Fox interview. The elephant in the room is where will this lead. Congress begins their investigations Monday I think.
 
No, what I mean to say is that I think a Clinton win would have been better from the Russian point of view.
 
ModlrMike said:
No, what I mean to say is that I think a Clinton win would have been better from the Russian point of view.
[/]

I think you might be right,after all she can be bought. >:(
 
tomahawk6 said:
ModlrMike said:
No, what I mean to say is that I think a Clinton win would have been better from the Russian point of view.
[/]

I think you might be right,after all she can be bought. >:(

Unlike Trump who can be owned.

;D
 
Trump as Greenpeace.  Greenpeace as Trump.  Modern discourse.

http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/kevin-libin-environmentalists-admit-you-shouldnt-believe-what-they-say-but-they-want-your-money-anyway

Turns out that includes telling the court that its claims about Resolute being “forest destroyers,” responsible for a “caribou death spiral and extinction” and myriad other vilifications, were all just marketing hype. “The challenged statements are no more than opinion based on disclosed facts,” Greenpeace International’s lawyers explained in their latest motion to dismiss the RICO suit. Greenpeace, like anyone protected by constitutional free speech, will “often use forceful language to make their point. They do not hew to strict literalisms or scientific precision, but regularly use words ‘in a loose, figurative sense’ to express ‘strong disagreement,’ and attack their intellectual opponents through ‘rhetorical hyperbole’ or ‘vigorous epithet(s).’”


Calling Resolute “forest destroyers,” the lawyers continue, doesn’t have to mean that the company is actually “destroying Canada’s boreal forest” as Greenpeace’s campaign literature claimed. Rather, the motion explains, it “can be describing figurative, rather than literal destruction.” What court could possibly disprove that Resolute is destroying “figurative” forests, since by definition, those forests don’t actually exist?


It seems only fair that Greenpeace should seek shelter behind America’s strong First Amendment protections, since that’s what they’re there for. And Greenpeace continues to maintain that its defence doesn’t mean its claims are lies. But Resolute’s allegation — which hasn’t been proven in court — is that the group is practicing a form of fraud, by lying about companies to squeeze more money from donors, to its own enrichment. It’s worth noting that Greenpeace has long had trouble proving that its work is all that altruistic: Several countries (although not the U.S.) have revoked its charitable status, including Canada, where government officials determined its activities serve “no public benefit” but its anti-development activism might well compound poverty.


lily.jpg
  [:D

 
Calling Resolute “forest destroyers,” the lawyers continue, doesn’t have to mean that the company is actually “destroying Canada’s boreal forest”

I think libel law would disagree with this assumption, no?
 
Apparently it is a debatable point for the lawyers.
 
Looks like 2017 could be a very good year for economic growth and employment opportunities in the US:

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/08/private-sector-jobs-february-2017-adp.html

Job creation posts blowout month in February, ADP says
Jeff Cox | @JeffCoxCNBCcom
12 Hours Ago
CNBC.com

Companies added jobs at a blistering pace in February, with a notable shift away from the service-sector positions that have dominated hiring for years, according to a report Wednesday.

Employment in the private sector surged by 298,000 for the month, with goods producers adding 106,000, ADP and Moody's Analytics said. Construction jobs swelled by 66,000 and manufacturing added 32,000.

The total shattered market expectations of 190,000, according to economists surveyed by ADP. The blockbuster report also solidified market expectations for the Fed to hike interest rates next week. Probability for an increase jumped to 91 percent after the release, according to the CME.

The report encompassed the first full month under President Donald Trump, who has pledged to rebuild the nation's aging infrastructure system.

"February proved to be an incredibly strong month for employment with increases we have not seen in years," Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute, said in a statement.

In addition to the construction and manufacturing positions, mining and natural resources also contributed 8,000 to the total. Trump has promised to restore mining jobs as well.

The year is off to a sizzling start for job creation, according to the ADP counts. January added 261,000 positions, a number that was revised upward from the originally reported 246,000.

"Confidence is playing a large role," Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics, told CNBC. "Businesses are anticipating a lot of good stuff — tax cuts, less regulation. They are hiring more aggressively."

Services led the way with 193,000 new jobs, with 66,000 coming from professional and business services. Health care added 38,000 while information-related jobs came to 25,000.

Job creation was fairly evenly distributed across business size. Companies with 50 to 499 employees added the most with 122,000, while small firms added 104,000 and large contributed 72,000.

In addition to generally positive sentiment expressed through business surveys, the job climate also got a boost from weather.

The big number could cause economists to adjust their expectations for Friday's key nonfarm payrolls number from the Labor Department. The market currently expects the report to show growth of about 185,000 jobs.

This is what voters elected Donald Trump for, and the mud throwing by the Democrats and Media will never stick so long as the Administration continues to set the table for economic growth. In fact, the distractions the mud throwing creates allows this to slip deeper into people's perceptions without the various factions in the Progressive alliance noticing the ground is changing under their feet.


































 










































 
https://milo.yiannopoulos.net/2017/03/woman-fabricates-trump-inspired-hate-crime-accidentally-scratching/

Another hate crime perpetrated by a white male which was ultimately trumps fault.

 
Brad Sallows said:
Boot's error in trying to make Sessions' meetings with the Russian ambassador look sinister, and to make the two stupid questions posed during the confirmation meaningful, are your tip-off that nothing he wrote should be trusted.  If a reporter can't get basics correct and deliver them in proper context, he's not providing information - he's providing propaganda.

Whether Sessions' meeting with the Russian Ambassador was sinister or not, the fact is that Session lied about it.

As for your "stupid questions" Session was asked during his confirmation hearing, he was asked if had any communications with any Russian officials and he replied that he had not.

And remember, he was under oath, so as I understand it, and the legal beagles can correct me it I'm wrong, its akin to lying on the witness stand (aka perjury).

And going back to my last post, if Session and the other two aides had been upfront about their contacts with the Russian Ambassador they wouldn't be in the mess they are know.

 
Retired AF Guy said:
Whether Sessions' meeting with the Russian Ambassador was sinister or not, the fact is that Session lied about it.

As for your "stupid questions" Session was asked during his confirmation hearing, he was asked if had any communications with any Russian officials and he replied that he had not.

And remember, he was under oath, so as I understand it, and the legal beagles can correct me it I'm wrong, its akin to lying on the witness stand (aka perjury).

And going back to my last post, if Session and the other two aides had been upfront about their contacts with the Russian Ambassador they wouldn't be in the mess they are know.

SEN. PATRICK J. LEAHY: Several of the President-elect's nominees or senior advisers have Russian ties. Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?

Seems to me that Sessions did not lie to this question on the questionnaire. You can't assume he lied having no evidence whatsoever as to what happened when he met the Russian ambassador. The question was if he discussed election business. He said no. Good enough unless you want to call him a bald faced liar with no evidence. You can see from Leahy's question that he didn't bother to ask if he had contact with the ambassador. He very well knew Sessions did. The Senators asking the questions knew as part of his normal duties he had this contact since they serve on the same committees and knew the drill.
 
kkwd said:
Seems to me that Sessions did not lie to this question on the questionnaire. You can't assume he lied having no evidence whatsoever as to what happened when he met the Russian ambassador. The question was if he discussed election business. He said no. Good enough unless you want to call him a bald faced liar with no evidence. You can see from Leahy's question that he didn't bother to ask if he had contact with the ambassador. He very well knew Sessions did. The Senators asking the questions knew as part of his normal duties he had this contact since they serve on the same committees and knew the drill.

Actually, the accusations of purgery stem from is response to Senator Franken's questioning.

FRANKEN: CNN has just published a story and I'm telling you this about a news story that's just been published. I'm not expecting you to know whether or not it's true or not. But CNN just published a story alleging that the intelligence community provided documents to the president-elect last week that included information that quote, "Russian operatives claimed to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump." These documents also allegedly say quote, "There was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump's surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government."
Now, again, I'm telling you this as it's coming out, so you know. But if it's true, it's obviously extremely serious and if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?

SESSIONS: Senator Franken, I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn't have — did not have communications with the Russians, and I'm unable to comment on it.

FRANKEN: Very well. Without divulging sensitive information, do you know about this or know what compromising personal and financial information the Russians claim to have?

SESSIONS : Senator Franken, allegations get made about candidates all the time and they've been made about president-elect Trump a lot sometimes. Most of them, virtually all of them have been proven to be exaggerated and untrue. I would just say to you that I have no information about this matter. I have not been in on the classified briefings and I'm not a member of the intelligence committee, and I'm just not able to give you any comment on it at this time.

FRANKEN: OK. Totally fair.

Franken was asking what Sessions, as Attorney General, would do if it was true that there was conact between the campaign team and Russians about the election. Would he carry out his duties, or recuse himself, or bring in a special prosecutor?

If Sessions had actually answered the question he was asked there would be no storey. He simply had to say something like "I'm not willing to speculate on hypotheticals, so I cannot provide you with a response."

But it appears that he was trying to avoid the answer by deflection and obfuscating, and stumbled over himself giving the answer to a question he wasn't asked. So he offered the statement, and ultimately was proven that it was wrong.
 
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