Trump's Milestones

[sundealer]

Obama should have fired Comey as soon as he opened his mouth.

[KathyInAR]

Obama should have fired Comey as soon as he opened his mouth.

I totally agree; and, I also know that had he there would have been the same reactions from the Right as there is now from the Left...it's politics unfortunately. However, it would not have been because Obama feared an investigation into his or his "surrogate's" illegal or immoral actions.

As I am sure you recall, Trump praised Comey for the very same thing that he now says he fired him for. Further, how is Trump's "visits and/or dinners or meetings" with Comey while his campaign is under investigation for serious wrongdoing by his agency any different than the meeting between friends, to showoff pictures of their grandkids, when they were both at the same airport at the same time?

[KathyInAR]

Two words..."incredibly stupid!!!" Another word..."moron!!!"

https://www.aol.com/article/news/201...se-m/22088258/

[sundealer]

AOL cracks me up!!

The info was so highly classified that the Post and media made sure that everyone knew what it was!

[KathyInAR]

AOL cracks me up!!

The info was so highly classified that the Post and media made sure that everyone knew what it was!

What cracks me up, is that when some see "AOL" they immediately start when in fact it is actually a Reuters article. They also ignore the crux of what the article is about and in the attempt to defend the indefensible, reasonably smart people misrepresent or twist what is actually written in an article. E.g., "...info was so highly classified that the Post and media made sure that everyone knew what it was." When what the article actually says is:

...
Asked about the disclosures, Trump's national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, who participated in the meeting, said no intelligence sources or methods were discussed that were not already known publicly, the Post reported. Asked by Reuters about the Post story, McMaster declined comment..

What the Post article said was that McMasters said no intelligence sources or methods were discussed that were not already known publicly, not that the intelligence (information) was known by the Post and other media. And we should believe what McMasters says??? Why???

There are those very few, could count on about 2-3 fingers, Middle Eastern countries and their governments that are at least somewhat allied with us and they don't want that fact broadcast or exploited for obvious reasons. It's like a "friendly informer" that is and amongst a gang of bad guys who will occasionally rat them out...if they get found out, they aren't likely to enjoy breathing fresh air for very long. To jeopardize them and/or our reliance on them is just plain stupid but it is at the point that seems to be the only thing we can expect from this adminstation...just plain stupid, and they prove it on an almost daily basis.

[KathyInAR]

What'd I say? (again, my comments are shown like this)

http://www.vocativ.com/430141/israel...-russia-gaffe/

Israelis Nervous About Sharing Intel With Trump After Russia Gaffe
Israeli officials say Americans have warned them not to share sensitive intelligence with Trump

By Shira Rubin
May 16, 2017 at 6:26 AM ET

---

Israel is on edge following a late Monday night bombshell report in the Washington Post that said President Donald Trump had “spontaneously” revealed espionage secrets to the Russians last week in a move that, if confirmed, could endanger the American war on terror abroad.

The highly classified intelligence is believed to pertain to Jordan, a critical U.S. ally who has been at the forefront of fighting the Islamic State, and the use of laptop computers to bomb airplanes. It was given up during a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the Russian ambassador in the Oval Office last week, current and former American government officials told the Washington Post. It seems that Trump spontaneously blurted out, “I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day,” without taking into account moves to increase U.S. leverage against the Russians, who hold opposing interests in the war in Syria. (an incredibly stupid moronic move, a look-at-me-I've-got-a-big-shiny-new-watch move, a typical braggadocios Trump action)

“Some within the [Israeli] government are very concerned by the signs coming out from Washington: that there’s not exactly a shift in regards to Israel and the region, but there are certainly unexpected signs which are very different from what we expected” from Trump the candidate, said Oded Eran, a former Israeli ambassador to Jordan and fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. He said that Israel still sees the U.S. as a critical security ally with which it pursues cooperation, but that it has also been developing security agreements with India and other Asian countries.

Trump is scheduled to speak with King Abdullah of Jordan on Tuesday, spurring speculation that the classified information, which was so sensitive that it was not widely shared with American officials or with other allies, belonged to the Jordanians.

Since Trump took office in January, Israeli intelligence officials have been re-assessing their intelligence sharing strategies, worried that any information passed on to Trump could be leaked to Russia and onward to Iran, (imagine that?) which backs its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah said earlier this month that Damascus, Moscow, Tehran and Hezbollah were “in more harmony politically and militarily than at any time.”

In closed-door meetings, American intelligence officials “warned” their Israeli counterparts about sharing classified information to Trump, given the president’s suspicious relationship with Russia, according to a report by Ronen Bergman in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot.
“American officials have said that they believe the Kremlin to have ‘leverages of pressure’ over Trump,” wrote Bergman, who added that U.S.-Israel intelligence cooperation has been increasing over the past decade, targeting Iran and, in some cases, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

“If Israel’s secrets are not secure in the hands of the American spy agencies, that would cause a very serious danger to the security of the state of Israel,” he wrote.

Constitutional law scholar Alan Dershowitz said in an interview on MSNBC that Trump did not break the law in revealing the information to the Russians, since the president is authorized to declassify government secrets as he sees fit, and so the allegations would not be grounds for impeachment. But if the Washington Post report is confirmed, the act would be even more serious than the crimes usually under debate in discussions of impeachment, he said.

Trump’s leak to the Russians “could compromise sources and methods and also result in a cutoff of information from American allies to the United States, as the result of which we would all suffer and be in danger,” said Dershowitz.

...

[slick]

Just wondering---why do commencement speakers usually wear a cap/gown, but the fool at Liberty UNIV. didnt?

[KathyInAR]

Sniff, sniff...do I smell a case of attempted obstruction of justice here?

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...2F+Top+News%29

POLITICS | Tue May 16, 2017 | 6:30pm EDT
Trump asked Comey to shut down Flynn probe: source

By Mark Hosenball | WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump asked then-FBI Director James Comey to shut down an investigation into ties between former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russia, an associate of Comey, who has seen the memo, said on Tuesday.

The associate told Reuters that the details of the document as first reported by the New York Times were accurate.

“I hope you can let this go,” Trump told Comey, according to the language of the memo, which the source confirmed.

The White House denied the report in a statement to reporters, saying it was "not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the President and Mr. Comey."

The memo was written by Comey immediately after his meeting in the White House Oval Office with Trump one day after Flynn resigned over his contacts with Russians.

Flynn's resignation came hours after it was reported that the Justice Department had warned the White House weeks earlier that Flynn could be vulnerable to blackmail for contacts with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak before Trump took power on Jan. 20.

A spokeswoman for the FBI declined to comment on the details of the memo.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball, writing by Julia Edwards Ainsley)

A smart Federal employee knows to document immediately when there is an untoward action by a superior; because if you resist, it will come back to bite you in the ass.

[KathyInAR]

Just wondering---why do commencement speakers usually wear a cap/gown, but the fool at Liberty UNIV. didnt?

I don't know, further I don't know why anyone would want to speak at that school anyway...it has long been know as place of hate. Only in the past few years, since Jerry Falwell, Sr.'s passing, have they tried to rehabilitate their reputation.

[sundealer]

Sniff, sniff...do I smell a case of attempted obstruction of justice here?

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...2F+Top+News%29



A smart Federal employee knows to document immediately when there is an untoward action by a superior; because if you resist, it will come back to bite you in the ass.

Think tarmac.

[KathyInAR]

Think tarmac.

I remember the outrage...where is that outrage now? And then, people had no idea of the conversation...still outrage...and now, knowing and they don't seem to care. I don't get it...

So, are you implying that you think because you believe that the Clintons are guilty of wrongdoing that gives Trump the green light for wrongdoing? Why is Democrat wrongdoing wrong, and Republican wrongdoing okay? I refer to my signature...

[KathyInAR]

Where are all the folks who were braying that "Obama was trampling on the Constitution"
while this idiot is/has tried to do more of that in 4 months than Obama did in 8 years?



http://www.businessinsider.com/trump...rmation-2017-5

Trump reportedly told James Comey to consider jailing reporters for publishing classified information

• Maxwell Tani
• 15h

President Donald Trump suggested former FBI Director James Comey should consider prosecuting reporters for reporting on leaks of classified information, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The Times reported that in a meeting with Comey in February, Trump condemned leaks of classified information to the media, saying that Comey "should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information."

The Supreme Court ruled in 1971 that the press had the right to publish classified information provided by sources, as long as they do not attempt to persuade potential sources to break the law.

Trump has routinely decried leaks of embarrassing information since his unexpected election victory.

In the latest example, the White House condemned leaks that resulted in The Washington Post reporting that Trump himself shared classified information with Russian officials during a meeting last week.

Trump's reported suggestion to Comey came as part a long New York Times report that said Trump asked Comey to drop the investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump's reported suggestion to Comey.

[KathyInAR]

His treatment of those who are trying to keep him from self-destruction

...stupid is as stupid does!



http://thehill.com/homenews/administ...oo-much-report

Trump called McMaster 'a pain' who talks too much: report

BY REBECCA SAVRANSKY - 05/16/17 03:13 PM EDT

President Trump has called National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster "a pain" and complained that he talks too much in meetings, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Some senior advisers worry about leaving Trump alone during meetings with foreign leaders, the report said.

McMaster has tried to subtly correct Trump in conversations when he thinks necessary and help keep him on topic — a habit that has annoyed Trump, the Times wrote.
...

[sundealer]

I remember the outrage...where is that outrage now? And then, people had no idea of the conversation...still outrage...and now, knowing and they don't seem to care. I don't get it...

So, are you implying that you think because you believe that the Clintons are guilty of wrongdoing that gives Trump the green light for wrongdoing? Why is Democrat wrongdoing wrong, and Republican wrongdoing okay? I refer to my signature...

Knowing? Knowing what? No one has seen this 'memo' in question.
Chavez(?) is calling for all notes and such be turned over to the oversite committee. That's a good thing.
What happens when nothing turns up?

And if you still think the meeting on the tarmac to talk about grandkids was just a coincidence, I have a nice piece of prime real estate in south FL and a bridge I can sell you for cheap!

[KathyInAR]

Knowing? Knowing what? No one has seen this 'memo' in question.
Chavez(?) is calling for all notes and such be turned over to the oversite committee. That's a good thing.
What happens when nothing turns up?

And if you still think the meeting on the tarmac to talk about grandkids was just a coincidence, I have a nice piece of prime real estate in south FL and a bridge I can sell you for cheap!

What will you say when the MFR is revealed or authenticated? Will you change your mind?

Like so many who don't know for sure but insist they know what was discussed, I will readily admit I have no idea what was talked about during the meeting between Bill and the Attorney General; however, regardless whether it was an innocent visit between friends or for a more sinister reason, it was a dumb move on their parts and gave the "appearance of impropriety." If they committed wrongdoing it doesn't give carte blanche to others to do the same; if so, then when one party commits a wrongdoing it nullifies it from being a wrongdoing if it then becomes common practice and not considered to be a "wrongdoing" from henceforth.

People want their cake and to eat it too...that is intellectually dishonest...either it is wrong or it is not, regardless who is the perpetrator of the wrongdoing...which is it?

This is really quite an interesting, if long, read...especially if one cares about accuracy, being taken advantage and/or advantage of, so on and so forth... is this what you (the general you) want for our country? I certainly do not, once we have lost all credibility we will have lost everything that makes us who we are.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...t-brain-214658

Trump’s Lies vs. Your Brain

Unfortunately, it’s no contest. Here’s what psychology tells us about life under a leader totally indifferent to the truth.

By MARIA KONNIKOVA
January/February 2017

All presidents lie. Richard Nixon said he was not a crook, yet he orchestrated the most shamelessly crooked act in the modern presidency. Ronald Reagan said he wasn’t aware of the Iran-Contra deal; there’s evidence he was. Bill Clinton said he did not have sex with that woman; he did, or close enough. Lying in politics transcends political party and era. It is, in some ways, an inherent part of the profession of politicking.
But Donald Trump is in a different category. The sheer frequency, spontaneity and seeming irrelevance of his lies have no precedent. Nixon, Reagan and Clinton were protecting their reputations; Trump seems to lie for the pure joy of it. A whopping 70 percent of Trump’s statements that PolitiFact checked during the campaign were false, while only 4 percent were completely true, and 11 percent mostly true. (Compare that to the politician Trump dubbed “crooked,” Hillary Clinton: Just 26 percent of her statements were deemed false.)

Those who have followed Trump’s career say his lying isn’t just a tactic, but an ingrained habit. New York tabloid writers who covered Trump as a mogul on the rise in the 1980s and ’90s found him categorically different from the other self-promoting celebrities in just how often, and pointlessly, he would lie to them. In his own autobiography, Trump used the phrase “truthful hyperbole,” a term coined by his ghostwriter referring to the flagrant truth-stretching that Trump employed, over and over, to help close sales. Trump apparently loved the wording, and went on to adopt it as his own.On January 20, Trump’s truthful hyperboles will no longer be relegated to the world of dealmaking or campaigning. Donald Trump will become the chief executive of the most powerful nation in the world, the man charged with representing that nation globally—and, most importantly, telling the story of America back to Americans. He has the megaphone of the White House press office, his popular Twitter account and a loyal new right-wing media army that will not just parrot his version of the truth but actively argue against attempts to knock it down with verifiable facts. Unless Trump dramatically transforms himself, Americans are going to start living in a new reality, one in which their leader is a manifestly unreliable source.What does this mean for the country—and for the Americans on the receiving end of Trump’s constantly twisting version of reality? It’s both a cultural question and a psychological one. For decades, researchers have been wrestling with the nature of falsehood: How does it arise? How does it affect our brains? Can we choose to combat it? The answers aren’t encouraging for those who worry about the national impact of a reign of untruth over the next four, or eight, years. Lies are exhausting to fight, pernicious in their effects and, perhaps worst of all, almost impossible to correct if their content resonates strongly enough with people’s sense of themselves, which Trump’s clearly do.

What happens when a lie hits your brain? The now-standard model was first proposed by Harvard University psychologist Daniel Gilbert more than 20 years ago. Gilbert argues that people see the world in two steps. First, even just briefly, we hold the lie as true: We must accept something in order to understand it. For instance, if someone were to tell us—hypothetically, of course—that there had been serious voter fraud in Virginia during the presidential election, we must for a fraction of a second accept that fraud did, in fact, take place. Only then do we take the second step, either completing the mental certification process (yes, fraud!) or rejecting it (what? no way). Unfortunately, while the first step is a natural part of thinking—it happens automatically and effortlessly—the second step can be easily disrupted. It takes work: We must actively choose to accept or reject each statement we hear. In certain circumstances, that verification simply fails to take place. As Gilbert writes, human minds, “when faced with shortages of time, energy, or conclusive evidence, may fail to unaccept the ideas that they involuntarily accept during comprehension.”

Our brains are particularly ill-equipped to deal with lies when they come not singly but in a constant stream, and Trump, we know, lies constantly, about matters as serious as the election results and as trivial as the tiles at Mar-a-Lago. (According to his butler, Anthony Senecal, Trump once said the tiles in a nursery at the West Palm Beach club had been made by Walt Disney himself; when Senecal protested, Trump had a single response: “Who cares?”) When we are overwhelmed with false, or potentially false, statements, our brains pretty quickly become so overworked that we stop trying to sift through everything. It’s called cognitive load—our limited cognitive resources are overburdened. It doesn’t matter how implausible the statements are; throw out enough of them, and people will inevitably absorb some. Eventually, without quite realizing it, our brains just give up trying to figure out what is true.But Trump goes a step further. If he has a particular untruth he wants to propagate—not just an undifferentiated barrage—he simply states it, over and over. As it turns out, sheer repetition of the same lie can eventually mark it as true in our heads. It’s an effect known as illusory truth, first discovered in the ’70s and most recently demonstrated with the rise of fake news. In its original demonstration, a group of psychologists had people rate statements as true or false on three different occasions over a two-week period. Some of the statements appeared only once, while others were repeated. The repeated statements were far more likely to be judged as true the second and third time they appeared—regardless of their actual validity. Keep repeating that there was serious voter fraud, and the idea begins to seep into people’s heads. Repeat enough times that you were against the war in Iraq, and your actual record on it somehow disappears.

...

The distressing reality is that our sense of truth is far more fragile than we would like to think it is—especially in the political arena, and especially when that sense of truth is twisted by a figure in power. As the 19th-century Scottish philosopher Alexander Bain put it, “The great master fallacy of the human mind is believing too much.” False beliefs, once established, are incredibly tricky to correct. A leader who lies constantly creates a new landscape, and a citizenry whose sense of reality may end up swaying far more than they think possible. It’s little wonder that authoritarian regimes with sophisticated propaganda operations can warp the worldviews of entire populations. “You are annihilated, exhausted, you can’t control yourself or remember what you said two minutes before. You feel that all is lost,” as one man who had been subject to Mao Zedong’s “reeducation” campaign in China put it to the psychiatrist Robert Lifton. “You accept anything he says.”

[Fastcar]

Some folks can't come to terms with the fact that they voted for the consummate Bullshitter. Now they are stuck with him and don't know how to step away.

[KathyInAR]

Some folks can't come to terms with the fact that they voted for the consummate Bullshitter. Now they are stuck with him and don't know how to step away.

Here's an op-ed piece from a conservative columnists...a person who, even though a conservative, recognizes the danger that is Donald Trump.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/o...rump.html?_r=1

he Opinion Pages | OP-ED COLUMNIST

The 25th Amendment Solution for Removing Trump


Ross Douthat MAY 16, 2017

It was just three days and a lifetime ago that I wrote a column about Donald Trump’s unfitness for the presidency that affected a world-weary tone. Nothing about this White House’s chaos was surprising given the style of Trump’s campaign, I argued. None of the breaking scandals necessarily suggested high crimes as opposed to simple omni-incompetence. And given that Republicans made their peace with Trump’s unfitness many months ago, it seemed pointless to expect their leaders to move against him unless something far, far worse came out.

As I said, three days and a lifetime. If the G.O.P.’s surrender to candidate Trump made exhortations about Republican politicians’ duty to their country seem like so much pointless verbiage, now President Trump has managed to make exhortation seem unavoidable again.

He has done so, if several days’ worth of entirely credible leaks and revelations are to be believed, by demonstrating in a particularly egregious fashion why the question of “fitness” matters in the first place.

The presidency is not just another office. It has become, for good reasons and bad ones, a seat of semi-monarchical political power, a fixed place on which unimaginable pressures are daily brought to bear, and the final stopping point for decisions that can lead very swiftly to life or death for people the world over.

One does not need to be a Marvel superhero or Nietzschean Übermensch to rise to this responsibility. But one needs some basic attributes: a reasonable level of intellectual curiosity, a certain seriousness of purpose, a basic level of managerial competence, a decent attention span, a functional moral compass, a measure of restraint and self-control. And if a president is deficient in one or more of them, you can be sure it will be exposed.

Trump is seemingly deficient in them all. Some he perhaps never had, others have presumably atrophied with age. He certainly has political talent — charisma, a raw cunning, an instinct for the jugular, a form of the common touch, a certain creativity that normal politicians lack. He would not have been elected without these qualities. But they are not enough, they cannot fill the void where other, very normal human gifts should be.

There is, as my colleague David Brooks wrote Tuesday, a basic childishness to the man who now occupies the presidency. That is the simplest way of understanding what has come tumbling into light in the last few days: The presidency now has king like qualities, and we have a child upon the throne.

It is a child who blurts out classified information in order to impress distinguished visitors. It is a child who asks the head of the F.B.I. why the rules cannot be suspended for his friend and ally. It is a child who does not understand the obvious consequences of his more vindictive actions — like firing the very same man whom you had asked to potentially obstruct justice on your say-so.

A child cannot be president. I love my children; they cannot have the nuclear codes.

But a child also cannot really commit “high crimes and misdemeanors” in any usual meaning of the term. There will be more talk of impeachment now, more talk of a special prosecutor for the Russia business; well and good. But ultimately I do not believe that our president sufficiently understands the nature of the office that he holds, the nature of the legal constraints that are supposed to bind him, perhaps even the nature of normal human interactions, to be guilty of obstruction of justice in the Nixonian or even Clintonian sense of the phrase. I do not believe he is really capable of the behind-the-scenes conspiring that the darker Russia theories envision. And it is hard to betray an oath of office whose obligations you evince no sign of really understanding or respecting.

Which is not an argument for allowing him to occupy that office. It is an argument, instead, for using a constitutional mechanism more appropriate to this strange situation than impeachment: the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which allows for the removal of the president if the vice president and a majority of the cabinet informs the Congress that he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” and (should the president contest his own removal) a two-thirds vote by Congress confirms the cabinet’s judgment.

The Trump situation is not exactly the sort that the amendment’s Cold War-era designers were envisioning. He has not endured an assassination attempt or suffered a stroke or fallen prey to Alzheimer’s. But his incapacity to really govern, to truly execute the serious duties that fall to him to carry out, is nevertheless testified to daily — not by his enemies or external critics, but by precisely the men and women whom the Constitution asks to stand in judgment on him, the men and women who serve around him in the White House and the cabinet.

Read the things that these people, members of his inner circle, his personally selected appointees, say daily through anonymous quotations to the press. (And I assure you they say worse off the record.) They have no respect for him, indeed they seem to palpitate with contempt for him, and to regard their mission as equivalent to being stewards for a syphilitic emperor.

It is not squishy New York Times conservatives who regard the president as a child, an intellectual void, a hopeless case, a threat to national security; it is people who are self-selected loyalists, who supported him in the campaign, who daily go to work for him. And all this, in the fourth month of his administration.

This will not get better. It could easily get worse. And as hard and controversial as a 25th Amendment remedy would be, there are ways in which Trump’s removal today should be less painful for conservatives than abandoning him in the campaign would have been — since Hillary Clinton will not be retroactively elected if Trump is removed, nor will Neil Gorsuch be unseated. Any cost to Republicans will be counted in internal divisions and future primary challenges, not in immediate policy defeats.

Meanwhile, from the perspective of the Republican leadership’s duty to their country, and indeed to the world that our imperium bestrides, leaving a man this witless and unmastered in an office with these powers and responsibilities is an act of gross negligence, which no objective on the near-term political horizon seems remotely significant enough to justify.

There will be time to return again to world-weariness and cynicism as this agony drags on. Right now, though, I will be boring in my sincerity: I respectfully ask Mike Pence and Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell to reconsider their support for a man who never should have had his party’s nomination, never should have been elevated to this office, never should have been endorsed and propped up and defended by people who understood his unfitness all along.

Now is a day for redemption. Now is an acceptable time.

[sundealer]

Knowing? Knowing what? No one has seen this 'memo' in question.
Chavez(?) is calling for all notes and such be turned over to the oversite committee. That's a good thing.
What happens when nothing turns up?

And if you still think the meeting on the tarmac to talk about grandkids was just a coincidence, I have a nice piece of prime real estate in south FL and a bridge I can sell you for cheap!

I knew I had the name wrong.
This is a good thing.

http://www.today.com/video/jason-cha...m_npd_nn_fb_ma

[Fastcar]

The end is near. This is how it will play out.

No impeachment.

Dumb Ass can't stand to lose.

He will resign and then claim victory.

Personally, I could care less how he leaves, as long as he leaves quickly. My 401 can't take another day like yesterday.

[KathyInAR]

The end is near. This is how it will play out.

No impeachment.

Dumb Ass can't stand to lose.

He will resign and then claim victory.

Personally, I could care less how he leaves, as long as he leaves quickly. My 401 can't take another day like yesterday.

I think you are close to exactly how it will end...and the sooner the better...