Re: The 47th POTUS - Donald J. Trump

[The Argonaut]

What do you do for a living, Orph?

[Orpheus]

Worked in education for almost 10 years, 5 in a state school for the blind and 5 for a non-profit organization, and I do odd jobs and do creative gigs here and there.

[lennytheweedwhacker]

Worked in education for almost 10 years, 5 in a state school for the blind and 5 for a non-profit organization, and I do odd jobs and do creative gigs here and there.

god bless you and thank you for your service

[McParadigm]

The Trump Administration May Evict the Press from the White House

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/ne ... ite-house/

According to three senior officials on the transition team, a plan to evict the press corps from the White House is under serious consideration by the incoming Trump Administration. If the plan goes through, one of the officials said, the media will be removed from the confines of the White House press room, where it has worked for decades.

[Norah]

that is absolutely insane

[BurtReynolds]

[Bi_3]

It's nothing new, but I'm constantly curious by what possible 'establishment' could possibly exist that a New York billionaire like Donald Trump could possibly not belong to.

When it comes down to it, I think the main thing about Trump and Russia is that he's been consistent on Russia pretty much the entirety of his campaign. And this is someone who is not consistent on anything, and will often find himself incorporating two directly opposing positions into the same sentence. Russia is really maybe the only thing he's always toed the same line on, and that's just kind of bizarre.

I have no idea if that dossier is true, but none of it is really outlandish, besides the "everything is connected"-ness of it all. I think the far more likely, and far more ominous probability is that Donald Trump sucks up to Putin because, in the sense that Donald Trump thinks enough to have aspirations, he aspires to Putin. I would imagine Putin is the type of leader he wants to be.

It entirely possible that Trump thinks they only real way to defeat Islamic fundamentalism is to ally with Russia. It's also possible he is setting up his businesses to be the go-between for multinationals to access Russian sphere-of-influence markets, ala the Clinton Foundation. Or it's entirely possible that someone on Trump's team actually was receiving Russian assistance without Trump knowing. Or any of hundreds of other not-a-spy explanations.

But to go back and consider what some folks seem hell bent on believing, that he is cultivated traitor, and that there is this huge trail of circumstantial evidence that confirms it. Let's say all of that evidence is true in the sense that all these secret meeting happened and everything not golden-shower related in the buzzfeed 'leak' is true. What would essentially have to happen is that the RNC, FBI, NSA, and CIA would have to be in on it or be acting willfully ignorant of it and somehow kept all of the analysts, admins, agents, and managers with access to the info from leaking it until days before his election. Is this really what we believe now?

[McParadigm]

You're oversimplifying the way things played out. In point of fact, almost all of this WAS out there before the election. It wasn't verifiable in some cases, it wasn't all put together in a string, and most of it was lost in the media's 'kitten and a laser pointer' game of "what did Trump tweet today?"

It was really the intelligence briefing, or just the announcing thereof, that brought it to center stage, which in turn ignited a lot of deep tissue journalism. I assume because Clinton emails weren't around for the easy win anymore.

But you're right in that we are currently left with what seems like an impossibly long string of "coincidences," but no direct verification. What shouldn't be ignored is that we also have red flag events. Other nation's intel groups confirming that they've been tracking this. The Sunday Times today is reporting on British concerns about the CIA under Trump knowing the identities of some of their spies. US intelligence briefs Israeli intelligence on what they know, and the Israelis decide to reign in on information sharing with America. The Israelis! Not sharing information with the most blindly pro-Israel president in decades!

God forgive me for quoting Rolling Stone in this, but:

We're either learning the outlines of the most extraordinary compromise to date of an incoming American president by a foreign power, or we're watching an unparalleled libel and media overreach.

The only solution is an immediate unveiling of all the facts and an urgent public investigation. A half-assed whispering campaign a week and a half from a Trump presidency, with BuzzFeed at the center of the action, isn't going to cut it.

That second paragraph is a little absurd, but so is being asked to move on from this without being offered any better understanding than we have thus far been provided.

But don't worry, everybody. Conway is already test driving her post-inauguration dismissal in interviews this morning, once Trump is sworn in: "It’s not top secret to keep it from the public, but to protect the public.”

[dimejinky99]

Read the pic
Perfect

[digster]

It's nothing new, but I'm constantly curious by what possible 'establishment' could possibly exist that a New York billionaire like Donald Trump could possibly not belong to.

Maybe the establishment that has been trying for over a year to get rid of him? I don't see why this is so hard to imagine. He's got a lot of money, but few allies in high places. And the ones he has, he's had to bludgeon into submission. There has very clearly been a sustained effort by the Republicans, the Democrats, the media as well multi-billionaire interests, both at home and abroad, to make him go away (probably for good reasons, possibly for horrible ones). This isn't wild-eyed conspiracy theory truther stuff here.

I wouldn't call it a conspiracy theory, but it is a pretty idealized and romantic description of Donald Trump's entire sales pitch as a candidate, a sales pitch that was in large extent utter bullshit. I get the notion that he was in some ways a man apart from these interests, but in many respects that couldn't be further from the truth, and many of the choices he's made in assembling the team for his administration illustrate that better than I could.

This is in general the rote pushback against the notion of a single-minded cabal of an 'establishment,' that somehow Republicans, Democrats, the Big Bad Media, billionaires throughout the world and the intelligence community all decided to get on the same page and work in tandem to destroy a candidate who in many respects will do strengthen many of those already-empowered interests. I just personally think that suffers from the same kind of "everything is connected"-ness view that is still the fishiest part of the dossier.

[96583UP]

Read the pic
Perfect

amazing

[B]

More Mark Hamill reading Trump tweets as the Joker.

https://audioboom.com/posts/5495377-ret ... -trumpster

[Bi_3]

<snip>

God forgive me for quoting Rolling Stone in this, but:

We're either learning the outlines of the most extraordinary compromise to date of an incoming American president by a foreign power, or we're watching an unparalleled libel and media overreach.

The only solution is an immediate unveiling of all the facts and an urgent public investigation. A half-assed whispering campaign a week and a half from a Trump presidency, with BuzzFeed at the center of the action, isn't going to cut it.

That second paragraph is a little absurd, but so is being asked to move on from this without being offered any better understanding than we have thus far been provided.

<snip>

I actually agree with you here. The sum of it all is just too much 'coincidence' to just brush aside as if it's nothing. But a few things are creating a mental block for me:

- I honestly can no longer tell what is fact and what is opinion w/r to reporting on Trump. I know the whole 'whose bias do you seek?' bit, but it's so out of control. It's not just the buzzfeed disaster, that Esquire thing you put up earlier is great example. The title, though it conveys fact, is clearly written to fool people who don't read the article into to thinking Trump is intentionally blocking journalists from the whitehouse, when it's really that they intend to add more press to the pool (one would assume the kind that buys into his bullshit) and there is not enough room.

-This myopic desire to connect the man himself to Russia versus the far more likely situation that one of his team is getting info from Putin's crew without Trump himself knowing. It reeks of a desperate attempt to delegitimize him (or somehow trigger immediate impeachment) and falls right into the 'establishment' paranoia that he banked on to get elected. Think about how absurd the idea of a blackmail video against the POTUS is in the modern age. How could you believe it was true? A high school computer club plus about $500 for hookers could probably make a nearly flawless fake given how much existing footage there is of him. It's useless as a blackmail tool for anything other than spinning up the anti-Trump zealots.

[McParadigm]

The story of the 21st century is being written this year, which has the potential to be a power structure pivot point on a level with World War One.

[B]

[BurtReynolds]

I'm looking forward to all the inauguration day rioting.

[McParadigm]

I'm looking forward to all the inauguration day rioting.

James O'Keefe post.

[dimejinky99]

'NATO is obsolete' says trump. He's not even pretending he's not putins puppet.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/ ... t=20170116

[BurtReynolds]

'NATO is obsolete' says trump. He's not even pretending he's not putins puppet.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/ ... t=20170116

It is obsolete and probably shouldn't have outlasted the Cold War.

The US has 800 military bases in 70 countries. Russia has about 12.

There are 28 member states of NATO, an alliance purpose built for war with Russia. 5 of them border Russia. Explain to me again why NATO continued to exist after the Cold War?

But then again European reliance on US military makes them more controllable, so we wouldn't want them to have to develop their own militaries.

[BurtReynolds]