Red Mosquito

Stunned!

Anybody win their "guess the date" office pool on this?

Bloomberg: Tillerson Asks Why U.S. Taxpayers Should Care About Ukraine

With one offhand remark, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson left European diplomats befuddled at a gathering in Italy.

“Why should U.S. taxpayers be interested in Ukraine?” Tillerson asked foreign ministers discussing Russia’s intervention there at a Group of Seven gathering Tuesday in Lucca, Italy.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who later recounted the exchange to reporters, said he responded that American taxpayers ought to want a European Union that’s “strong politically, strong from a security point of view, and strong economically.”

Asked what Tillerson was driving at with his question about Ukraine, State Department spokesman R.C. Hammond responded with two words: “Rhetorical device.”

Live to win 'till you die

Daily Beast: Carter Page Still Pushing for Close Ties With Russia

Despite all the controversy swirling around him, former Trump adviser Carter Page continues to advocate for a closer relationship between Russia and the United States.

Page appears undaunted by the attention paid to him by the House Intelligence Committee, where he was called out by Democrats in an open hearing; by his status as a person of interest to the Senate Intelligence Committee; and by a Buzzfeed article which revealed that Page had passed documents to a Russian intelligence agent in New York in 2013.

Not even a Washington Post article Tuesday evening, which revealed that the FBI had sought and obtained a secret court order to monitor his communications, has driven Page into silence. To obtain the order, the FBI would have needed to show probable cause that Page was an agent for a foreign power or in some way engaged in a clandestine intelligence activity.

Page merely took the latest revelations as evidence that he has been the victim of the American government’s efforts to silence him. He was defiant, framing himself as a “dissident” whose support for closer U.S.-Russia ties had made him a target and a victim.

“I was so happy to hear that further confirmation is now being revealed. It shows how low the Clinton/Obama regime went to destroy our democracy and suppress dissidents who did not fully support their failed foreign policy,” Page told The Daily Beast on Tuesday evening, in a series of texts. “It will be interesting to see what comes out when the unjustified basis for those FISA requests [[from the FBI]] are more fully disclosed over time.”

Last week, following Bashar al-Assad regime’s chemical weapon attack in Syria and subsequent United States cruise missile strikes, Page sent an email to The Daily Beast lamenting that deaths could have been prevented had Russia and the United States been closer. The email was totally unprompted, suggesting that Page is still undertaking an active campaign to push for friendlier relations.

He argued that the ongoing investigations into Russia’s interference in America’s 2016 presidential elections, now taking place in the House and Senate, were distractions that prevented detente.

“Instead of Congress encouraging negotiations with Moscow which might have otherwise helped prevent the chemical attack of 4 April and other recent atrocities in Syria, the continued distraction of last year’s fabrications stood as an obvious roadblock to any serious collaboration that might have saved innumerable lives,” Page wrote.

10 Ben Carson is trapped in an elevator at a public housing building.
20 print 10
30 goto 20

Execute.

Second time on one week he's said '...the Presidents attempts to destabilise Syria'.

I get such a kick out of the stock/AP photos that outlets use for their headlines. Like when it's a negative Trump story, they inevitably use one where Trump's brow is furrowed and he's rubbing his temples or something. Today's WP story on some negative comments Trump made about Bannon is so great: they've got a picture of Bannon adjusting his tie, with a "It's getting hot in here" implication.

So NATO is no longer obsolete and China is no longer a currency manipulator.

I bet the nationalists are thrilled.

I saw her today at the reception
A glass of wine in her hand

McParadigm wrote:So NATO is no longer obsolete and China is no longer a currency manipulator.

I bet the nationalists are thrilled.

BurtReynolds wrote:

McParadigm wrote:So NATO is no longer obsolete and China is no longer a currency manipulator.

I bet the nationalists are thrilled.

one of these weekends SNL is going to do nothing but air clips from what the Trump team did that week.

I do love when his unfilterable lack of self-awareness ends up accidentally sounding humble.

hopefully as he gets more and more exposure to real world issues, and less of the hollywood pr bubble, more of the repressed moderate agnostic new yorker comes out and we see less and less of the whatever-steve-bannon-and-the-other-consultant-fucks-like-him put in his talking points in order to win the election

McParadigm wrote:

This is where the war or words / semantics gets interesting given that GCHQ repeatedly denied spying on Trump's team.

Bi_3 wrote:

McParadigm wrote:

This is where the war or words / semantics gets interesting given that GCHQ repeatedly denied spying on Trump's team.

GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added.

Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russians, sources said.

The European countries that passed on electronic intelligence – known as sigint – included Germany, Estonia and Poland. Australia, a member of the “Five Eyes” spying alliance that also includes the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand, also relayed material, one source said.

Another source suggested the Dutch and the French spy agency, the General Directorate for External Security or DGSE, were contributors.

It is understood that GCHQ was at no point carrying out a targeted operation against Trump or his team or proactively seeking information. The alleged conversations were picked up by chance as part of routine surveillance of Russian intelligence assets. Over several months, different agencies targeting the same people began to see a pattern of connections that were flagged to intelligence officials in the US.

Exactly my point. Intentional vs repeated incidental is tricky to understand sometimes.

I agree, insomuch as it's easy to disinformation the concept into politically dubious territory. My point in quoting that part of the article was that it will be interesting to see if a previously dropped thread picks back up in the attempts to do so: that it wasn't just the Brits. It was, for all practical purposes, the entire "Western" world.

We MOAB'd Afghanistan??

McParadigm wrote:We MOAB'd Afghanistan??

yup. Geezes christ.

Trump felt the power and he wants more.