[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2017-February-14, 08:54, said:

We will see how this goes, but I think it does not end with the resignation. In his resignation letter Flynn apologizes for misleading Spence. Yes, but that is only part of it.. As I understand the sequence of events, Obama imposed sanctions expecting a Russian response, Flynn talked with Kislyak, Putin said he would hold off on the response, Trump praised Putin. A person does not have to be a conspiracy theorist, and I don't think that I am, to see some probable connections here. An honest letter from Flynn would have acknowledged the conversations about sanctions and expressed regret for that error of judgment. Misleading Spence about what occurred is small stuff compared to the fact that the conversation with Kislyak on the sanctions occurred at all. And, I gather, the fact that it occurred is no longer in dispute even by the Trumpites. Whether the discussion of sanctions was an inadvertent error or a planned act on behalf of Trump can still be disputed, but really an inadvertent error of this magnitude by a highly experienced individual seems hard to believe.

We, the People, need to see Trump's tax returns.

Quote

Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security adviser for strategic communications under former President Barack Obama, said: "When campaign chairman and NSA both resign over Russia ties there is more. Manafort and Flynn had nothing in common except Russia and Trump."

As Deep Throat said to Woodward: "Follow the money."

[kenberg]

I found this David Ignatius piece interesting, no doubt partly because it supports a long time view of mine. He speaks highly of Flynn's work in JSOC:

Quote

Flynn made his name perfecting the "find, fix, finish" tactics employed by JSOC against al-Qaeda in Iraq. The intelligence haul from one night's raid would be processed in a few hours, and the leads from cellphones and laptops would drive the next night's raids.

Those inside JSOC's super-secret operations felt "we're conquering the world," recalled one colleague. Flynn continued to shine as intelligence chief at U.S. Central Command, then at the Joint Staff at the Pentagon and finally in Afghanistan, where I met him. His appointment to head the DIA in 2012 was the culmination of what had been a charmed rise to the top.

My point is that people can be really good, excellent, at some things and not much good at other things. Surely everyone has seen this, but it often is completely ignored. When I was very young I delivered furniture and did a fine job. I also tried selling door to door and was awful at it. I took the GRE's and won a fellowship. A couple of years before that I thought that I would earn some money delivering mail but I failed the Civil Service exam for the job. I may be an extreme case, but I view this as illustrating a truth. During the campaign Trump supporters often noted, and probably overstated, Trump's business success. However successful he was or wasn't, it need not translate into a successful presidency. And this is hardly the first time. Often you hear the argument "He (or She) has been really successful at X so clearly he (or she) will be really great at doing Y. This has always seemed wrong to me from the git-go but it appears that we are right now seeing some dramatic illustrations of how wrong it is.





I am not hoping for a failed Trump presidency, I hope he gets his act together. A first step would be to forget about the crowd size at his inauguration and stop yapping about how fraudulent voting cost him New Hampshire or whatever. But, really, that's cosmetic. I mentioned before about hearing a Republican say "I'm not from the wing of the party that thinks Putin is our friend". Trump needs to listen to this guy rather than Bannon. And get rid of Kelleyanne. Republicans won, so I expect some conservative legislation. I can live with that. What we are getting is destructive idiocy.





Quite possibly Trump, for business reasons or psychological reasons, is incapable of rational action. I regard that as very possible I do not hope for it.

[Winstonm]

To the current Russian contact crisis, are these the words of a rational mind?

Quote

“This Russian connection non-sense is merely an attempt to cover-up the many mistakes made in Hillary Clinton's losing campaign,” Trump wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning. That post followed an earlier one, in which the president wrote that “the fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred. @MSNBC & @CNN are unwatchable. @foxandfriends is great!”

“Information is being illegally given to the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost by the intelligence community (NSA and FBI?). Just like Russia,” Trump added in a third post.

Unlike Ken, I think it imperative for this president to fail, and the faster he fails and is replaced the safer we will all be. With believers such as the Gorkas, Stephen Miller, and Steve Bannon in positions of influence, the ideas of white nationalism are hailed as progressive and hatred and vilification are praised as patriotism.

These are dangerous times. Thankfully, this group of cowboys can't rope or shoot - they only know how to stamp the Trump brand on their ignorance.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2017-February-15, 09:38, said:

To the current Russian contact crisis, are these the words of a rational mind?



Unlike Ken, I think it imperative for this president to fail, and the faster he fails and is replaced the safer we will all be. With believers such as the Gorkas, Stephen Miller, and Steve Bannon in positions of influence, the ideas of white nationalism are hailed as progressive and hatred and vilification are praised as patriotism.

These are dangerous times. Thankfully, this group of cowboys can't rope or shoot - they only know how to stamp the Trump brand on their ignorance.

I may come around in the not too distant future. One of the things that strikes me is that they are not even good at lying. For something they do so much, I would expect a higher level of skill.

[barmar]

mikeh, on 2017-February-14, 11:56, said:

Based on the foreword, I expect to learn how an educated, industrious and (for many) well-intentioned citizenry became compliant with or even complicit in the abolition of democracy and the imposition of a single-party dictatorship in a handful of years.

Doesn't apply here, our citizenry isn't that well educated.

[barmar]

kenberg, on 2017-February-15, 10:03, said:

I may come around in the not too distant future. One of the things that strikes me is that they are not even good at lying. For something they do so much, I would expect a higher level of skill.

You'd think so, but it seems to be working well enough for them so far. In fact, making the lies more blatant could be part of the strategy, since they dominate the conversation so much. That seemed to be part of the point that John Oliver was making.

[barmar]

kenberg, on 2017-February-15, 09:30, said:

When I was very young I delivered furniture and did a fine job. I also tried selling door to door and was awful at it.

Is there any situation you can't relate to an anecdote from your life?

You're like our own Forest Gump.

[y66]

kenberg related this story here in the WC years ago which I have often thought of in the context of Trump.

Quote

A grandson, when he was younger, had trouble with self-control When he was six or so I was supervising him at some function and I picked him up and removed him from a game where he was being a pain. I physically restrained him from rejoining the game. But I also explained to him that he would be getting bigger and I would not always be able to do this, so his job was to learn how to get himself under control. He paid close attention. Most kids want to learn how to interact successfully with others. If they get to be sixteen or so without learning this, the fat is in the fire.

I suspect this did not happen in Trump's formative years. The things money can't buy.

[barmar]

y66, on 2017-February-15, 14:05, said:

kenberg related this story here in the WC years ago which I have often thought of in the context of Trump.

LOL, it's not just Ken who relates everything to an anecdote from Ken's life.

Quote

I suspect this did not happen in Trump's formative years. The things money can't buy.

Indeed, Trump definitely seems like a grown up "spoiled brat". He was born with a silver spoon in his hand, his father helped set him going on his real estate career, and now he thinks he's entitled to whatever he wants and no one should ever contradict him.

[kenberg]

Indeed I often do think back to personal experiences when evaluating a situation. Actually, I think we all do this one way or another. Logic allows us to deduce that B follows logically from A. But we still must choose whether to start from A or from A'. Choosing A' might lead to Not B. Or at least to B'. So choice precedes logic. Just call me Jean-Paul. Or Forrest.

Last Sunday a grandson became an Eagle Scout and his cousin, my daughter's husband's brother's daughter, was there. I had not seen her for a couple of years and after a bit I recalled that the last time we talked she had been thinking of changing high schools for social reasons. I asked her about this. "I didn't do that, it would have been the worst mistake of my life". Ah to be seventeen again when such a choice might qualify as the worst mistake of one's life. It made my day.

I now return this thread to its regularly scheduled programming.

[Winstonm]

barmar, on 2017-February-15, 10:50, said:

Is there any situation you can't relate to an anecdote from your life?

You're like our own Forest Gump.

Politics is like a box of chocolates; heat turns it into a gooey mess.

[Winstonm]

I am sentimentally wishing I could see Roseanne Roseannadanna describing an encounter with Donald Trump at Mar-a-lago. "There was this little ball of sweat hangin' from the end of his nose. It was disgusting!"

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2017-February-15, 14:05, said:

kenberg related this story here in the WC years ago which I have often thought of in the context of Trump.


I suspect this did not happen in Trump's formative years. The things money can't buy.

It is not only Trump and money. This seems to be rampant in our society.

Edit: Just saw this. Can you imagine the psychological sickness that drives this president to go hunting ego gratification in Florida when his administration most needs him to be its leader? Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

Quote

President Donald Trump is returning to the trail.

The president will hold a rally Saturday afternoon at a hangar in Melbourne, Florida. It will be his first campaign-style rally since his so-called thank-you tour during the transition period to states he won in November.


“Join me in Florida this Saturday at 5pm for a rally at the Orlando-Melbourne International Airport!” Trump tweeted from his personal Twitter handle, along with a link for supporters to RSVP.

[Winstonm]

This is a must read Washington Post article from August 2016 that presciently explains Trump and why there are so many billionaires elevated to cabinet posts.

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Quite a lot has already been written, including by me, on the multiple connections between Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Trump campaign. But the deeper point has not really been driven home: The real problem with Trump isn’t that he is sympathetic to Russian oligarchs, it’s that he is a Russian oligarch, albeit one who happens to be American.

Quote

As a candidate, Trump has used the same kinds of tactics that Manafort, on behalf of Russian and pro-Russian clients, deployed in Ukraine: pumping up ethnic (in Trump’s case, white ethnic) discontent, playing on public fear and hatred, undermining trust in democracy. In 2006, Manafort instructed his client, Yanukovych, to begin talking up the possibility of election fraud. Yanukovych’s party began training election observers. It’s an amazing coincidence, but these are exactly the same tactics that Trump has also deployed. And now, as Manafort’s replacement, Trump has selected a man from the closest thing to Sputnik News in the United States: Breitbart.com, a completely dishonest propaganda machine that seeks to sow information chaos under the guise of producing news. Massive, negative trolling operations; bots that repeat angry slogans; the constant repetition of fake stories — these are tactics used to excess in Putin’s Russia as well as Trump’s America.

[barmar]

kenberg, on 2017-February-15, 15:29, said:

Indeed I often do think back to personal experiences when evaluating a situation. Actually, I think we all do this one way or another.

Of course we all do. But we don't all have relevant experiences, you seem to have one for everything. I guess you've just lived a fuller life than me, or have a better memory. I regularly marvel at the ability of people to write autobiographies with details about so many experiences in their lives. I can only remember little snippets of things -- like when we took a family vacation to Disney World, I remember that we drove down the east coast and stopped at the infamous "South of the Border" souvenir area along the way and I got a huge sombrero.

[Zelandakh]

barmar, on 2017-February-16, 10:00, said:

Of course we all do. But we don't all have relevant experiences, you seem to have one for everything.

Ken is the Miss Marple of the BBF world!

[kenberg]

barmar, on 2017-February-16, 10:00, said:

Of course we all do. But we don't all have relevant experiences, you seem to have one for everything. I guess you've just lived a fuller life than me, or have a better memory. I regularly marvel at the ability of people to write autobiographies with details about so many experiences in their lives. I can only remember little snippets of things -- like when we took a family vacation to Disney World, I remember that we drove down the east coast and stopped at the infamous "South of the Border" souvenir area along the way and I got a huge sombrero.

I have a long standing interest in what makes us who we are. I don't think that the answer is simple. This is a political thread, but perhaps such questions are fundamental to our political life.

S to what makes us, see
http://www.npr.org/s...k-in-the-future

"Tiger by the tail" comes to mind.

Added: Miss Marple? Better than Forrest Rump! But are there other choices? At least it's not Jessica Fletcher.
Hmmm! I can't right off think of anyone over 70 that I would like to be seen as. Literature has a gap here.

[Winstonm]

Quote

"....It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
-Joseph Goebbels

Quote

An exasperated President Donald Trump on Thursday gathered the media in the White House's East Room for a dressing down in which he claimed that he "inherited a mess" and that the "dishonest media" is not giving his presidency the credit it deserves.

“I'm making this presentation directly to the American people with the media present, which is an honor to have you, this morning, because many of our nation's reporters and folks will not tell you the truth. And will not treat the wonderful people of our country with the respect that they deserve,” Trump said during a news conference that was billed as a rollout for his new labor secretary pick.

But after he quickly announced that Alexander Acosta is his new nominee, Trump launched into a rant. “The press has become so dishonest that if we don't talk about it we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people. Tremendous disservice. We have to talk about it. We have to find out what's going on because the press honestly is out of control," he said.

“I inherited a mess. It’s a mess. At home and abroad, a mess. Jobs are pouring out of the country," Trump added.

This liar's credibility is so shot by now that cult-like brainwashing is the only explanation for anyone to still believe his schtick.

[Winstonm]

"The leaks are real. The news is fake." Donald Trump, 2-26-17

The Trump cultists need deprogramming. ABC reports that Trump supporters thought this press conference was a Trump victory.

[Trinidad]

Trump is starting to be very philosophical: He slowly, but steadily, comes to the conclusion that the rest of the world is fake. At some point, the fakeness will get so close to him that he will ask himself the fundamental question: "Am I real?".

And then we have come full circle, because for years already most of us have been asking ourselves: "Is this guy real?!?"



Rik