Donald Trump and the Deathly Fallout (Part 15)

[GreyhoundFan]

"Many think this law is obsolete. It could actually be a big problem for Trump."

Quote

A major question remains as to whether President Trump’s inner circle violated federal law before coming into office by communicating with foreign governments and undermining the official policies of President Barack Obama. But if you listen to almost any recent commentary, you would think that the law in question — 1799’s Logan Act — is essentially a dead letter. Why? We’re told that no one has been convicted of violating the Logan Act since the law was signed more than 200 years ago.

That’s true, but that’s not nearly the end of the argument. What commentators miss is that the Logan Act has been “enforced” and relied upon time and again by the executive branch, most notably through the State Department.

In the 19th century, secretaries of state kicked foreign ambassadors out of the country for aiding and abetting violations of the Logan Act. The Spanish minister to the United States in 1805 and the British consul during the Civil War were expelled on that basis. (It is fair to wonder if the current Russian ambassador — Sergey Kislyak — should meet a similar fate for his conversations with ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn before Trump’s inauguration.)

During periods of tension with foreign governments, the State Department restricted — and sometimes suspended — U.S. passports out of concern for Logan Act violations. President Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state invoked the Logan Act in denying passports to U.S. delegates to the Stockholm Peace Conference in 1917. In 1944, Secretary of State Cordell Hull advised President Franklin D. Roosevelt to include explicit conditions in the issuance of passports to a prominent professor and religious leader to travel to the Soviet Union “particularly in view of possible repercussions which may arise under the ‘Logan Act.’ ”

...

I didn't realize how much the Logan Act had come into play in the past. I guess it's because the Agent Orange administration is just a walking violation of pretty much everything that is good and decent.

[clueliss]

A judge has ordered Kris Kobach (sec of state in Brownbackistan (Kansas)) to produce the documents he shared with Guess Who.  This is related to his man handling Kansas elections I think.  

http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article142866014.html

Quote

BY BRYAN LOWRY

blowry@kcstar.com

 

A federal magistrate judge on Wednesday ordered Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to hand over documents that he brought to a meeting with President Donald Trump outlining a strategic plan for the Department of Homeland Security for a private review.

Kobach met with Trump in November in Bedminster, N.J., and was photographed carrying a stack of papers with headings “DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY” and “KOBACH STRATEGIC PLAN FOR THE FIRST 365 DAYS.”

He’s been ordered to turn over those papers for an in camera review by 5 p.m. Thursday by federal magistrate Judge James O’Hara in Kansas City, Kan., as part of a pending lawsuit seeking to overturn a Kansas law that requires voters to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, when they register to vote.

The Homeland Security documents contained a reference to voting rolls that was partially obscured by Kobach’s hand in the photograph.

Kobach’s office did not immediately comment on the order.

Kobach has refused requests from plaintiffs’ attorneys to provide the documents as part of the lawsuit’s discovery process on the grounds that they fall beyond the scope of the case, according to court documents.

However, O’Hara said in his order that if the documents show Kobach lobbied to change federal voting law this information would bear on whether he can demonstrate that the proof of citizenship requirement is the “least burdensome method of preventing substantial numbers of noncitizens from registering to vote” under the current legal standard. The camera review will determine their relevancy to the case.

“The Court has yet to decide whether Secretary Kobach will in fact be required to produce the documents to us,” said Dale Ho, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, which is representing plaintiff voters in the case. “We’ll await the Court’s decision in that regard, probably later this week.”

Kobach has also been ordered to provide the court with a draft amendment to the National Voter Registration Act, which plaintiffs’ attorneys contend that he has crafted.

Kobach has served as an informal adviser to Trump on election law and has previously said that he has advised the president to investigate the issue of voter fraud. In the wake of the election, Trump repeatedly made unsupported claims that millions of people voted illegally and tipped the popular vote in Democrat Hillary Clinton’s favor.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article142866014.html#storylink=cpy

2

 

[Cartmann99]

Latest Keith Olbermann video. 

 

[onekidanddone]

On 4/4/2017 at 4:11 AM, Cartmann99 said:

It's time for another exciting episode of "Dammit, I'm a white Trump supporter, his policies aren't supposed to hurt me!!!"

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/04/if-i-have-to-get-a-lawyer-i-will-trump-voter-upset-his-border-wall-will-put-her-house-on-mexico-side/?comments=disqus

 

Trump supporter, but does not want the wall?  Special kind of stupid entitled snowflake. 

22 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

Latest Keith Olbermann video. 

 

Word.

[GreyhoundFan]

I don't know if everyone has seen Melania's official portrait...airbrush city. "Melania Trump and the politics of airbrushing"
 

Quote

The official portrait of first lady Melania Trump is jarring because her face appears to be heavily retouched, or perhaps just photographed through a lens smeared with Vaseline. It is devoid of fine lines and pores. It is not just the near-perfect face of a former model; it is a face that does not look real. The artificiality of her visage is even more acute when compared to the long, chestnut locks that frame it. You don’t have to squint to make out individual strands of hair. The hair is in sharp focus. Her face is not.

She is wearing a black Dolce & Gabbana jacket and a bedazzled kerchief. Her arms are folded across her torso. And it’s impossible to ignore that ring. But it’s the face that gives you pause because it is so unabashedly, unashamedly given over to a doll-like perfection in this image taken by celebrity and fashion photographer Régine Mahaux.

In the culture of high fashion, intellectualism and feminism, that’s not necessarily considered good. But in some quarters, it’s glorious.

...

Mahaux has given the public a two-dimensional version of Trump: just the gloss, just the facade. Trump is the fantasy, the dream. She’s not trying to speak to the judgmental types who are quick to sneer at new money, but to folks who would be thrilled to have all that crisp, fresh cash loaded into the back of a fancy car with gold rims. She has given them virtual reality. An Instagram first lady. And maybe that’s good enough. But she has not given them Melania Trump.

The article has official portraits of Michelle Obama and Laura Bush to compare and contrast.

 

 

This is an interesting opinion piece: "Maybe liberals are so ‘P.C.’ because conservatives keep excusing bad behavior"

Quote

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign almost ended with his “grab them by the p – – – y” riff. Last month, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) stood by his statement that “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” Last week, on air, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly watched a clip of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives and then mocked her by saying, “I didn’t hear a word she said. I was looking at the James Brown wig.”

Enough Americans voted for Trump last year to prove that his unprecedented crassness wasn’t fatal to his political aspirations. King has gotten away with a series of racially inflammatory remarks (Remember “calves the size of cantaloupes?”). O’Reilly offered an apology, but instead of taking him to task, the Daily Caller’s Jim Treacher argued that critics were playing a racial gotcha game. CNN commentator Ben Ferguson deflected blame from O’Reilly by wondering aloud, about Waters, “isn’t she a racist for saying that the white guy, who was elected president, who had done nothing wrong, but get elected, should be impeached?” And former congressman Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) played down O’Reilly’s comments by saying, “It always seems like it’s okay to make fun of a conservative, but liberals are off — you can’t touch ’em. … Making fun of Maxine Waters’s hair, making fun of Donald Trump’s hair, I don’t know what the difference is.”

Go far enough back and recall that after Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) suggested that women possess innate biological defenses against “legitimate rape,” former senators Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) still endorsed Akin’s 2012 Senate bid, calling him the candidate of “freedom-loving Americans.”

I’m not naive enough to be stunned by Akin, King, O’Reilly or Trump, but as a Republican, I continue to be dismayed by the willingness of fellow Republicans and conservatives to overlook, rationalize and make excuses for this type of behavior. And each time I see conservatives defending, or looking away, in the face of other conservatives’ noxious behavior, I become less and less sure that liberals aren’t justified in taking the sometimes-condescending, always-disapproving “politically correct” approach that they do in these all-too-predictable episodes.

Maybe liberals are so “P.C.” because conservatives keep making excuses for bad behavior.

I didn’t always think this way about liberal highhandedness toward Republicans. I used to co-sign the typical conservative rejoinder to political correctness, which generally goes something like: Life’s not fair, so please get over yourself. My feelings on the topic were rooted in my experiences as a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic graduate school environment, where my liberal colleagues routinely derided my political views.

That case against political correctness was used to great effect in the 2016 presidential election, starting at a GOP primary debate when then-candidate Donald Trump addressed the litany of derogatory statements he’s made toward women by saying, “The big problem this country has is being politically correct. I’ve been challenged by so many people, and I don’t, frankly, have time for total political correctness.”

...

And it’s not just being politically correct to publicly scrutinize the serial allegations of sexual harassment against O’Reilly. If even half of what’s been alleged by women who say he harassed them is true, he’s a disgrace, and so is any conservative or Republican who decides that what he’s done doesn’t merit consequences, just because O’Reilly’s shame might also be cheered by liberals. Already, 20 companies have announced that they’re pulling advertising from O’Reilly’s show, even though it’s the gold standard when it comes to cable news ratings. The question, now, is whether self-respecting conservatives and Republicans will stand on principle, or if, as former Republican Capitol Hill communications director Tara Setmayer wrote recently for Cosmopolitan, they continue to circle the wagons around him just because he’s on their team.

If that’s what they do, it would be pretty indecent, but it would also turn out to be bad politics.

...

More important is acknowledging, before we try to beat political correctness into extinction, is that it’s not political correctness to expect common courtesy and respect. And it’s not a burden on a politician or anyone else to refrain from making sexist and racist remarks. It’s both the right thing to do, and an approach in keeping with the values that the Republican Party is supposed to stand for, including judging all people as individuals, not caricaturing them because of their race or gender.

It’s hard to deny that we’ve become a society where people are put out by the smallest slights, real or perceived. Conservatives are right to bristle at left-wing condescension, and liberals would be foolish to ignore that their elitism helped fuel Trump’s rise. But this cuts both ways, and every time conservatives and Republicans let an O’Reilly slide — rather than take a stand in favor of common decency — the “politically correct” scorn of liberals becomes just a bit more justified. Hoping that the GOP becomes the Party of Lincoln again may be wishful thinking. But if that’s what we aspire to, no longer defending the indefensible would be a start.

 

[JMarie]

23 hours ago, JMarie said:

http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/03/media/mercedes-ads-bill-oreilly/index.html?iid=hp-toplead-dom

It's up to eighteen, in just one day.

Now it's 48 companies.  In just two days.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/advertisers-continue-drop-fox-news-oreilly-factor/story?id=46605563

Quote

Advertisers continued to abandon Fox News' top-rated show "The O'Reilly Factor" on Wednesday, as fallout from a scandal involving the show's namesake host persisted.

By Wednesday afternoon, at least 48 companies said that they had pulled advertisements from the primetime program. Among the most prominent were Advil, Mercedes, BMW and Jenny Craig.

 

[Cleopatra7]

Ross Douthat claims that what the US really needs right now is for Trump to channel his inner Hapsburg:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/opinion/in-search-of-a-good-emperor.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=0

Quote

His eventual successor, liberal or conservative, should not seek to learn from Assad or Erdogan or Putin. But he (or she) might learn something from an earlier age’s custodians of diverse, fragmented societies — from monarchies like that of the Austrian Hapsburgs, in particular, that worked to contain and balance religious and ethnic divisions, to prevent disintegration and forestall totalitarianism, and might have succeeded longer absent the folly of 1914.

If we’re going to have an imperial presidency, we should want a president who thinks less like a party leader and more like a good emperor — who doesn’t just divide and conquer, but who tries to make all his empire’s many peoples feel like they’re safe and recognized and home.

It seems like Republicans are jettisoning any pretense of being about "small government," not that they were ever really in favor of that to begin with. Also note how slavery and the genocide of Native Americans are so breezily tossed out there as being minor annoyances on par with being stuck in traffic.

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Go far enough back and recall that after Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) suggested that women possess innate biological defenses against “legitimate rape,” former senators Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) still endorsed Akin’s 2012 Senate bid, calling him the candidate of “freedom-loving Americans

Just a reminder that during Akin's "legitimate rape" scandal, he was Kellyanne Conway's client. In trying to defend him, she compared him to David Koresh. 

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/28/akin-consultant-compares-him-to-cult-leader/

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I don't know if everyone has seen Melania's official portrait...airbrush city. "Melania Trump and the politics of airbrushing"
 

The article has official portraits of Michelle Obama and Laura Bush to compare and contrast.

Mrs. Trump looks like she time traveled to the eighties for a Glamour Shot, and then brought the picture back to our time for someone to photoshop to death.  I'm glad she at least had enough sense to say no to the acid washed jean jacket with the collar popped up.

[Cartmann99]

Dumb Donnie's trying to silence his critics:

Quote

 

Twitter Inc on Thursday filed a federal lawsuit to block an order by the U.S. government demanding that it reveal who is behind an account opposed to President Donald Trump's tough immigration policies.

Citing freedom of speech as a basis for not turning over records, Twitter filed the lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco and said that the account, @ALT_uscis, claimed to be run by at least one federal immigration employee. The acronym CIS refers to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the account describes itself as "immigration resistance."

 

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1782PH

[fraurosena]

Oh boy. This is not going to end well.

US has just fired 50 tomahawk missiles at an airbase in Syria.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39523654

[Audrey2]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

Oh boy. This is not going to end well.

US has just fired 50 tomahawk missiles at an airbase in Syria.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39523654

Donnie, you know by doing this that you're not going to be Putie's BFF.

[fraurosena]

25 minutes ago, Audrey2 said:

Donnie, you know by doing this that you're not going to be Putie's BFF.

My guess is he's done this to get his poll ratings up. He has dropped to 34% so he's desperate...

[IrishCarrie]

When I saw the news of the air strike, the first thing I thought was "Oh great, now all the Trump fans will be gloating on Twitter about what a strong decisive leader they have...they're going to luuuurve this!"

Then I started wondering if Putin and Trump cooked the whole thing up between them to boost Trump's ratings, from the Saran gas attack right through to the reactions this morning.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm completely losing it... 

[fraurosena]

7 minutes ago, IrishCarrie said:

When I saw the news of the air strike, the first thing I thought was "Oh great, now all the Trump fans will be gloating on Twitter about what a strong decisive leader they have...they're going to luuuurve this!"

Then I started wondering if Putin and Trump cooked the whole thing up between them to boost Trump's ratings, from the Saran gas attack right through to the reactions this morning.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm completely losing it... 

Don't worry. I thought exactly the same thing. I even had the whole scenario play out in my head. It went something like this:

 

"Vlad, the fake polls in the fake news, they're showing my approval rating is down. It is so down, so, so down. People don't like me anymore! What should I do?"

"Donnie, do not worry.  Just start a war. Approval rating will go up. No problem."

"Ok. I'll fire some nukes at North Korea. Nobody likes Kim Jong whatsit. Everybody will love me for it. Then my ratings will go up bigly."

"No. North Korea is bad idea. They will fire back. Approval ratings will go down again."

"But Vlad, where can I start a war then?"

"I have idea. Syria. It is perfect place. Russia is already there. We will fire bad chemical bombs, blame Assad."

"I thought Assad was your friend, Vlad."

"Ha! No, he is stupid little man. He is my puppet. I pull strings, he does what I want."

"Where will you fire your chemical bombs at? Please, not here in America. Americans won't like that... but if you really have to, maybe Alaska? That is farthest away from Washington. I don't much like that Palin woman anyway. Wouldn't let me grab her pu- "

"Do not be stupid, Donnie. I will tell Assad to bomb Syria."

"But that's his own country. Will he do that?"

"Yes. I told you, he's my puppet, like you. He will fire bombs. Kill many peoples. Little childrens. Make world very angry. Then you can bomb Syria. Everybody likes you again."

"You're so smart, Vlad. Ok, let's do it!"

 

>end conspiracy theory<  

[formergothardite]

http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/syria-gas-attack-and-donald-trumps-military-response-dont-add-up-unless-putin-orchestrated-it/2210/

I don't want to become a crazy conspiracy person, but this does look a bit on the suspicious side. Trumputin needed a distraction from his very, very low approval ratings and the whole investigating him for being a traitor. 

Quote

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, genocidal as he may be, would not have done something like this without the approval of the Kremlin, because he is a longtime Russian puppet in both an economic and military sense.

 

Quote

But Vladimir Putin knows full well that a gas attack like this was likely to prompt at least some kind U.S. military response against Assad. So Putin wouldn’t have been behind this unless he wanted the U.S. to take military action in Syria. And the only logical reason for Putin to want that is if he was trying to set up a win for Donald Trump, which could boost his historically low approval rating. It would also allow Trump to paint himself as being willing to go against Russian interests, as an argument against the most serious charges in the worsening Trump-Russia scandal.

 

Quote

 

Moreover, the U.S. Tomahawk missiles used in the attack could have been struck down by the S-400 weaponry which Russia already had in place in Syria (source: Washington Post) – but Russia chose not to do so. Additionally, NBC News is reporting on-air that the U.S. strike only took out planes and fueling stations, while leaving the two airstrips intact. The airstrips would have required significant reconstruction, but the equipment can theoretically be replaced tomorrow.

The U.S. attack seemed tailor made to look fierce to casual viewers at home, while inflicting as little real damage to Assad’s air force capability as possible

 

 

Quote

.Donald Trump’s role in it must be investigated to the fullest. Because if my logical theory is even half right, then Trump just became a genocidal war criminal.

 

[fraurosena]

4 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

Trump just became a genocidal war criminal.

I'm not sure about that. I think he already was one. Remember Yemen? Nine little children, the youngest only three months old, died in that fiasco. 

Self-serving, psychopathic bastards, the lot of them! 

[VelociRapture]

I'm torn. Something clearly does need to be done about Assad. He may not have done this on his own, but he still did it. And he's done other equally horrific things in the past as well.

On the other hand, the US and the West don't exactly have a stellar record at helping out in the Middle East or other regions (like Africa.) And it's not like there's a stable replacement Government waiting to take over - removing Assad would mean years of US interference to prevent ISIL or another extremist group from swooping in and taking advantage.

All I know is that I can't stand to see more pictures of innocent children who have been murdered. Those poor kids did nothing to deserve this.  

[laPapessaGiovanna]

1 hour ago, VelociRapture said:

I'm torn. Something clearly does need to be done about Assad. He may not have done this on his own, but he still did it. And he's done other equally horrific things in the past as well.

On the other hand, the US and the West don't exactly have a stellar record at helping out in the Middle East or other regions (like Africa.) And it's not like there's a stable replacement Government waiting to take over - removing Assad would mean years of US interference to prevent ISIL or another extremist group from swooping in and taking advantage.

All I know is that I can't stand to see more pictures of innocent children who have been murdered. Those poor kids did nothing to deserve this.  

The only way to not have to look at dead children faces is the diplomatic way. Can you imagine Donnie negotiating a cease-fire, convincing all the parts to sit around a table and find an effective agreement? Neither do I. Syrians are screwed, now more than ever. 

[AnywhereButHere]

The two-facedness is, well no, not surprising in the slightest. I don’t know why I would expect anything else. Caligula is all about protecting those “poor, innocent babies”  when they’re across an ocean, but they become probable “scary terrorists in the making” once they come over here. So no, no asylum for you.

 

I get so angry. I just can’t even with this guy, pretending at playing president. Someone (Putin or other) whispered in his ear saying, throw a few missiles. It’s great for approval ratings and news cycles. Go 'Murica.

I hope whoever that "someone" is has a plan for what comes next, because I guarantee Caligula doesn't. He's just pretending at being a big boy, playing with the big boy toys.

[onekidanddone]

I am working from home using the office laptop, but I had to switch to my home computer right away. A memo sent out by one of the big bosses re: Take Your Child to Work Day.  

Please indicate if your child has any food allergies as one of the activities will include Cheetos.  

Was this done as some kind of sick joke or are they just that clueless? 

11 minutes ago, AnywhereButHere said:

The two-facedness is, well no, not surprising in the slightest. I don’t know why I would expect anything else. Caligula is all about protecting those “poor, innocent babies”  when they’re across an ocean, but they become probable “scary terrorists in the making” once they come over here. So no, no asylum for you.

 

I get so angry. I just can’t even with this guy, pretending at playing president. Someone (Putin or other) whispered in his ear saying, throw a few missiles. It’s great for approval ratings and news cycles. Go 'Murica.

I hope whoever that "someone" is has a plan for what comes next, because I guarantee Caligula doesn't. He's just pretending at being a big boy, playing with the big boy toys.

A petulant child with Big boy toys that kill people.

[Childless]

The whole strike is simply a farce to make it look like we care and are doing something, so we can pat ourselves on the back.  Taking out a few planes does nothing.  If Russia was in on it, they'll simply replace the equipment.  If they weren't in on it, they'll still replace the equipment while bitching loudly about high handed tactics by the U.S.  Assad will still be there and he'll still have chemical weapons and a penchant for using them.  We can't just send in a Seal team to take him out because IS will step right into power.  Our only option would be to take over the government ourselves and maintain control until the Syrians are able to govern themselves again.  But that means major American forces in country and smacks of colonialism.  I don't think that would go down well with either Americans or Syrians.  The only thing I can even imagine would be palatable would be to set up a worldwide coalition with every first and second world county on the planet and offer to get out any and all Syrians who want to leave and repatriate them in various countries (maybe a rule that each participating country has to take in a certain percentage of their own total population in refugees).  Leaving behind only those who want to participate in the war.  Of course, it's impossible for the world to do this for every war torn country, so it might set an unattainable precedent.  Jeez, what a mess.

[candygirl200413]

Don't worry! You all aren't the only ones that think about his alternative motives. It was the first thing that popped into my head. That a man would start so much to keep his leader Putin happy and give a bull shit reason to protect those children (who he STILL won't let into the country).

Also throwback to when Obama wanted to strike in 2013 and many republicans (along with some dems) voted no, Chaffetz tweeted

My eyes are permanently stuck in the rolled position.

 

And now Gorsuch is in the SC so I can't wait to see so much get overturned cause maga

[VixenToast]

Fucksticks. Russia is pissed... or pretending to be, however, in an ominous way. Holy shit snacks, what has SCROTUS allowed to happen?!

[Childless]

5 minutes ago, VixenToast said:

Fucksticks. Russia is pissed... or pretending to be, however, in an ominous way. Holy shit snacks, what has SCROTUS allowed to happen?!

Quite frankly, Russia can go screw itself.  Whether or not it was done with Lord Dampnut's involvement, Putin was entirely complicit.  No way would Assad have done this if he had any misgivings about how it would affect his relationship with the only country backing him.  He knew Putin wouldn't care and it's possible Putin knew he was planning on doing it.  If they're angry about the airstrike, they should have reigned in their little regional puppet and prevented the excruciating death of innocent babies.  Fuck them.