Trump 18: Info to Russia, With Love

[laPapessaGiovanna]

OMG!   even at Breitbart they think it's embarrassing

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/22/one-orb-to-rule-them-all-image-of-trump-and-glowing-globe-perplexes-internet

[faraway]

So Ivanka received 100 million from the Saudis to go into the fund for women's entrepreneurs (what she was in Berlin for). I have to say Merkel really knew what she was doing there. It's like inviting the unpopular rich girl to your birthday party because you know the presents will be good.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5921c1d9e4b034684b0d17a1

But this whole visit makes me uneasy, they are way to comfortable with a place like Saudi Arabia.

[bashfulpixie]

1 hour ago, faraway said:

So Ivanka received 100 million from the Saudis to go into the fund for women's entrepreneurs (what she was in Berlin for). I have to say Merkel really knew what she was doing there. It's like inviting the unpopular rich girl to your birthday party because you know the presents will be good.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5921c1d9e4b034684b0d17a1

But this whole visit makes me uneasy, they are way to comfortable with a place like Saudi Arabia.

Russia... Saudi Arabia... there's a running theme here. 

[47of74]

Raw Story had this piece about three reich wing "Christian" leaders - Jim Bakker, Rick Joyner, and Lance Wallnau - who had some rather out there theories about why Benedict Donald is imploding now;

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/right-wing-christians-have-some-insane-theories-about-why-the-trump-presidency-is-imploding/

Quote

The resistance has sparked endless right-wing speculation since Trump took office about who might be behind the movement. But with support for impeachment steadily increasing, many of the president’s die-hard supporters are struggling to explain the chaos that has engulfed Washington. And few are quite as unhinged as the evangelicals in his base.

According to Bakker, Trump’s opposition is “the spirit of the Antichrist,” fighting back against God’s miracle: the election of Trump. The strongest indicator of end times for Bakker was the cancellation of ABC’s “Last Man Standing” last week. The show starred Tim Allen, an anomalyous Trump supporter in Hollywood. Conservatives have blamed Allen’s political leanings for the show’s cancellation, despite offering no evidence to support their claims.

“I think Trump is going to fight,” he (Joyner) predicted. “He’s fighting his own party as much as the other party, he’s fighting in every direction, he’s a fighter, he was made for that… wait and see if he doesn’t prevail.”

Wallnau, author of God’s Chaos Candidate: Donald J. Trump and the American Unraveling, believes that women marchers are witches and late-night talk show hosts their “evangelists.”

I have three words of advice for each of these idiots.  The last one is thyself.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I think the title says it all: "Trump’s bizarre and un-American visit to Saudi Arabia"

Spoiler

Before he moves on to Israel and then to Europe, before we are consumed by the next scandal and forget, here is a list, for the record, of just a few of the ways in which President Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia was bizarre, unseemly, unethical and un-American.

1. It was a very strange choice for a first trip abroad. The past four American presidents, two Republicans and two Democrats, made their first trips to either Mexico and Canada, countries that are close trading partners, close allies, compatible democracies and of course neighbors. Trump chose, instead, to make his first presidential visit to an oligarchic kleptocracy which forces women to hide their faces and forbids them to travel without a male guardian’s permission.
2. It was a very strange place to speak out against Islamist extremism. Although Saudi Arabia is afraid of some forms of Islamist extremism, it supports others. Saudi Arabia sponsors extremist Wahabi mosques and imams all over the world; Osama bin Laden was a Saudi citizen, as were 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers.
3. The sword dance. Every American president has met with his Saudi counterparts, and of course the stability of Saudi Arabia, as well as its oil, is an important U.S. security concern. But until now American presidents made it clear that, while we have to deal with Saudi leaders, we don’t endorse their culture. Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and others in the delegation did exactly that, by participating in this sinister all-male dance.
4. Ivanka Trump’s “outreach” to women entrepreneuers. Saudi women must cover their heads and often their faces. They cannot drive cars, cannot (see above) travel without the permission of male guardians and are deprived of legal rights and education. In that context, Ivanka Trump’s promotion of female “entrepreneurs” looked like a cynical public relations gambit, which of course it was. The announcement that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will donate money to her fund was a “pay to play” far more blatant than anything Hillary Clinton ever dreamed of.
5.  Tillerson talking about human rights in Iran. Yes, Americans are often hypocritical about where and when they promote human rights. But to denounce human rights in Iran while standing in Saudi Arabia, a place where there is no political freedom and no religious freedom, brought hypocrisy to a whole new level. Better not to have said anything at all.
6.  Tillerson holding a news conference for foreign press only. The U.S. press corps was not invited. Presumably this was because the White House doesn’t want Americans to find out what the president was doing in Saudi Arabia?

...

The last point is the most infuriating. This administration is doing everything it can to cut off facts and information to the American people.

[GreyhoundFan]

I'll bet he does: "Billy Bush speaks out about Trump ‘Access Hollywood’ tape: ‘I wish I had changed the topic’"

Spoiler

Former NBC host Billy Bush says he has done a lot of soul searching in the past seven months.

He has walked across hot coals with self-help guru Tony Robbins, of infomercial fame. He has taken part in a healing retreat in Napa Valley, cut off from the outside world. He has learned yoga and meditation, started reading motivational books, and spent quality time with his wife and three teenage daughters.

And perhaps more than anything, he has thought long and hard about his 2005 conversation with President Trump in the back of an “Access Hollywood” bus.

In an interview published Sunday in the Hollywood Reporter, Bush opened up for the first time since last fall about the now infamous exchange, in which Trump was caught on a hot microphone bragging about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women.

“Looking back upon what was said on that bus,” Bush said, “I wish I had changed the topic. [Trump] liked TV and competition. I could’ve said, ‘Can you believe the ratings on whatever?’ But I didn’t have the strength of character to do it.”

The 2005 tape was provided exclusively to The Washington Post and published in early October. It captured audio of Trump and Bush riding on a bus on the way to a soap opera set and discussing Trump’s attempts to seduce women, as well as video once they emerged to shoot a segment.

Bush, who hosted “Access Hollywood” at the time the recording was made, laughed and egged Trump on as he talked about grabbing women by the genitals.

Less than two weeks after the tape surfaced, Bush was suspended and then fired from NBC’s “Today,” with a multimillion-dollar severance package and a nondisclosure agreement preventing him from talking in detail about his ouster.

Trump apologized and dismissed the conversation as “locker-room banter.”

Bush said he has only seen the tape three times: once just a few days before it was made public and twice more before his Hollywood Reporter interview. Every time, he said, it “totally and completely gutted” him.

The Hollywood Reporter asked how it felt that Bush got fired over the tape while Trump became president.

“I will admit that the irony is glaring,” Bush said.

“When a woman watches that tape,” he added, “they may be asking themselves, ‘Is that what happens when I walk out of a room? When I walk out of a meeting, is that what they’re saying about me? Are they sizing me up?’ I can’t live with that. If a moment like that arose again, I would shut it down quickly. I am in the women-raising business, exclusively.”

In the tape, Bush and Trump can be heard commenting about actress Arianne Zucker. She was waiting to escort them onto the soap opera set.

“Your girl’s hot as s—, in the purple,” says Bush.

“Woah!” Trump says. “Woah!”

“Yes! The Donald has scored,” Bush says before commenting on Zucker’s legs.

As the men prepared to get off the bus, Trump made the comment that came to define the last month of the campaign and inspire rallying cries from women’s rights organizations.

“I just start kissing them,” Trump says. “When you’re a star, they let you do it.”

“Whatever you want,” says another voice, apparently Bush’s.

“Grab them by the p—y,” Trump says.

They eventually exit the bus and greet Zucker, who is unaware of the conversation that had just taken place.

“How about a little hug for the Donald?” Bush says. “He just got off the bus.”

Bush issued a statement the same day the tape went public, saying he was embarrassed and ashamed of the more than decade-old conversation.

About 10 days later, NBC wrote a memo to staff that Bush was “leaving” the “Today” show. Senior Vice President Noah Oppenheim called him a “valued colleague and longtime member of the broader NBC family.”

Bush told the Hollywood Reporter that covering Trump was one of his main assignments at “Access Hollywood.” The show tried to score interviews with Trump three times a week, knowing that segments about him would get viewers’ attention, he said.

“That was my job, and I did it well,” Bush said. “I got access to Trump. And in my job, there’s a lot of downtime, and there are off-camera moments where you have a short period of time to, in a chameleonlike way, connect with people.”

Trump probably didn’t know he was being recorded on the bus in 2005, according to Bush. He compared Trump to the comedian Andrew Dice Clay, saying he’d heard him say shocking things but never anything so extreme up to that point.

Bush told the Hollywood Reporter: “When he said what he said, I’d like to think if I had thought for a minute that there was a grown man detailing his sexual assault strategy to me, I’d have called the FBI.”

When the tape surfaced Bush’s then-15-year-old daughter called him in tears from boarding school asking why he had laughed at Trump’s remarks.

“It hit really hard,” Bush said, “and I stopped for a second, and I said, ‘I have no answer for that that’s any good. I am really sorry. That was Dad in a bad moment a long time ago. You know me. I am really sorry that you had to hear and see that. I love you.’ She needed to hear that, and I certainly needed to tell her that.”

Bush said he had the same conversation with his 12- and 18-year-old daughters as well. His wife, he said, was “supportive from the very beginning.”

After he was fired, Bush said he became “depressed, bloated and miserable.” So at the beginning of the year he enrolled in a weeklong, $5,000 healing program in Napa Valley. Part of the group therapy, he said, involved kneeling before a baseball bat and a pillow and “literally bashing these negative patterns that you’ve identified in your life.”

He also attended a Tony Robbins seminar at the Galen Center in Los Angeles, where Robbins singled him out in an audience of 9,000 people. At one point, he said, they walked over 2,200-degree coals together.

Bush is now plotting a return to television, saying he has changed in a way that made him better at his job.

As for Trump, Bush said he has no interest in asking the president if he is remorseful about what happened. If Trump called, he told the Hollywood Reporter, they wouldn’t have much to discuss.

“I’d just say thanks and move on,” Bush said. “There is nothing I need from him.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s first foreign trip is all downhill from here"

Spoiler

Let’s give it up for President Trump: He hasn’t blown up the world yet on his first overseas trip.

If you think that is damning with faint praise, consider that the president, whose policies and campaign rhetoric no one would categorize as terribly Islam-friendly, managed to give a major speech on Islam in Saudi Arabia to not completely catastrophic reviews.

Okay, so I’m damning with faint praise a little bit. Blake Hounshell captured the hole in the middle of the speech in Politico:

Parts of the speech could have been given by either of Trump’s predecessors — respectful language about religion, the observation that Muslims have suffered the most from terrorism, the patronizing evocation of past civilizational glories, like the pyramids. What was missing, though, was any sense of why Trump thinks terrorism is on the rise, and how he plans to combat it.

It was as if, as former Bush administration official Elliott Abrams put it, the terrorists were aliens from outer space, rather than the twisted product of broken societies that have yet to divine how to stop churning them out. “He offered no explanation of what was producing this phenomenon,” Abrams noted in an email to my colleague Annie Karni. “Trump had no theory, and therefore could not suggest what might be done to prevent more extremists from rising.”

Graeme Wood was even more scathing in the Atlantic: “The speech was nonetheless divisive. But the intolerance it preached was the intolerance sanctioned by Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states: anti-Shiism, with frankly sectarian overtones.”

Here’s the thing, though: There are three excellent reasons to believe that the Saudi Arabia leg, with the speech and the arms deal and the Glowing Orb of Destiny, is is the highlight of Trump’s first overseas trip.

Reason one is Trump himself. Even before he left, there were reports that he wanted to cut the trip short. Loren Schulman warned last week that these kinds of trips are exhausting for staff and presidents alike. That holds with particular force for a president who doesn’t like to sleep away from his places of residence. Trump reportedly canceled an appearance at a forum hosted by Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier, sending his daughter Ivanka in his stead. The Associated Press’s Julie Pace and Jonathan Lemire noted that Trump flubbed one of his lines in his prepared remarks because, according to a White House official, the president is “an exhausted guy.”

...

This is day two of the trip, and he’s about to do more flying. He’s only going to get crankier and more error-prone from here:

...

The second reason is that Trump is exiting his more comfortable world of authoritarian rulers and now must cope with the politicians of advanced industrialized democracies. It is possible that this has not dawned on some of Trump’s policy principals just yet:

...

These countries are not going to shower him with shiny gold medals, sword dances or glowing orbs. For example, Haaretz’s Barak Ravid reports that Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet is not necessarily thrilled to pull out all the stops to please Trump:

During a Sunday meeting of coalition heads, Netanyahu was notified that there would be a sparse attendance of ministers at the reception and that most party heads wouldn’t participate in it. Netanyahu was furious and blew up the meeting, a senior official who attended the meeting said. Immediately afterwards, the Prime Minister’s Bureau issued an instruction to all government ministers according to which they must participate in the airport reception.

Bear in mind that Netanyahu has a very strong incentive for Trump’s visit to go smoothly.

The third reason that this trip will be going downhill is that the officials Trump meets at the NATO and G-7 summits will be less beholden to protect him. I am willing to bet that by that point of the trip, Trump will do or say something obnoxious behind closed doors that will be leaked almost immediately. To be sure, some allies are making accommodations for Trump’s shortcomings, and some heads of state will not have an incentive to spill the beans. Nonetheless, some staffers in the room will be ready to pounce on any mistake Trump makes.

These are probabilities, of course. It is possible that as Trump gets over his jet lag, he will build up the stamina needed to gut out this trip. But it is not terribly likely.

There are some great tweets in the article. I agree that he will probably really hose up things in Israel and Europe.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is great: "Any Half-Decent Hacker Could Break Into Mar-a-Lago"

Spoiler

This story was co-published with Gizmodo.

Two weeks ago, on a sparkling spring morning, we went trawling along Florida’s coastal waterway. But not for fish.

We parked a 17-foot motor boat in a lagoon about 800 feet from the back lawn of The Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach and pointed a 2-foot wireless antenna that resembled a potato gun toward the club. Within a minute, we spotted three weakly encrypted Wi-Fi networks. We could have hacked them in less than five minutes, but we refrained.

A few days later, we drove through the grounds of the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with the same antenna and aimed it at the clubhouse. We identified two open Wi-Fi networks that anyone could join without a password. We resisted the temptation.

We have also visited two of President Donald Trump’s other family-run retreats, the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., and a golf club in Sterling, Virginia. Our inspections found weak and open Wi-Fi networks, wireless printers without passwords, servers with outdated and vulnerable software, and unencrypted login pages to back-end databases containing sensitive information.

The risks posed by the lax security, experts say, go well beyond simple digital snooping. Sophisticated attackers could take advantage of vulnerabilities in the Wi-Fi networks to take over devices like computers or smart phones and use them to record conversations involving anyone on the premises.

“Those networks all have to be crawling with foreign intruders, not just ProPublica,” said Dave Aitel, chief executive officer of Immunity, Inc., a digital security company, when we told him what we found.

Security lapses are not uncommon in the hospitality industry, which — like most industries and government agencies — is under increasing attack from hackers. But they are more worrisome in places where the president of the United States, heads of state and public officials regularly visit.

U.S. leaders can ill afford such vulnerabilities. As both the U.S. and French presidential campaigns showed, hackers increasingly exploit weaknesses in internet security systems in an effort to influence elections and policy. Last week, cyberattacks using software stolen from the National Security Agency paralyzed operations in at least a dozen countries, from Britain’s National Health Service to Russia’s Interior Ministry.

Since the election, Trump has hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and British politician Nigel Farage at his properties. The cybersecurity issues we discovered could have allowed those diplomatic discussions — and other sensitive conversations at the properties — to be monitored by hackers.

The Trump Organization follows “cybersecurity best practices,” said spokeswoman Amanda Miller. “Like virtually every other company these days, we are routinely targeted by cyberterrorists whose only focus is to inflict harm on great American businesses. While we will not comment on specific security measures, we are confident in the steps we have taken to protect our business and safeguard our information. Our teams work diligently to deploy best-in-class firewall and anti-vulnerability platforms with constant 24/7 monitoring.”

The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Trump properties have been hacked before. Last year, the Trump hotel chain paid $50,000 to settle charges brought by the New York attorney general that it had not properly disclosed the loss of more than 70,000 credit card numbers and 302 Social Security numbers. Prosecutors alleged that hotel credit card systems were “the target of a cyber-attack” due to poor security. The company agreed to beef up its security; it’s not clear if the vulnerabilities we found violate that agreement. A spokesman for the New York attorney general declined comment.

Our experience also indicates that it’s easy to gain physical access to Trump properties, at least when the president is not there. As Politico has previously reported, Trump hotels and clubs are poorly guarded. We drove a car past the front of Mar-a-Lago and parked a boat near its lawn. We drove through the grounds of the Bedminster golf course and into the parking lot of the golf course in Sterling, Virginia. No one questioned us.

Both President Obama and President Bush often vacationed at the more traditional presidential retreat, the military-run Camp David. The computers and networks there and at the White House are run by the Defense Information Systems Agency.

In 2016, the military spent $64 million on maintaining the networks at the White House and Camp David, and more than $2 million on “defense solutions, personnel, techniques, and best practices to defend, detect, and mitigate cyber-based threats” from hacking those networks.

Even after spending millions of dollars on security, the White House admitted in 2015 that it was hacked by Russians. After the hack, the White House replaced all its computer systems, according to a person familiar with the matter. All staffers who work at the White House are told that “there are people who are actively watching what you are doing,” said Mikey Dickerson, who ran the U.S. Digital Service in the Obama administration.

By comparison, Mar-a-Lago budgeted $442,931 for security in 2016 — slightly more than double the $200,000 initiation fee for one new member. The Trump Organization declined to say how much Mar-a-Lago spends specifically on digital security. The club, last reported to have almost 500 members paying annual dues of $14,000 apiece, allotted $1,703,163 for all administration last year, according to documents filed in a lawsuit Trump brought against Palm Beach County in an effort to halt commercial flights from flying over Mar-a-Lago. The lawsuit was dropped, but the FAA now restricts flights over the club when the president is there.

It is not clear whether Trump connects to the insecure networks while at his family’s properties. When he travels, the president is provided with portable secure communications equipment. Trump tracked the military strike on a Syrian air base last month from a closed-door situation room at Mar-a-Lago with secure video equipment.

However, Trump has held sensitive meetings in public spaces at his properties. Most famously, in February, he and the Japanese prime minister discussed a North Korean missile test on the Mar-a-Lago patio. Over the course of that weekend in February, the president’s Twitter account posted 21 tweets from an Android phone. An analysis by an Android-focused website showed that Trump had used the same make of phone since 2015. That phone is an older model that isn’t approved by the NSA for classified use.

Photos of Trump and Abe taken by diners on that occasion prompted four Democratic senators to ask the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether electronic communications were secure at Mar-a-Lago.

In March, the GAO agreed to open an investigation. Chuck Young, a spokesman for the office, said in an interview that the work was in “the early stages,” and did not offer an estimate for when the report would be completed.

So, we decided to test the cybersecurity of Trump’s favorite hangouts ourselves.

Our first stop was Mar-a-Lago, a Trump country club in Palm Beach, Florida, where the president has spent most weekends since taking office. Driving past the club, we picked up the signal for a Wi-Fi-enabled combination printer and scanner that has been accessible since at least February 2016, according to a public Wi-Fi database.

An open printer may sound innocuous, but it can be used by hackers for everything from capturing all the documents sent to the device to trying to infiltrate the entire network.

To prevent such attacks, the Defense Information Systems Agency, which secures the White House and other military networks, forbids installing printers that anyone can connect to from outside networks. It also warns against using printers that do more than printing, such as faxing. “If an attacker gains network access to one of these devices, a wide range of exploits may be possible,” the agency warns in its security guide.

We also were able to detect a misconfigured and unencrypted router, which could potentially provide a gateway for hackers.

To get a better line of sight, we rented a boat and piloted it to within sight of the club. There, we picked up signals from the club’s wireless networks, three of which were protected with a weak and outmoded form of encryption known as WEP. In 2005, an FBI agent publicly broke this type of encryption in minutes.

By comparison, the military limits the signal strength of networks at places such as Camp David and the White House so that they are not reachable from a car driving by. It also requires wireless networks to use the strongest available form of encryption.

From our desks in New York, we were also able to determine that the club’s website hosts a database with an insecure login page that is not protected by standard internet encryption. Login forms like this are considered a severe security risk, according to the Defense Information Systems Agency.

Without encryption, spies could eavesdrop on the network until a club employee logs in, and then steal his or her username and password. They then could download a database that appears to include sensitive information on the club’s members and their families, according to videos posted by the club’s software provider.

This is “bad, very bad,” said Jeremiah Grossman, chief of Security Strategy for cybersecurity firm SentinelOne, when we described Mar-a-Lago’s systems. “I’d assume the data is already stolen and systems compromised.”

A few days later, we took our equipment to another Trump club in Bedminster, New Jersey. During the transition, Trump had interviewed candidates for top administration positions there, including James Mattis, now secretary of defense.

We drove on a dirt access road through the middle of the golf course and spotted two open Wi-Fi networks, TrumpMembers and WelcomeToTrumpNationalGolfClub, that did not require a password to join.

Such open networks allow anyone within range to scoop up all unencrypted internet activity taking place there, which could, on insecure sites, include usernames, passwords and emails.

Robert Graham, an Atlanta, Georgia, cybersecurity expert, said that hackers could use the open Wi-Fi to remotely turn on the microphones and cameras of devices connected to the network. “What you’re describing is typical hotel security,” he said, but “it’s pretty concerning” that an attacker could listen to sensitive national security conversations.

Two days after we visited the Bedminster club, Trump arrived for a weekend stay.

Then we visited the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., where Trump often dines with his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, whose responsibilities range from Middle East diplomacy to revamping the federal bureaucracy. We surveyed the networks from a Starbucks in the hotel basement.

From there, we could tell there were two Wi-Fi networks at the hotel protected with what’s known as a captive portal. These login screens are often used at airports and hotels to ensure that only paying customers can access the network.

However, we gained access to both networks just by typing “457” into the room number field. Because we provided a room number, the system assumed we were guests. We looked up the hotel’s public IP address before logging off.

From our desks in New York, we could also tell that the hotel is using a server that is accessible from the public internet. This server is running software that was released almost 13 years ago.

Finally, we visited the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, where the president sometimes plays golf. From the parking lot, we recognized three encrypted wireless networks, an encrypted wireless phone and two printers with open Wi-Fi access.

The Trump club websites are hosted by an Ohio-based company called Clubessential. It offers everything from back-office management and member communications to tee time and room reservations.

In a 2014 presentation, a company sales director warned that the club industry as a whole is “too lax” in managing and protecting passwords. There has been a “rising number of attacks on club websites over the last two years,” according to the presentation. Clubessential “performed [an] audit of security in the club industry” and “found thousands of sensitive documents from clubs exposed on [the] Internet,” such as “lists of members and staff, and their contact info; board minutes, financial statements, etc.”

Still, the club software company has set up a backend server accessible on the internet, and configured its encryption incorrectly. Anyone who reaches the login page is greeted with a warning that the encryption is broken. In its documentation, the company advises club administrators to ignore these warnings and log in regardless. That means that anybody snooping on the unprotected connection could intercept the administrators’ passwords and gain access to the entire system.

The company also publishes online, without a password, many of the default settings and usernames for its software — essentially providing a roadmap for intruders.

Clubessential declined comment.

Aitel, the CEO of Immunity, said the problems at Trump properties would be difficult to fix: “Once you are at a low level of security it is hard to develop a secure network system. You basically have to start over.”

 

To go along with that, this was linked in the article above: "Trump’s Mar-a-Lago is heaven — for spies"

[JMarie]

4 hours ago, 47of74 said:

Raw Story had this piece about three reich wing "Christian" leaders - Jim Bakker, Rick Joyner, and Lance Wallnau - who had some rather out there theories about why Benedict Donald is imploding now;

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/right-wing-christians-have-some-insane-theories-about-why-the-trump-presidency-is-imploding/

I have three words of advice for each of these idiots.  The last one is thyself.

 

I've started watching Last Man Standing on Freeform.  I don't really like the Tim Allen character (I think the middle daughter, the self-absorbed fashionista, gets the best lines).  But the show lasted six seasons, and it aired on Friday nights, when nobody's ever home.  That right there is a miracle.

[onekidanddone]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'll bet he does: "Billy Bush speaks out about Trump ‘Access Hollywood’ tape: ‘I wish I had changed the topic’"

  Reveal hidden contents

Former NBC host Billy Bush says he has done a lot of soul searching in the past seven months.

He has walked across hot coals with self-help guru Tony Robbins, of infomercial fame. He has taken part in a healing retreat in Napa Valley, cut off from the outside world. He has learned yoga and meditation, started reading motivational books, and spent quality time with his wife and three teenage daughters.

And perhaps more than anything, he has thought long and hard about his 2005 conversation with President Trump in the back of an “Access Hollywood” bus.

In an interview published Sunday in the Hollywood Reporter, Bush opened up for the first time since last fall about the now infamous exchange, in which Trump was caught on a hot microphone bragging about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women.

“Looking back upon what was said on that bus,” Bush said, “I wish I had changed the topic. [Trump] liked TV and competition. I could’ve said, ‘Can you believe the ratings on whatever?’ But I didn’t have the strength of character to do it.”

The 2005 tape was provided exclusively to The Washington Post and published in early October. It captured audio of Trump and Bush riding on a bus on the way to a soap opera set and discussing Trump’s attempts to seduce women, as well as video once they emerged to shoot a segment.

Bush, who hosted “Access Hollywood” at the time the recording was made, laughed and egged Trump on as he talked about grabbing women by the genitals.

Less than two weeks after the tape surfaced, Bush was suspended and then fired from NBC’s “Today,” with a multimillion-dollar severance package and a nondisclosure agreement preventing him from talking in detail about his ouster.

Trump apologized and dismissed the conversation as “locker-room banter.”

Bush said he has only seen the tape three times: once just a few days before it was made public and twice more before his Hollywood Reporter interview. Every time, he said, it “totally and completely gutted” him.

The Hollywood Reporter asked how it felt that Bush got fired over the tape while Trump became president.

“I will admit that the irony is glaring,” Bush said.

“When a woman watches that tape,” he added, “they may be asking themselves, ‘Is that what happens when I walk out of a room? When I walk out of a meeting, is that what they’re saying about me? Are they sizing me up?’ I can’t live with that. If a moment like that arose again, I would shut it down quickly. I am in the women-raising business, exclusively.”

In the tape, Bush and Trump can be heard commenting about actress Arianne Zucker. She was waiting to escort them onto the soap opera set.

“Your girl’s hot as s—, in the purple,” says Bush.

“Woah!” Trump says. “Woah!”

“Yes! The Donald has scored,” Bush says before commenting on Zucker’s legs.

As the men prepared to get off the bus, Trump made the comment that came to define the last month of the campaign and inspire rallying cries from women’s rights organizations.

“I just start kissing them,” Trump says. “When you’re a star, they let you do it.”

“Whatever you want,” says another voice, apparently Bush’s.

“Grab them by the p—y,” Trump says.

They eventually exit the bus and greet Zucker, who is unaware of the conversation that had just taken place.

“How about a little hug for the Donald?” Bush says. “He just got off the bus.”

Bush issued a statement the same day the tape went public, saying he was embarrassed and ashamed of the more than decade-old conversation.

About 10 days later, NBC wrote a memo to staff that Bush was “leaving” the “Today” show. Senior Vice President Noah Oppenheim called him a “valued colleague and longtime member of the broader NBC family.”

Bush told the Hollywood Reporter that covering Trump was one of his main assignments at “Access Hollywood.” The show tried to score interviews with Trump three times a week, knowing that segments about him would get viewers’ attention, he said.

“That was my job, and I did it well,” Bush said. “I got access to Trump. And in my job, there’s a lot of downtime, and there are off-camera moments where you have a short period of time to, in a chameleonlike way, connect with people.”

Trump probably didn’t know he was being recorded on the bus in 2005, according to Bush. He compared Trump to the comedian Andrew Dice Clay, saying he’d heard him say shocking things but never anything so extreme up to that point.

Bush told the Hollywood Reporter: “When he said what he said, I’d like to think if I had thought for a minute that there was a grown man detailing his sexual assault strategy to me, I’d have called the FBI.”

When the tape surfaced Bush’s then-15-year-old daughter called him in tears from boarding school asking why he had laughed at Trump’s remarks.

“It hit really hard,” Bush said, “and I stopped for a second, and I said, ‘I have no answer for that that’s any good. I am really sorry. That was Dad in a bad moment a long time ago. You know me. I am really sorry that you had to hear and see that. I love you.’ She needed to hear that, and I certainly needed to tell her that.”

Bush said he had the same conversation with his 12- and 18-year-old daughters as well. His wife, he said, was “supportive from the very beginning.”

After he was fired, Bush said he became “depressed, bloated and miserable.” So at the beginning of the year he enrolled in a weeklong, $5,000 healing program in Napa Valley. Part of the group therapy, he said, involved kneeling before a baseball bat and a pillow and “literally bashing these negative patterns that you’ve identified in your life.”

He also attended a Tony Robbins seminar at the Galen Center in Los Angeles, where Robbins singled him out in an audience of 9,000 people. At one point, he said, they walked over 2,200-degree coals together.

Bush is now plotting a return to television, saying he has changed in a way that made him better at his job.

As for Trump, Bush said he has no interest in asking the president if he is remorseful about what happened. If Trump called, he told the Hollywood Reporter, they wouldn’t have much to discuss.

“I’d just say thanks and move on,” Bush said. “There is nothing I need from him.”

 

Bill boy was only sorry he got caught. I shed no tear for him

[GreyhoundFan]

An interesting analysis: "So, let’s say Trump gets impeached. Then what?"

Spoiler

To everyone dreaming of a quick and easy impeachment: What do you imagine happens the day after?

Passions subside. President Pence begins his orderly reign. Donald Trump retreats to Mar-a-Lago. Normalcy returns.

That’s about what you have in mind, right?

Dream on.

Here’s a likelier scenario: Trump goes to Mar-a-Lago to regroup, not retreat. Early in the morning, he tweets: “Join me on Day One of our campaign to reverse the most corrupt theft in political history and reclaim the White House in 2020.” His supporters vow to reverse the coup d’etat.

And the wars intensify.

Impeachment should not be ruled out. If special counsel Robert S. Mueller III gathers evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors, Congress should proceed, regardless of partisan advantage or political fallout.

But Trump opponents are kidding themselves if they think that sacking him will restore comity and peace to the nation. And they are dodging the work they need to do if they let a focus on impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment keep them from offering solutions to problems that contributed to Trump’s victory.

Impeachment has been and should be considered a “drastic remedy,” as attorney Gregory Craig called it when he was defending President Bill Clinton before the House Judiciary Committee in 1998.

Trump was legitimately elected by Americans who knew they were voting for an inexperienced, bombastic, intermittently truthful, thin-skinned, race-baiting businessman. If Trump turns out to be an inexperienced, bombastic, intermittently truthful, thin-skinned, race-baiting president, that should not come as a surprise. Nor is it grounds for impeachment.

Even if Trump turns out to be worse than feared, a failure, a disappointment even to his voters, someone who would, say, boorishly disparage America’s FBI chief as a “nut job” while speaking to America’s adversaries — even that would not be grounds for impeachment. The remedy for poor performance is not to reelect. It is a decision for the voters.

Impeachment (by the House) and conviction (by a two-thirds vote in the Senate) would stoke, not calm, political anger. Even if some of his voters felt let down by his performance, many would see his removal from office as an undemocratic short-circuiting of the process. Already his reelection committee is claiming that Trump is a victim of “sabotage,” as The Post’s Abby Phillip reported.

“You already knew the media was out to get us,” a recent fundraising email began. “But sadly it’s not just the fake news. . . . There are people within our own unelected bureaucracy that want to sabotage President Trump and our entire America First movement.”

Would Trump, if convicted by the Senate, stage a run for redemption in 2020, fueling and feeding on that kind of paranoia? That would depend on many factors, including whether Congress chose to bar him from future service, which it is allowed but not required to do in an impeachment trial.

But certainly many among the 46 percent of the electorate who rallied to Trump’s side in order to “drain the swamp” of Washington elitism would not subside quietly if the swamp, as they saw it, swallowed him. Maybe their candidate would be Donald Jr. or Eric Trump, who last week tweeted, “This entire thing is a witch hunt propagated by a failed political campaign.” Maybe they would find another champion.

What’s least conceivable is that they, and other voters, would suddenly be satisfied again with the old Republican and Democratic parties. Which is why Trump opponents can’t afford to think that getting rid of Trump is all they need to do.

Neera Tanden and Matt Browne, in a recent Post op-ed on the French presidential election, noted that Emmanuel Macron did not win his landslide victory simply by stressing the danger of electing his populist, Russia-sympathizing opponent, Marine Le Pen. Although many observers said Macron lacked a substantive platform, Tanden, who is president and chief executive of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, and Browne, a senior fellow there, argued that Macron actually set out a “bold agenda” for political reform.

“For progressives in the United States, this is a critical lesson,” Tanden and Browne wrote. To rebut the politics of “ethno-nationalist populism” progressives need to offer more than opposition — they need “an aggressive agenda for political reform.”

We are far from knowing the whole story of Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election, its relationship over the years with Trump and his businesses, and the administration’s possible efforts to keep the truth from emerging. The country needs Mueller and members of Congress, of both parties, working overtime to expose that story.

But the country also needs to beware of the fantasy that the nation’s problems, and the Democratic Party’s, could be solved if only that one man could magically be made to disappear.

Sadly, I could see this happening -- he gets impeached and goes to work on twitter and Faux, stirring up the BTs.

[RoseWilder]

14 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

An interesting analysis: "So, let’s say Trump gets impeached. Then what?"

  Reveal hidden contents

To everyone dreaming of a quick and easy impeachment: What do you imagine happens the day after?

Passions subside. President Pence begins his orderly reign. Donald Trump retreats to Mar-a-Lago. Normalcy returns.

That’s about what you have in mind, right?

Dream on.

Here’s a likelier scenario: Trump goes to Mar-a-Lago to regroup, not retreat. Early in the morning, he tweets: “Join me on Day One of our campaign to reverse the most corrupt theft in political history and reclaim the White House in 2020.” His supporters vow to reverse the coup d’etat.

And the wars intensify.

Impeachment should not be ruled out. If special counsel Robert S. Mueller III gathers evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors, Congress should proceed, regardless of partisan advantage or political fallout.

But Trump opponents are kidding themselves if they think that sacking him will restore comity and peace to the nation. And they are dodging the work they need to do if they let a focus on impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment keep them from offering solutions to problems that contributed to Trump’s victory.

Impeachment has been and should be considered a “drastic remedy,” as attorney Gregory Craig called it when he was defending President Bill Clinton before the House Judiciary Committee in 1998.

Trump was legitimately elected by Americans who knew they were voting for an inexperienced, bombastic, intermittently truthful, thin-skinned, race-baiting businessman. If Trump turns out to be an inexperienced, bombastic, intermittently truthful, thin-skinned, race-baiting president, that should not come as a surprise. Nor is it grounds for impeachment.

Even if Trump turns out to be worse than feared, a failure, a disappointment even to his voters, someone who would, say, boorishly disparage America’s FBI chief as a “nut job” while speaking to America’s adversaries — even that would not be grounds for impeachment. The remedy for poor performance is not to reelect. It is a decision for the voters.

Impeachment (by the House) and conviction (by a two-thirds vote in the Senate) would stoke, not calm, political anger. Even if some of his voters felt let down by his performance, many would see his removal from office as an undemocratic short-circuiting of the process. Already his reelection committee is claiming that Trump is a victim of “sabotage,” as The Post’s Abby Phillip reported.

“You already knew the media was out to get us,” a recent fundraising email began. “But sadly it’s not just the fake news. . . . There are people within our own unelected bureaucracy that want to sabotage President Trump and our entire America First movement.”

Would Trump, if convicted by the Senate, stage a run for redemption in 2020, fueling and feeding on that kind of paranoia? That would depend on many factors, including whether Congress chose to bar him from future service, which it is allowed but not required to do in an impeachment trial.

But certainly many among the 46 percent of the electorate who rallied to Trump’s side in order to “drain the swamp” of Washington elitism would not subside quietly if the swamp, as they saw it, swallowed him. Maybe their candidate would be Donald Jr. or Eric Trump, who last week tweeted, “This entire thing is a witch hunt propagated by a failed political campaign.” Maybe they would find another champion.

What’s least conceivable is that they, and other voters, would suddenly be satisfied again with the old Republican and Democratic parties. Which is why Trump opponents can’t afford to think that getting rid of Trump is all they need to do.

Neera Tanden and Matt Browne, in a recent Post op-ed on the French presidential election, noted that Emmanuel Macron did not win his landslide victory simply by stressing the danger of electing his populist, Russia-sympathizing opponent, Marine Le Pen. Although many observers said Macron lacked a substantive platform, Tanden, who is president and chief executive of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, and Browne, a senior fellow there, argued that Macron actually set out a “bold agenda” for political reform.

“For progressives in the United States, this is a critical lesson,” Tanden and Browne wrote. To rebut the politics of “ethno-nationalist populism” progressives need to offer more than opposition — they need “an aggressive agenda for political reform.”

We are far from knowing the whole story of Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election, its relationship over the years with Trump and his businesses, and the administration’s possible efforts to keep the truth from emerging. The country needs Mueller and members of Congress, of both parties, working overtime to expose that story.

But the country also needs to beware of the fantasy that the nation’s problems, and the Democratic Party’s, could be solved if only that one man could magically be made to disappear.

Sadly, I could see this happening -- he gets impeached and goes to work on twitter and Faux, stirring up the BTs.

I don't think he's going to have access to twitter in prison. This isn't like Nixon. Trump has committed treason and money laundering. And since New York state is bringing the money laundering charges against him, he won't be able to pardon himself or anyone else. 

 

[sawasdee]

2 minutes ago, RoseWilder said:

And since New York state is bringing the money laundering charges against him, he won't be able to pardon himself or anyone else

Do we know this for sure, or is it a rumour?

[sawasdee]

Oh FFS - he can't get his foot out of his mouth!

https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/05/what-trump-told-the-russians/527604/#article-comments

Spoiler

Quote

President Trump said Monday he “never mentioned the word or the name Israel” in his conversation with Russian officials at the White House during which he is said to have revealed sensitive intelligence from an ally about ISIS.

His remarks in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during which he stopped the press pool from leaving the room in order to clarify the incident, are all but certain to revive the controversy Trump had left behind in Washington last week when he departed for his first foreign trip as president.

Last week, The Washington Post reported that Trump had shared with Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and Sergei Kislyak, Moscow’s envoy to Washington, highly classified information about ISIS’s operations from an unnamed intelligence-sharing ally. That country reportedly did not give permission to the U.S. to share the information with Russia, and U.S. officials had urged the Post not to name the country the information came from. The New York Times later identified that ally as Israel, and reported that details of the intelligence shared with the Russians could make its way back to its Iran, a Russian ally, and expose an Israeli intelligence asset.

Israeli officials have publicly not commented on the reports, but the country’s intelligence officials were reportedly furious over the leak. Their political bosses downplayed the fallout. Netanyahu said Monday: “Intelligence cooperation [with the U.S.] is terrific. It’s never been better.”

White House officials tried to soften the impact of the revelations. H.R. McMaster, Trump’s national-security adviser, rejected last week the idea the “president had a conversation that was inappropriate or that resulted in any kind of lapse in national security.” And, he added Trump “was not even aware of where this information came from.” But by stopping the reporters from leaving the room, Trump clarified—or inadvertently confirmed, depending on your point of view—what he told the Russians during the Oval Office meeting two weeks ago.

“I never mentioned the word or the name Israel. Never mentioned during
that conversation,” he said. “They’re all saying I did, so you have another story wrong. Never mentioned the word Israel.”

But the news reports never claimed Trump divulged the source of the information—only that he had divulged secret information. To be clear, the president is allowed to share any information he deems fit, but Trump’s remarks about Israel Monday are only likely to raise fresh questions about the source of the intelligence and the future of Israel-U.S. intelligence sharing.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The real threat of phony leaks"

Spoiler

Conservative talk show host Bill Mitchell has hatched an ingenious plot to destroy the credibility of major newspapers.

... <stupid tweet about flooding the NYT and WaPo with fake leaks>

Simple, right? Mitchell's theory is that the media is so hungry for unflattering information about President Trump that it will gobble up anything that feeds its narrative. When “crazy leaks” make print, Mitchell and his fellow Trump boosters can expose the falsehoods and prove once and for all that the “fake news media,” as the president calls it, is composed of a bunch of hacks.

It's brilliant! But New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman says the plan won't work.

,,,<Maggie tweeted that the administration has tried this, but the NYT actually vets info>

Let's get serious for a moment: Mitchell's scheme is rather facile, but that does not mean phony leaks are not a real threat. According to Haberman, members of the Trump administration already have tried to dupe the New York Times on several occasions — presumably with tips that seem plausible and are not easily dismissed as “crazy.”

Recall that before his first address to a joint session of Congress, in February, Trump said at a luncheon with TV journalists that he might talk about a compromise that would include offering legal status to some undocumented immigrants. When he took the stage, however, Trump said no such thing.

CNN later quoted a senior White House official who admitted that Trump's initial remark to journalists was a “misdirection play” designed to promote favorable coverage. It seems clear that feeding false information to reporters is part of the White House playbook.

Kyle Pope, editor in chief and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review, said last week that he believes journalists need to be on high alert for attempts to fool them into reporting incorrect info that could damage their reputations. When I asked whether he worries about errors made in haste, as news outlets compete for scoops, Pope said “the bigger risk right now is of somebody getting duped — intentional misdirection or fabricated leaks. In this climate, that is more what I would be worried about.”

I'm reminded of a time when I was intentionally misdirected — on a story with much lower stakes. While freelancing for a local news site during grad school, in 2011, I once covered an American Legion baseball game in which an ineligible athlete played in a game under someone else's name. The whole team was in on it, including the coach. The player, whose real name was Paul Nelson, introduced himself in a postgame interview as Kevin Superko, a teammate whose name he had borrowed for the day. I had no idea he was lying.

I later discovered and exposed the scheme but not before writing an account of the game that described the exploits of “Superko,” who had homered, doubled and batted in three runs in a victory. I was angry that I had been fooled but unsure what I would have done differently. When a person gives you his name, you tend to believe it's his real name, unless there is a compelling reason to be suspicious.

I bring this up because on some level, reporting depends on good-faith human interaction. If the Trump White House manages to slip false information into a news report, it won't be something that is obviously outlandish; it will be something that seems completely reasonable.

It appears that White House reporters can take absolutely nothing at face value, at this point.

I guess I just don't understand making up shit/lying. Silly me.

[Rachel333]

I can't say I feel sorry for Billy Bush because he did go along with it, but, IMO, he does have a right to be upset about what happened. He never said he liked grabbing women by the pussy, but he was scapegoated for it (remember Melania blaming Trump's comments on Billy Bush?) and fired for it when the man who actually did say and do those things faced no real consequences for it and is now occupying the highest office in the country. That is some bullshit right there.

[GreyhoundFan]

John Oliver had another awesome show last night:

 

[RoseWilder]

1 hour ago, sawasdee said:

Do we know this for sure, or is it a rumour?

This wasn't a rumor. I read it in an article, which links back to the Department of Justice's website. And then I went to the Department of Justice's website to double check the information.

Here's the information I read on this matter: 

http://www.palmerreport.com/factcheck/pardon-donald-trump-russia-new-york-state/2325/

Quote

Because no U.S. president has ever tried to pardon himself or his alleged co-conspirators from federal crimes, there is no concrete consensus – even among legal experts – as to whether the Constitution gives the president that power. For instance the Wall Street Journal’s view is that he “probably” can. If Donald Trump were to attempt it, the matter could end up being decided in what would be a groundbreaking Supreme Court case. Even if Trump were successful, he could not prevent Congress from impeaching and removing him from office – but he could try to pardon himself and his associates on the way out the door.

But with the recent buzz that New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is seeking RICO indictments in Donald Trump’s Russia scandal (link), that led a Twitter user named William Butler to assert today that Donald Trump would not be able to pardon anyone from state level charges that New York might bring. Palmer Report has researched the matter, and according to the Department of Justice official website, it turns out that assertion is correct.

The DOJ website asks the question “Does the President have authority to grant clemency for a state conviction?” Then it flatly answers the question with a “No”. Pardons are defined as a form of clemency. This means that Donald Trump cannot pardon himself or his associates from any state level charges or convictions they may face in the New York Attorney General’s ongoing investigation.

And here is a link to the Department of Justice's website that explains further: 

https://www.justice.gov/pardon/frequently-asked-questions-concerning-executive-clemency#0

Quote

Does the President have authority to grant clemency for a state conviction?

No.  The President’s clemency power is conferred by Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution of the United States, which provides:  “The President . . . shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”  Thus, the President’s authority to grant clemency is limited to federal offenses and offenses prosecuted by the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia in the name of the United States in the D.C. Superior Court.  An offense that violates a state law is not an offense against the United States.  A person who wishes to seek a pardon or a commutation of sentence for a state offense should contact the authorities of the state in which the conviction occurred.  Such state authorities are typically the Governor or a state board of pardons and/or paroles, if the state government has created such a board.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Sorry, suckers: Trump is perfectly happy to help Paul Ryan shred the safety net"

Spoiler

The White House will be releasing the president’s budget tomorrow, and it’s going to be brutal:

President Trump’s first major budget proposal on Tuesday will include massive cuts to Medicaid and call for changes to anti-poverty programs that would give states new power to limit a range of benefits, people familiar with the planning said, despite growing unease in Congress about cutting the safety net.

For Medicaid, the state-federal program that provides health care to low-income Americans, Trump’s budget plan would follow through on a bill passed by House Republicans to cut more than $800 billion over 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that this could cut off Medicaid benefits for about 10 million people over the next decade.

Last week the group Third Way got hold of a spreadsheet with some details on the budget, and the details were alarming: Deep cuts to funding for public housing, mental health, substance abuse, student aid, diplomacy, environmental protection and many other things, along with the complete elimination of programs such as the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. School lunches and food stamps are in the crosshairs, too.

Some of that may change by the time we get the official release, but the basic picture is likely to remain like this. And let’s not forget that these cuts are being proposed at the same time that Republicans are hoping to enact an enormous tax cut for the wealthy.

The standard response to the release of a president’s budget is to say, “This won’t actually become law — it’s just a statement of goals.” Which is true. Congress will write the budget, and while they’ll certainly take the president’s proposal into consideration, they’re under no obligation to include any of it. But the White House budget is important precisely because of what it tells us about President Trump. And while we don’t know all the details yet, it’s becoming clear that the negotiation between the White House and the Republican Congress isn’t going to be what we might have thought.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump unsettled some Republicans by saying repeatedly that he wouldn’t cut Social Security or Medicare. He even promised on occasion not to cut Medicaid either. When you put that together with some of his populist rhetoric, it was natural to assume that once he and the Republican Congress had to agree on a budget, the negotiation would involve Congress hoping for deep cuts to social programs, Trump resisting at least some of those cuts and them arriving at some kind of compromise in the middle.

But it has become obvious that Trump’s words about protecting programs like Medicaid were not “positions” in the sense of being a stance he took based on something he believed. They were passing impulses, probably based on his reading of whoever was in the room with him at a particular moment. Once they escaped his mouth and faded into the ether, they exercised no more hold on him than a promise to release his tax returns or make Mexico pay for a border wall. If they were things Trump genuinely believed in, the White House staffers who wrote his budget would know they’d have to take them into account. But they didn’t.

So what they produce will in many ways be even more draconian than what House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) will come up with. Don’t be fooled by the fact that they threw in a paid leave program for Ivanka Trump — no one seriously thinks congressional Republicans are going to fund that. The rest of what’s in the Trump budget is practically a declaration of war on the poor, and even conservative House Republicans are saying it goes too far.

“Like I want to go home after having voting against Meals on Wheels and say, ‘Oh it’s a bad program, keeping seniors alive,'” said one Republican last week. “There’s just some of the stuff in here that doesn’t make any sense. … Frankly, you can’t pass these budgets on the floor.”

This shows that it’s only outside forces that will pull the Republican budget in the direction of being less cruel. Members will fear a public backlash if the cuts they make are too harsh, and there will be other actors, such as Republican governors, who object to the depth of the cuts and might be able to exercise some influence over members of Congress. But the president himself has no particular opinion about any of it, and the people who work for him — particularly budget director Mick Mulvaney — obviously want to eviscerate every social program they can. That’s what many key congressional Republicans want, too, but they’re more attuned to the politics of yanking support away from their constituents so they can give a tax cut to the rich. It won’t be Trump keeping Ryan from finally enacting his Ayn Randian vision; if anything, it’ll be up to other congressional Republicans to hold back the White House.

So when they get around the negotiating table, there may be some differences, but not ones of basic sentiment. Everyone will have the same long-term goal in mind: cutting the safety net to ribbons. How far they’ll go will depend only on what they think they can get away with.

Off to make a couple more calls to my senators and representative.

[sawasdee]

@RoseWilderBut do we actually KNOW that NY is bringing laundering charges? I desperately want it to be true......but Palner Report is not always reliable - a watered down Drudge of the left, sometimes.

[GreyhoundFan]

More from Jennifer Rubin: "Trump said what?!?"

Spoiler

If only it were a “Saturday Night Live” sketch. The Associated Press reports:

President Donald Trump says he never “mentioned the word or the name Israel” during a recent conversation with top Russian diplomats.

Speaking alongside Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump was referencing revelations that he divulged classified information about an Islamic State threat in a recent meeting with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador.

U.S. officials said the information originated from Israel.

Trump says, “I never mentioned the word or the name Israel in that conversation.” But it was never alleged that Trump told the Russians that Israel was the source of the intelligence, just that he shared the information with the Russians.

Moreover, by conveying his message in Israel, he obviously confirmed that the information came from Israel.

Former CIA director Michael Hayden reacted to this forehead-slapping blunder via email:

Choice one.     Say nothing.

Choice two.    If FORCED to comment, say no specific sources were mentioned.

Choice three.   Don’t use choice two standing next to the Israeli prime minister.

Was Trump “exhausted,” as a briefer claimed yesterday in explaining why he muffed the phrase “Islamic extremism” in his speech in Saudi Arabia? If so, we are reminded that a 70-year-old obese man with a horrible diet and refusal to exercise (except for a weekend of golf) may not have the wherewithal to make it through the rigors of the presidency. He was only a couple of days into the trip when, apparently, he couldn’t spit out his lines correctly. The alternative explanation is that he is not, as he famously said, “like, a smart person.” That realization should petrify both Americans and our allies and entice our enemies, who are probably convinced they can fool the hapless president again and again.

Trump’s error is so laughably horrible it left many observers shaking their heads. “I can’t imagine why the President would be commenting on this in a public setting on camera,” said former ambassador Eric S. Edelman. “To the extent that information was unintentionally shared in the conversations with the Russians, he will now be seen to be confirming the origin. It is just further evidence of his total lack of understanding of the uses and abuses of classified information.”

In any event, the likelihood that allies will entrust classified material to this president is diminishing daily. With regard to the issue of Russian collusion, Trump’s conduct does give support to the conclusion that he was/is a “useful idiot” — someone so vain, self-absorbed, untutored and irrational that he can be led around by the nose by the Russians. Put differently, “He thinks, and talks, like a guilty 8-year-old,” says frequent Trump critic Eliot Cohen.

Alas, the damage is real. “Trump’s comment betrays an ignorance about how other countries, especially adversaries like Russia, can figure out how we know what we know from our intelligence partners,” says Brian Katulis of the liberal Center for American Progress. “Just … sharing basic facts from hard-won intelligence collection without coordinating it with our allies can give the Russians all the clues they need to determine our sources and methods. This puts lives at risk and it could undermine the efforts to defeat ISIS and push back against Iran in the Middle East.”

One can only hope national security adviser H.R. McMaster does not damage his reputation any further by trying to explain this horrendous error. For once, Trump should have to clean up his own mess.

Yeah, par for the freaking course with the TT.

[sawasdee]

  @GreyhoundFanI feel very, very sick. He wants to take the US back to the 19th century, and the days of the robber barons. It will take years to unravel the damage he is doing , not only in this proposed budget, but the rollback of Obama era regulations, lack of concern for human rights, Sessions' proposals to reinstitute failed drug enforcement policies from the 80s - I can't list any more, it's too depressing.

PLEASE, all you Americans, do all you can to flip at least Congress in 2018. The Senate looks out of reach, but get back at least something to slow him down - for your sakes, and the rest of the world!

[fraurosena]

Oh dear.. I'm afraid I had to giggle when I saw this. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

29 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

  @GreyhoundFanI feel very, very sick. He wants to take the US back to the 19th century, and the days of the robber barons. It will take years to unravel the damage he is doing , not only in this proposed budget, but the rollback of Obama era regulations, lack of concern for human rights, Sessions' proposals to reinstitute failed drug enforcement policies from the 80s - I can't list any more, it's too depressing.

PLEASE, all you Americans, do all you can to flip at least Congress in 2018. The Senate looks out of reach, but get back at least something to slow him down - for your sakes, and the rest of the world!

I so agree with you, @sawasdee. Not just Agent Orange, but the Repugs in general want to take us back to the bad old days. Frankly, Pence is just as bad, if not worse. Personally, I've been working on the effort to oust Barbara Comstock from the 10th district in VA, which adjoins my district. Luckily, she's already running a little scared. I've donated to the Dem candidates in the GA and MT special elections that are pending. Even if we can't turn Congress back to the Democrats, hopefully we can shrink the Repug majority. Paul Lyan talked earlier about his dream of taking away benefits from the poor. I've been dreaming of taking seats away from smug-assed Repugs.

 

@fraurosena -- thank you! That was awesome!

 

"Sinkhole forms in front of Mar-a-Lago; metaphors pour in"

Spoiler

A large sinkhole has formed in front of Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach estate belonging to President Trump.

Town officials posted a run-of-the-mill advisory about the sinkhole Monday morning:

"A 4' x 4' sinkhole has formed on Southern Boulevard directly in front of Mar-a-Lago," the traffic alert read. "It appears to be in the vicinity of the newly installed water main. West Palm Beach Utilities distribution crews have secured the area and will most likely need to do some exploratory excavation today."

But where utility workers saw a repair project, the Internet saw a giant opening — for metaphors.

,,,

(the tweets are a hoot)

 

[sawasdee]

@GreyhoundFan The comments  are hysterical - and not a tRump troll to be seen......