Trump 24: Fiddling, er, Tweeting While Rome Burns

[AnywhereButHere]

Well, on a good note boys and girls, this week is character week (and no, I don't mean Twitter characters)!

Maybe they're hoping he learns from example?

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/10/13/president-donald-j-trump-proclaims-october-15-through-october-21-2017-0

Quote

President Donald J. Trump Proclaims October 15 through October 21, 2017, as National Character Counts Week

NATIONAL CHARACTER COUNTS WEEK, 2017

- - - - - - - 

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

We celebrate National Character Counts Week because few things are more important than cultivating strong character in all our citizens, especially our young people.  The grit and integrity of our people, visible throughout our history, defines the soul of our Nation.  This week, we reflect on the character of determination, resolve, and honor that makes us proud to be American.

We all know proclamations are the fun part about being president.

He's an idiot. A very dangerous idiot.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump calls sexual harassment claims ‘fake news’ and ‘disgraceful’"

Spoiler

President Trump on Monday dismissed as “fake news” an ongoing legal case involving a woman who has accused him of sexual misconduct.

“All I can say is it's totally fake news. It's just fake. It's fake. It's made-up stuff, and it's disgraceful, what happens, but that happens in the — that happens in the world of politics,” Trump said about the allegations made by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on his television show, “The Apprentice.”

Trump was asked about the case and a subpoena delivered to his campaign during a Rose Garden news conference Monday.

Although the subpoena dates to March, it came to light only in recent days amid renewed attention on the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace because of allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.

Attorneys for Zervos have asked the Trump campaign for any document or communications about her and “all documents concerning any woman who asserted that Donald J. Trump touched her inappropriately.”

Zervos accuses Trump of assaulting her in 2007. She first detailed her accusation during a news conference a year ago, before Trump won the 2016 election. She claims Trump forcibly kissed her and touched her breast.

In a statement last year, Trump denied the allegations.

“To be clear, I never met her at a hotel or greeted her inappropriately a decade ago. That is not who I am as a person, and it is not how I've conducted my life. In fact, Ms. Zervos continued to contact me for help, emailing my office on April 14 of this year asking that I visit her restaurant in California,” Trump said.

Zervos filed a defamation suit against Trump in January.

Attorneys for Trump said the suit “has no legal merit.”

"...That is not who I am as a person, and it is not how I've conducted my life." Um, yeah, actually it is.

[GreyhoundFan]

"White House brushes off House investigators over aides' use of personal email"

Spoiler

The White House brushed off a bipartisan request from House investigators for details of senior administration officials' use of private email and encrypted messaging apps for government work, including possible violations of federal record-keeping laws, a letter obtained by POLITICO shows.

In a terse letter to Reps. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) — leaders of the House oversight committee — President Donald Trump's congressional liaison Marc Short declined to indicate whether any administration officials had used personal email accounts or messaging services, despite reports suggesting such communications were common in the West Wing.

"The White House and covered employees endeavor to comply with all relevant laws," Short wrote in a two-page reply delivered late last week and obtained Monday by POLITICO.

Short's statement comes despite recent revelations that several senior aides to President Donald Trump routinely used private email addresses and personal devices for government business. Among the current and former aides who POLITICO found at least occasionally relied on private email addresses were Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Gary Cohn and Reince Priebus.

In a similarly brief letter, Short also declined to provide records in response to a separate inquiry by Gowdy and Cummings into the use of costly private air travel by top administration officials.

The White House's limited responses set up a potential confrontation with Gowdy, a hard-nosed prosecutor with subpoena power and a track record that includes sharp criticism of Hillary Clinton's use of private email as secretary of state. Cummings said last week that he hoped the committee would subpoena any information that the White House declined to provide, as have other Democrats.

"These were bipartisan requests to the White House related to the Administration’s private travel and email usage, and the White House has completely blown off the Committee," said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), a member of the oversight committee. "The Committee needs to assert its jurisdiction and authority immediately to get this information. If the White House won’t provide documents to permit basic oversight, the Chairman should send subpoenas.”

An aide to Gowdy said the lawmakers "are currently in the process of evaluating whether there has been compliance, partial compliance or non-compliance" by the White House and other administration officials.

"We expect full compliance," the aide added.

Gowdy and Cummings had requested details from the White House on the extent of private email correspondence after POLITICO reported that Kushner, in particular, had relied on a private email account to conduct some White House business.

In a Sept. 25 letter to White House counsel Don McGahn, the lawmakers requested the names of any senior officials who "had ever used a personal email account to conduct official business." They also asked for "the individual, cellular number and account used" by any White House officials who communicated using "text-messages, phone-based message applications, or encryption software to conduct official business.

In his answer, Short simply referred to existing federal record-keeping laws and said the administration consults with the National Archives and Records Administration to ensure compliance. He also indicated that there has been no change in policy since the Obama administration pertaining to presidential record-keeping.

In response to Gowdy and Cummings' request for details on the use of charter jets by administration officials, Short contended that the committee's inquiry — initially addressed to chief of staff John Kelly — was misdirected because "not all components" of the West Wing "are under the supervision of the President's Chief of Staff."

"As such, the heads of those components are in the best position to respond to requests for your Committee concerning legal compliance," he wrote.

Gowdy and Cummings had asked for a detailed breakdown of every flight on a government-owned aircraft or a "private, non-commercial aircraft" by senior White House officials. Their inquiry followed a POLITICO investigation into costly flights taken by former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. Price left his post amid fallout from the reports.

"The White House seeks to ensure employee travel is conducted through the most economic and expeditious means of transportation available," Short wrote.

Since Price's departure, several other cabinet officials have faced scrutiny for chartering jets and taking expensive trips.

It would be truly satisfying to see Gowdy go after the TT's staff. However, I would be surprised if it actually happens.

[candygirl200413]

My high school principal used to say that all the time but he was also one of the nicest people ever and like actually meant it so I feel all types of way that the orange fuckface is trying to take it over

[GreyhoundFan]

"Federal judge blocks Trump’s third travel ban"

Spoiler

A federal judge on Tuesday largely blocked the Trump administration from implementing the latest version of the president’s controversial travel ban, setting up yet another legal showdown on the extent of the executive branch’s powers when it comes to setting immigration policy.

The decision from Judge Derrick K. Watson in Hawaii is sure to be appealed, but for now, it means that the administration cannot restrict the entry of travelers from six of the eight countries that officials said were either unable or unwilling to provide information that the United States wanted to vet their citizens.

The latest ban was set to fully go into effect in the early morning hours of Wednesday, barring various types of travelers from Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Chad, Somalia, North Korea and Venezuela. Watson’s order stops it, at least temporarily, with respect to all the countries except North Korea and Venezuela.

In a 40-page decision granting the state of Hawaii’s request for a temporary restraining order and blocking Trump’s order nationwide, Watson wrote that the latest ban “suffers from precisely the same maladies as its predecessor: it lacks sufficient findings that the entry of more than 150 million nationals from six specified countries would be ‘detrimental to the interests of the United States.’”

Watson also wrote that the executive order “plainly discriminates based on nationality” in a way that was opposed to federal law and “the founding principles of this Nation.”

Neal Katyal, one of the lawyers representing Hawaii, wrote on Twitter, “we have just won.” Omar Jadwat, who directs the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and was involved in a separate challenge to the ban in federal court in Maryland, said, “We’re glad, but not surprised, that President Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional Muslim ban has been blocked once again.”

A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Trump had been blocked by courts from imposing his last two versions of the travel ban, but the ultimate question of whether he ever had the authority to do so remains somewhat murky.

The Supreme Court had been scheduled to hear arguments on his second travel ban, inked in March, which barred the entry of citizens from six Muslim majority countries and refugees from everywhere. But a key portion of that ban expired and Trump issued his latest ban before the hearing.

That prompted the justices to remove oral arguments from the calendar. They later dismissed one of the challenges to the March version of the ban.

Meanwhile, the State of Hawaii, the International Refugee Assistance Project and others who had sued over the March travel ban asked judges to block the new one in federal courts in Hawaii, Washington and Maryland. They argued that Trump had exceeded his legal authority to set immigration policy, and the latest measure — like the last two — fulfilled his unconstitutional campaign promise to implement a Muslim ban. As of Tuesday afternoon, the judges in Hawaii and Washington had yet to rule, though arguments in Washington are scheduled for Oct. 30.

“It exceeds the limits on the President’s exclusion authority that have been recognized for nearly a century, by supplanting Congress’s immigration policies with the President’s own unilateral and indefinite ban,” the challengers in Hawaii wrote of the new ban. “And it continues to effectuate the President’s unrepudiated promise to exclude Muslims from the United States.”

The state asked a judge to block the ban with respect to all the Muslim majority countries, though they did not challenge the measures imposed against Venezuela and North Korea.

Watson did not address whether the ban was constitutional; rather, he limited his analysis to whether Trump had exceeded the authority that Congress has given the president to impose restrictions on those wanting to enter the United States. Of particular concern, he said, were that officials seemed to treat someone’s nationality an indicator of the threat they pose — without providing evidence of a connection between the two.

“As discussed herein, because [the executive order’s] findings are inconsistent with and do not fit the restrictions that the order actually imposes, and because [the executive order] improperly uses nationality as a proxy for risk, Plaintiffs are likely to prevail on the merits of their statutory claims,” Watson wrote.

He added that the order did “not reveal why existing law is insufficient to address the President’s described concerns,” and it was internally flawed — for example, exempting Iraq from the banned list, even though that country had failed the U.S. government’s security assessment.

Legal analysts had said those challenging the latest travel ban would face an uphill battle. That was particularly because measure was only put into effect after an extensive process in which the United States negotiated with other countries for information, putting those on a banned list that could not or would not meet a baseline standard.

Such a process, legal analysts said, presumably would help the government defeat arguments that president had not made the appropriate findings to justify his order. The list of countries affected also was changed to include two countries that are not Muslim-majority — Venezuela and North Korea — potentially helping the government argue against the measure was not meant to discriminate against Muslims.

Challengers to the ban, though, sought to link the new directive to its predecessors, and they asserted that even the additions were mainly symbolic. The ban only affects certain government officials from Venezuela, and very few people actually travel to the United States from North Korea each year. They noted Trump himself promised a “larger, tougher, and more specific” ban — meaning the new version would have the same legal problems as the prior iterations.

The directive imposed more complete bans on some countries than others, and the Trump administration has indicated countries could make their way off the list if conditions changed.

For Syria and North Korea, the president’s proclamation blocked immigrants wanting to relocate to the United States and nonimmigrants wishing to visit in some capacity. For Iran, the proclamation blocked both immigrants and nonimmigrants, though it exempted students and those participating in a cultural exchange.

The proclamation blocked people from Chad, Libya and Yemen from coming to the United States as immigrants or on business or tourist visas, and it blocked people from Somalia from coming as immigrants. The proclamation named Venezuela, but it only blocked certain government officials.

Cue the tweetstorm...

[GreyhoundFan]

Wait, what? "Key senators reach bipartisan health-care subsidy deal, and Trump expresses support"

Spoiler

A pair of leading Republican and Democratic senators reached an agreement Tuesday to fund key federal health-care subsidies that President Trump ended last week — and the president expressed support for the plan.

But it was unclear whether Senate GOP leaders would embrace the proposal, leaving its long-term prospects in doubt.

The compromise from Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) would provide states with greater flexibility under the Affordable Care Act in exchange for authorizing cost-sharing reduction payments known as CSRs for two years. Those payments help offset deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs for low-income consumers who obtain insurance under the ACA.

“Yes, we have been involved and this is a short-term deal because we think ultimately block grants going to the states is going to be the answer,” said Trump, referring to a Republican push to block grant health-care funding individually to states. His comments came just days after he moved to end the CSR payments and punt the issue to Congress.

Republican leaders did not immediate endorse the Alexander-Murray framework, raising new questions about whether it would find any traction.

“We haven’t had a chance to think about the way forward yet,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) at his weekly news conference, minutes after the deal was announced about 20 feet away outside a Republican policy luncheon.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday afternoon, Alexander said the deal he has struck with Murray would extend CSR payments for two years and provide states “meaningful flexibility” under the ACA’s existing 1332 waiver program. He said the proposal would offer states greater freedom by allowing them to make changes to insurance offerings as long as the plans had “comparable affordability,” which is a slightly looser definition than the existing one.

The proposal would also allow insurers to offer catastrophic insurance plans to consumers aged 30 and older on ACA exchanges, while maintaining a single risk pool. To speed the approval of 1332 waivers, it would shorten the time period for federal review of state waiver applications, expedite review for states in emergency circumstances and those with waiver proposals that have already been approved for other states, and allow governors to approve state waiver applications rather than requiring state legislative approval. It also would assess the budget impact of any state proposal over the life of the waiver, rather than on an annual basis.

Alexander emphasized that the legislation would not allow states to change the essential benefits insurers are now required to offer individuals and small businesses under the ACA, or let insurers discriminate against consumers with preexisting conditions. “This takes care of the next two years,” the senator said, standing off to the side as GOP leaders emphasized the importance of tax reform before the television cameras. “After that we can have a full-fledged debate on where we go long-term on health care.”

Trump stopped the CSR payments last week. In doing so, he not only dealt a blow against the ACA, which conservative activists have wanted to dismantle and congressional Republicans have tried and failed to repeal this year. He also handed off the matter to Congress, forcing it to decide whether to appropriate funding for the subsidies.

Earlier Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who was golfing with Trump on Saturday when the president discussed the prospect of negotiations with Alexander on the phone, said that even if a deal is struck, it may not be enough of an overhaul to satisfy core Republican voters.

“That will be his challenge, how much is enough? I can’t support the payments until you get some reform, but I realize that for the base, it’s going to be about not keeping Obamacare in place,” Graham told reporters.

For now, many Republican senators are distancing themselves from the emerging Alexander-Murray plan.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure what the Senate should do,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said Tuesday morning.

This probably should have gone on the congress thread, but the fact that the TT has changed his mind again made me post it here. Hopefully he means it and will let this go forward.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s lie about Obama and fallen soldiers shows how he makes America dumber"

Spoiler

Every once in a while, a politician says something so outrageous that it produces not the feigned outrage that has become so familiar, but genuine outrage. That’s what President Trump managed yesterday, when in a news conference he was asked about his public silence on the four American soldiers who were killed in Niger, and claimed that while he calls the families of those killed in action to express his condolences, previous presidents, particularly Barack Obama, hadn’t done so.

This was a particularly despicable lie, because it painted Obama — and other presidents, but let’s be honest, mostly Obama — as cruel and dismissive when it comes to the sacrifice of those in uniform, while portraying Trump as the only one who truly cares.

This morning, Trump actually seemed to double down. In an interview with Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade, he referred to the fact that the son of his chief of staff, John Kelly, was killed in Afghanistan in 2010:

“I mean, you could ask General Kelly did he get a call from Obama. You could ask other people. I don’t know what Obama’s policy was. I write letters, and I also call. … This was, again, fake news CNN. I mean, they’re just a bunch of fakers.”

It would be easy to just add this to the mountain of lies Trump has told, but it’s worth taking a moment to examine it, because it provides an important window not only into his own thinking but also the way that the president is succeeding in making the entire country stupider and more misinformed on an ongoing basis.

Let’s begin with Trump’s words at the news conference. He was asked, “Why haven’t we heard anything from you so far about the soldiers that were killed in Niger?” and he replied that he had written letters to the families, though those letters hadn’t yet been sent, and that he’d be calling them at some point. Then came this:

“So, the traditional way — if you look at President Obama and other Presidents, most of them didn’t make calls, a lot of them didn’t make calls. I like to call when it’s appropriate, when I think I’m able to do it.”

A few minutes later, another reporter circled back to this question, asking how Trump could claim that Obama didn’t call the families of fallen soldiers. Here’s part of his response:

“I don’t know if he did. No, no, no, I was told that he didn’t often. And a lot of Presidents don’t; they write letters. I do…

“President Obama I think probably did sometimes, and maybe sometimes he didn’t. I don’t know. That’s what I was told. All I can do — all I can do is ask my generals. Other Presidents did not call. They’d write letters. And some Presidents didn’t do anything. But I like the combination of — I like, when I can, the combination of a call and also a letter.”

It’s obvious from his responses that Trump had absolutely no idea what presidents before him did or didn’t do in this situation, which he admitted again today (“I don’t know what Obama’s policy was”). But he went ahead and claimed that only he calls the families.

This is quite familiar to anyone who has been watching Trump these past couple of years. He takes his own limited experience and characterizes it as unique, extraordinary and unprecedented. No one has ever done this before, no one has accomplished so much, no one knows more than I do. There’s an element of the salesman’s puffery at work, but it also comes from a place of pure ignorance.

As conservative writer Tim Carney hypothesized last week, when Trump claims that no administration has ever done as much as his, it isn’t so much that he’s intentionally lying but that he’s so ignorant of the presidency and politics in general. He never realized that presidents and their staffs work very hard (“Like how 10-year-old me assumed teachers went into a cocoon at 3 pm,” Carney said), so he assumes he must be the first to have ever done so. The comparison to a 10-year-old is apt, because Trump’s brand of ignorance is so infantile. All of us are ignorant about some things, but only Trump believes that if he doesn’t know something, no one else could know it either (“Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated“).

When a normal person is in a state of ignorance, he or she might exercise some caution and refrain from making a volatile accusation that, for instance, his or her predecessors were callous to Gold Star families. But not Trump. You’ll notice that the first time he says it, he asserts it as simple fact: “If you look at President Obama and other Presidents, most of them didn’t make calls.” When he’s challenged, he equivocates: “I don’t know if he did … President Obama I think probably did sometimes, and maybe sometimes he didn’t. I don’t know. That’s what I was told.”

Now here’s why this matters. Yes, many news outlets pointed out that Trump wasn’t telling the truth. But there are probably three interns at Fox News who are now scouring old news reports to find some family member of a fallen soldier who didn’t get a call from Obama. If they find it, that person’s story will then become the subject of a segment on Sean Hannity’s show, and it will then get retold on a hundred talk radio programs and conservative websites as proof that Obama was a monster and the media are all lying about this. (Trump’s insistence that there was “fake news” at work is another way of telling his supporters not to believe whatever they hear about this subject that comes from sources not explicitly supporting him.) And I promise you that if you took a poll two weeks from now, you’d find that 40 percent of the public (or more) believes that Obama never called the family of any fallen soldier, and only Trump has the sensitivity to do so.

And that’s how Trump takes his own particular combination of ignorance, bluster and malice, and sets it off like a nuclear bomb of misinformation. The fallout spreads throughout the country, and no volume of corrections and fact checks can stop it. It wasn’t even part of a thought-out strategy, just a loathsome impulse that found its way out of the president’s mouth to spread far and wide.

If you’re one of those who marvel at the fact that Trump’s approval ratings aren’t even lower than they are, this is a big reason for that. It’s absolutely necessary to correct Trump’s falsehoods, but we shouldn’t fool ourselves into believing that any poisonous lie he tells won’t find an eager audience. And the whole country gets dumber and dumber.

I love the part about three interns at Faux News. Sadly, it's true.

[47of74]

Fornicate Face lost bigly

Quote

President Donald Trump's net worth took a dive on Forbes list of the wealthiest Americans. 

The president dropped by $600 million — and 92 spots — to No. 248 this year, to an estimated net worth of $3.1 billion, according to Forbes, which released its new list on Tuesday. Trump tied with Evan Spiegel, the 27-year-old co-founder of Snapchat. 

Last year, the president ranked No. 156 with a net worth of $3.7 billion. 

Forbes said it spent months digging through financial disclosure forms, public property records and interviewing dozens of people to estimate the president's net worth, which has long been a source of contention.

I just have one thing to say about that development. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"What does Trump mean when he calls someone a ‘true American patriot?’"

Spoiler

When the Pittsburgh Penguins — the current National Hockey League champions — visited the White House earlier this month, President Trump praised the team for its commitment to American values:

“You are true, true champions — and incredible patriots,” Trump said.

It didn't matter that of the 18 players who won the cup last season and are still with the Penguins, only seven are American. All of them were  held up as examples.

“You embody the values of dedication, discipline, and hard work,” Trump said. “To every young American watching today, we encourage you to always strive to be your best, to do your best, and to give your all.”

The praise came hours after the president's latest attack on National Football League players protesting racism and police violence by kneeling during the national anthem.

... < tweet >

The Fix's Callum Borchers ran the numbers and found the NFL is the most American sport, with many of its players hailing from states where troops are also most likely from. And according to the latest Harris Poll, 1 in 3 people surveyed say football is their favorite sport.

But despite the NFL players, whom Trump criticized again Monday, participating in an iconically American pastime, Trump isn't likely to call former San Francisco 49er Colin Kaepernick a “true American patriot” anytime soon. In fact, Kaepernick  has constantly been questioned by Trump and those who hold his perspective of what it means to be a patriot.

Because when it comes to epitomizing loyalty to Americanism, Trump's idea tends to be more consistent with the traditional values of the country's more conservative communities.

That's why at a rally in Alabama last month for Sen. Luther Strange (R), Trump pivoted from praising a candidate's “American values” to a long-held symbol of Americana: professional football.

For many Americans who voted for Trump, his appeal to years gone by spoke to a Norman Rockwell-like America that many conservative or older Americans consider long gone.

The United States is less white, less Christian and more ethnically diverse today than in decades past. And those changes, plus more related to sexual orientation and gender roles, make some Americas long for a different time.

For many, this is what Trump's campaign slogan — Make America Great Again — was all about.

To many of those Trump supporters, American culture at its core does not criticize the military or welcome non-English speakers, non-Christians or even people who have liberal values.

These values were set by the historically dominant culture in America, according to an influential theory that argues that politically dominant groups effectively claim “ownership of the nation,” according to the Monkey Cage blog's Michael Tesler. He wrote:

Consistent with that contention, social psychology research finds that for many “to be American is implicitly synonymous with being white.” Moreover, whites who feel a sense of solidarity with other whites have historically felt more strongly attached to such symbols of patriotism as the national anthem and the American flag.

And it is often these Americans that Trump credits for his victory, as he did at the Strange rally in Alabama.

“I think we won because of the military. I think we won because of the vets. I think we won because of the evangelicals,” he said.

Despite the feeling of many conservatives that their values are no longer prominent, Republicans control the White House, Senate and Congress as well as most legislatures and gubernatorial offices.

That gives some Trump supporters hope that those with the most traditional values will be acknowledged as the true patriots.

“We believe our nation was founded as a Christian nation. The enemy is trying to take it in another direction, not Christianity,” said Linda Shebsta, a Burelson, Tex., resident who joined other conservative Christian women on the Mall earlier this week for a prayer event.

Shebsta told The Post's Julie Zauzmer that the Supreme Court's authorization of same-sex marriage was proof of Satan at work during the Obama administration. “We believe God put Donald Trump in,” she said.

Regardless of how Trump got to the White House, he has promised Americans with traditional values that he will carry out the pledges he made to them on the campaign trail.

“As long as we have pride in our country, confidence in our future, and faith in our God, then America will prevail,” he said this past weekend at the Values Voters Summit.  “We will defeat every evil, overcome every threat, and meet every single challenge.  We will defend our faith and protect our traditions.”

“We will pass on the blessings of liberty and the glories of God to our children,” he added to roaring applause.  “Our values will endure.”

Short answer: he means the person is white and Christian.

[Rachel333]

He's telling the crowd at the Heritage Foundation that they're going to be saying Merry Christmas again. I'm pretty sure they never stopped!

[VixenToast]

On a side note, on Oct 11 my aunt died from brain cancer/congestive heart failure/pneumonia. My cousin/bff, granddaughter of my aunt, and I were in the waiting room watching Trump talk about whatever BS he was talking about that day when we both decided we would go in and tell her Trump was impeached.

Last year on Election night, we three watched in horror at the TV and my aunt said, "Oh Gawd, I don't think I can live through a Trump presidency." So even though she was heavily morphined and sleeping, we announced it to her (in loud voices... the radiation nearly destroyed her hearing): He's impeached, Trump's been impeached! He is going to jail, Trump is impeached!

Her eyebrows shot up. I like to think she heard us and was pleased

yes, yes, I know, you're all sorry for my loss, thank you in advance. I know how sweet you all are, and God knows I've been avoiding this section for a bit.

[MarblesMom]

On 10/15/2017 at 10:32 PM, Audrey2 said:

it will only be a quick item on a short list

Why do I think his intelligence briefings play out like an episode of Short Attention Span Theater?

@VixenToast my sincere condolences on your loss.

[GreyhoundFan]

@VixenToast -- my condolences on your loss. I would have done the same thing.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Twelve days of silence, then a swipe at Obama: How Trump handled four dead soldiers"

Spoiler

On Oct. 4, the day four U.S. Special Forces soldiers were gunned down at the border of Niger and Mali in the deadliest combat incident since President Trump took office, the commander in chief was lighting up Twitter with attacks on the “fake news” media.

The next day, when the remains of the first soldiers reached Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, Trump was assailing the “fake news” and warning the country of “the calm before the storm.” What storm, he never did say.

Over that weekend, as the identity of the fourth soldier was disclosed publicly and more details emerged about the incident, Trump was golfing and letting it rip on Twitter about Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the NFL, North Korea, Puerto Rico and, again, alleged media bias.

But a president who revels in providing color commentary on the news said nothing about what happened in Niger for 12 straight days — until Monday in the Rose Garden of the White House, where he was asked by a reporter to explain his uncharacteristic silence.

In his answer, Trump said in his defense that he had written personal letters to the soldiers’ family members, and he then tried to use the issue to gain a political advantage. Trump leveled false accusations at his predecessors, including former president Barack Obama, saying they never or rarely called family members of soldiers who were killed on their watch, when in fact they regularly did.

As anger swelled, Trump continued to attempt to bolster his broader claim Tuesday by invoking the death of Marine 2nd Lt. Robert Kelly, the son of White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly who was killed in 2010 while serving in Afghanistan.

The White House has not explained why Trump took so long to comment publicly about the Niger ambush, but officials said Tuesday that he was regularly briefed on the incident during that period. They declined to provide details.

The White House did not receive detailed information from the Defense Department about the four dead soldiers until Oct. 12, and that information was not fully verified by the White House Military Office until Monday, according to a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment on the internal process.

At that point, the official said, Trump was cleared to reach out to the four families — both in letters that were mailed Tuesday and in personal phone calls to family members that day.

“He offered condolences on behalf of a grateful nation and assured them their family’s extraordinary sacrifice to the country will never be forgotten,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.

Leon Panetta, who served as defense secretary and White House chief of staff under Democratic presidents, said Trump should have more quickly conveyed the “deepest regrets of the country for the families that lost their loved ones.” He put some of the responsibility for Trump’s slow response on his staff.

“Somebody screwed up here, okay?” Panetta said. “You don’t let that amount of time pass when our men and women in uniform have been killed.”

Trump did not serve in the military — he sought and received several draft deferments during the Vietnam War — and has drawn pointed criticism in the past for his comments about military heroes.

As a presidential candidate, Trump mocked the service of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and feuded with the Gold Star parents of Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq in 2004.

And on his first full day as president, Trump used a speech before the Central Intelligence Agency’s wall of stars honoring intelligence officers who died in service to air his personal grievances, including about the media coverage of the size of his inaugural crowd.

Peter Wehner, an adviser and speechwriter in President George W. Bush’s White House, said communicating empathy and compassion has been for Trump like speaking “a foreign language.”

“Part of being a president is at moments being pastor in chief, dispensing grace and understanding and giving voice to sorrow, tragedy and loss,” Wehner said. “But he’s a person who’s missing an empathy gene.”

Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist and former adviser to Bush and McCain, said he was surprised by Trump’s 12-day silence on the Niger attack.

“There is no issue too small for him to comment on,” Schmidt said. “He tweets at all hours of the morning and night on every conceivable subject. He has time to insult, to degrade, to demean always. But once again, you see this moral obtusity in the performance of his duties as commander in chief.”

Still, the brother of one of the fallen soldiers, Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright, 29, said he and his family have not been bothered by Trump’s comments.

William Wright said Tuesday afternoon in an interview that his parents were expecting a phone call from the president soon and that his family would consider it a “great honor” to speak with him. If Trump had called earlier, Wright said, the family would not have been ready for it.

“It’s not something we’re upset by, and it’s not something we are offended by,” Wright said. “This is a devastating experience to go through, and we have been blessed with a lot of support. It’s our hope that everyone can rally around the families of the fallen soldiers.”

Sanders defended Trump’s Monday comments, saying the president was not criticizing his predecessors “but stating a fact” that presidents sometimes have called family members, sometimes have sent letters and other times have met in person.

Inside the West Wing, Trump’s advisers have been furious with what they consider unfair criticism of their boss’s comments leveled by former Obama staffers. Privately, they have accused the media of assuming the worst in Trump — jumping to a conclusion that he does not respect military members because he waited so long to comment on the four killed Green Berets. One top aide argued that a “tone and veil of hate” has defined the coverage.

With the war against terrorism continuing well into its second decade, the number of battlefield deaths has greatly declined, making the loss of four soldiers on a single day all the more significant. So far in 2017, about 30 service members have died, compared with at least 346 hostile deaths in all of 2009 and 456 in all of 2010, which were Obama’s first two years in office.

Wartime presidents historically have wrestled with how often they reach out to the bereaved, which is an important part of leadership, and how they maintain their own emotional health by not letting personal grief overwhelm their judgment, said Eliot A. Cohen, a senior State Department official in the Bush administration.

“If Franklin D. Roosevelt had personally contacted the family members of every service member who fell in World War II, he would have been so overwhelmed emotionally he could not have made any decisions,” Cohen said.

Panetta said each president has his own way of expressing condolences. “The most important test is whether it comes from the heart,” he said. “It’s not so much whether he decides to do a letter or a phone call. You don’t do this by the numbers. You do it by what you think can most appropriately reflect the nation’s concern.”

This month’s deadly operation in Niger was unusual and highly sensitive, and the military has not yet disclosed many details. It was something of a surprise that the Special Forces unit came under fire — and the remains of one of the fallen soldiers, Sgt. La David T. Johnson, 25, were not recovered until two days afterward.

Marine Lt. Gen. Frank McKenzie, the director of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, told reporters Oct. 12 that the ambush marked the first time in at least six months that the U.S. military had faced enemy fire in the region.

McKenzie said the operation was meant to be an outreach effort in which the U.S. soldiers went out alongside local forces; it was “not designed to be a combat patrol.” But he defended the support the soldiers had, saying that there was a “pretty good level of planning” and that French forces responded within 30 minutes with helicopter air support.

The general said the Pentagon believes there is some connection to an affiliate of the Islamic State terrorist group in the attack.

U.S. Africa Command first disclosed late Oct. 4 that U.S. troops had come under fire in Niger. The command confirmed the following morning that three U.S. soldiers — Staff Sgts. Bryan C. Black, 35; Jeremiah W. Johnson, 39; and Wright — were killed.

On Oct. 6, the Pentagon disclosed that U.S. troops also had recovered the remains of Johnson. The military did not explain how Johnson was separated from other U.S. forces in the mission, a development that rarely occurs in a military that prides itself on never leaving service members behind on the battlefield.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters Oct. 11 that he “completely rejected” any notion that the rescue effort for the unit was slow, and he promised that the military will examine the operation.

“We’re not complacent,” he said. “We’re going to be better.”

Sanders twice extended thoughts and prayers on behalf of the administration to the family members of the dead soldiers — in her press briefings on Oct. 5 and 6 — but Trump issued no statement echoing his press secretary.

Bonnie Carroll, who founded the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, said she has had good experiences with several presidents when it comes to mourning the loss of fallen service members.

“While there is no one way to acknowledge the death,” she said in a statement, “what is important for the family is that the president acknowledges the life and service of their loved one, and expresses gratitude on behalf of the nation.”

"...communicating empathy and compassion has been for Trump like speaking “a foreign language.” Ain't that the truth?

[47of74]

I see fuck face is just as sensitive as ever

Quote

President Trump told the widow of a Green Beret who died in Niger that the soldier “knew what he signed up for … but when it happens it hurts anyway” during a phone call on Tuesday.

The widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson received the five-minute call from Trump, Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson told The Post, one day after the commander in chief falsely suggested that former President Barack Obama did not phone the families of fallen soldiers.

“They were astonished,” Wilson said about the Florida family’s reaction. “It was almost like saying, ‘You signed up to do this, and if you didn’t want to die, shouldn’t have signed up.’ ”

Wilson said the widow, Myeshia Johnson, spoke to Trump for about five minutes and her only words were “thank you” at the end of the conversation.

Fuck face considers soldiers to be little more than cannon fodder.  

[Rachel333]

I saw that last night and I just knew he would find a way to fuck it up even worse. Holy fuck, Trump, attacking a newly grieving, pregnant widow?

[formergothardite]

How is Fox news going to spin that to make it look good? 

[GreyhoundFan]

Aaaaand, the TT is denying his words to Mrs. Johnson: "Trump disputes account of his call with soldier’s widow. But congresswoman who heard exchange says it was ‘horrible’."

Spoiler

President Trump in a tweet Wednesday denied that he had told the widow of a soldier killed in an ambush in Africa this month that her husband “must have known what he signed up for.”

... < typical tweet >

The president was reacting to a Florida congresswoman saying the family of Sgt. La David T. Johnson was “astonished” by that remark during a phone call from Trump on Tuesday. Trump said he has “proof” that the conversation did not happen as recounted by Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D.) He did not elaborate, but the claim again raised questions about whether the president tapes calls and conversations.

Wilson told MSNBC on Wednesday that Johnson's widow, Myeshia, was shaken by the exchange.

“She was crying the whole time, and when she hung up the phone, she looked at me and said, ‘He didn’t even remember his name.’ That’s the hurting part.”

Wilson went on to say Trump “was almost like joking. He said, ‘Well, I guess you knew’ — something to the effect that ‘he knew what he was getting into when he signed up, but I guess it hurts anyway.’ You know, just matter-of-factly, that this is what happens, anyone who is signing up for military duty is signing up to die. That’s the way we interpreted it. It was horrible. It was insensitive. It was absolutely crazy, unnecessary. I was livid.”

“She was in tears. She was in tears. And she said, ‘He didn’t even remember his name.’”

Wilson had told NBC Miami on Tuesday that she heard the comment Trump made to Johnson's widow through a speaker phone.

“He said, 'But you know, he must have known what he signed up for,'" Wilson said. She said the president made that comment more than once during the three-to-five-minute call.

The White House had said Tuesday that Trump placed calls Tuesday to the families of all four service members killed in Niger on Oct. 4. The calls followed Trump's claims Monday and Tuesday that his Democratic predecessor, President Barack Obama, had not often made such calls to families. Former Obama administration officials strongly dispute that claim, saying Obama engaged families of fallen service members in various ways throughout his presidency.

Johnson, 25, of Miami Gardens, Fla., was found dead after initially being reported as missing after the attack.

He was a driver assigned to 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) based in Fort Bragg, N.C.

What a pitiful situation withe the "commander-in-chief". I wonder if he would have said the same thing to the widow of a white soldier?

[GreyhoundFan]

Oh, good grief: "Trump asks whether James Comey was truthful about Clinton probe"

Spoiler

President Trump suggested Wednesday that former FBI director James B. Comey had intended to spare Democrat Hillary Clinton from prosecution “long before investigation was complete” into her government email practices.

In a pair of early-morning Twitter messages, Trump referred to a recently released Justice Department document that indicates a draft of a Comey statement about the investigation was circulating among aides in May last year, two months before Comey announced the end of the investigation and his decision not to seek charges.

... < more unhinged tweets >

The FBI posted the document to its “Vault” Freedom of Information Act reading room on Monday. The unclassified document titled “Drafts of Director Comey's July 5, 2016 Statement Regarding Email Server Investigation Part 01 of 01" includes part of an email message from FBI official James Rybicki, who forwarded an email from Comey asking for “any comments on this statement so we may roll it into a master doc for discussion with the Director at a future date.”

The draft statement itself is redacted, as is nearly everything else in the five-page document.

It was written before investigators had interviewed several witnesses, including Clinton herself. Comey announced the closure of the investigation in July, days after Clinton's FBI interview. At issue was the security and handling of classified material on Clinton's home-based email server, which she used during her tenure as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

Trump's tweets revive his feud with Comey, whom he fired in May, and the Democratic opponent he defeated last year. He has twice this week referred to Clinton as “Crooked Hillary,” his campaign trail nickname for her.

Trump said Comey had “stated under oath that he didn't do this,” in apparent reference to Comey's Senate testimony in which he said there was no criminal case to bring. In his tweet Wednesday, Trump asked, “Where is Justice Dept?” apparently inviting an investigation into the existence of the 2016 email chain.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) have said the FBI email chain shows that Comey began drafting an “exoneration statement” long before the Clinton probe ended. In September, Graham told Fox News that although he does not think Comey perjured himself, he wants Comey to return to testify.

“This doesn’t add up, and I smell a rat here,” Graham said.

This just stinks of desperation to distract from the dumpster fire that is this sham administration.

[candygirl200413]

If I hear anyone of his supporters say how he loves the troops I will go off greatly off. It's so disgusting that so many are echoing this whole don't kneel but eh it's okay for the orange fucking pos to say all things offensive and yet they think he's the greatest. ugh.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Second judge rules against latest travel ban, saying Trump’s own words show it was aimed at Muslims"

Spoiler

A federal judge in Maryland early Wednesday issued a second halt on the latest version of President Trump’s travel ban, asserting that the president’s own comments on the campaign trail and on Twitter convinced him that the directive was akin to an unconstitutional Muslim ban.

U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang issued a somewhat less complete halt on the ban than his counterpart in Hawaii did a day earlier, blocking the administration from enforcing the directive only on those who lacked a “bona fide” relationship with a person or entity in the United States, such as family members or some type of professional or other engagement in the United States.

But in some ways, Chuang’s ruling was more personally cutting to Trump, as he said the president’s own words cast his latest attempt to impose a travel blockade as the “inextricable re-animation of the twice-enjoined Muslim ban.”

Omar Jadwat, who directs of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and represented those suing in Maryland over the ban, said: “Like the two versions before it, President Trump’s latest travel ban is still a Muslim ban at its core. And like the two before it, this one is going down to defeat in the courts.”

The third iteration of Trump’s travel ban had been set to go fully into effect early Wednesday, barring various types of travelers from Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Chad, Somalia, North Korea and Venezuela. Even before Chuang’s ruling, though, a federal judge in Hawaii stopped it — at least temporarily — for all of the countries except North Korea and Venezuela.

That judge, Derrick K. Watson, blocked the administration from enforcing the measure on anyone from the six countries, not just those with a “bona fide” U.S. tie. But his ruling did not address whether Trump’s intent in imposing the directive was to discriminate against Muslims. He said the president had merely exceeded the authority Congress had given him in immigration law.

The Justice Department already had vowed to appeal Watson’s ruling, which the White House said “undercuts the President’s efforts to keep the American people safe and enforce minimum security standards for entry into the United States.” Both Watson’s temporary restraining order and Chuang’s preliminary injunction are also interim measures, meant to maintain the status quo as the parties continue to argue the case.

The administration had cast the new measure as one that was necessary for national security, implemented only after officials conducted an extensive review of the information they needed to vet those coming to the United States. Those countries that were either unwilling or unable to produce such information even after negotiation, officials have said, were included on the banned list.

“These restrictions are vital to ensuring that foreign nations comply with the minimum security standards required for the integrity of our immigration system and the security of our Nation,” the White House said after Watson’s ruling. “We are therefore confident that the Judiciary will ultimately uphold the President’s lawful and necessary action and swiftly restore its vital protections for the safety of the American people.”

Like Watson’s order, Chuang’s 91-page ruling also found Trump had exceeded his authority under immigration law, but only partially.

The order — which has “no specified end date and no requirement of renewal” — violated a nondiscrimination provision in the law in that it blocked immigrants to the United States based on their nationality, Chuang wrote.

But Chuang said he could not determine, as Watson did, that Trump had violated a different part of federal immigration law requiring him to find entry of certain nonimmigrant travelers would be “detrimental” to U.S. interests before blocking them.

Chuang instead based much of his ruling on his assessment that Trump intended to ban Muslims, and thus his order had run afoul of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. When Trump was a presidential candidate in December 2015, Chuang wrote, he had promised a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” and all of his comments since then seemed to indicate his various travel bans were meant to fulfill that promise.

After his second ban was blocked, Chuang wrote, Trump described the measure as a “watered down version” of his initial measure, adding, “we ought go back to the first one and go all the way, which is what I wanted to do in the first place.” The president had then revoked and replaced his first travel ban, which had also been held up in court.

In August, with courts still weighing the second version, Chuang noted that Trump “endorsed what appears to be an apocryphal story involving General John J. Pershing and a purported massacre of Muslims with bullets dipped in a pig’s blood, advising people to ‘study what General Pershing . . . did to terrorists when caught.’ ”

In September, as authorities worked on a new directive, Trump wrote on Twitter “the travel ban into the United States should be far larger, tougher and more specific — but stupidly, that would not be politically correct!

Chuang had pressed challengers at a hearing this week on what the government would have to do to make the new ban legal, and he noted in his ruling that the new directive had changed from the previous iterations. The government, for example, had undertaken a review process before inking the new measure, and had added two non-Muslim majority countries to the banned list.

But Chuang wrote that he was unmoved that government had simply relied on the results of their review, and instead believed they made “certain subjective determinations that resulted in a disproportionate impact on majority-Muslim nations.” He wrote that the government offered “no evidence, even in the form of classified information submitted to the Court, showing an intelligence-based terrorism threat justifying a ban on entire nationalities,” and asserted that even the new measure “generally resembles President Trump’s earlier description of the Muslim ban.”

“The ‘initial’ announcement of the Muslim ban, offered repeatedly and explicitly through President Trump’s own statements, forcefully and persuasively expressed his purpose in unequivocal terms,” Chuang wrote.

The suits in federal court in Maryland had been brought by 23 advocacy groups and seven people who said they would be negatively impacted by the new ban.

I'm surprised there hasn't been a twitter tantrum.

[AnywhereButHere]

9 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Second judge rules against latest travel ban, saying Trump’s own words show it was aimed at Muslims"

  Reveal hidden contents

A federal judge in Maryland early Wednesday issued a second halt on the latest version of President Trump’s travel ban, asserting that the president’s own comments on the campaign trail and on Twitter convinced him that the directive was akin to an unconstitutional Muslim ban.

U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang issued a somewhat less complete halt on the ban than his counterpart in Hawaii did a day earlier, blocking the administration from enforcing the directive only on those who lacked a “bona fide” relationship with a person or entity in the United States, such as family members or some type of professional or other engagement in the United States.

But in some ways, Chuang’s ruling was more personally cutting to Trump, as he said the president’s own words cast his latest attempt to impose a travel blockade as the “inextricable re-animation of the twice-enjoined Muslim ban.”

Omar Jadwat, who directs of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and represented those suing in Maryland over the ban, said: “Like the two versions before it, President Trump’s latest travel ban is still a Muslim ban at its core. And like the two before it, this one is going down to defeat in the courts.”

The third iteration of Trump’s travel ban had been set to go fully into effect early Wednesday, barring various types of travelers from Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Chad, Somalia, North Korea and Venezuela. Even before Chuang’s ruling, though, a federal judge in Hawaii stopped it — at least temporarily — for all of the countries except North Korea and Venezuela.

That judge, Derrick K. Watson, blocked the administration from enforcing the measure on anyone from the six countries, not just those with a “bona fide” U.S. tie. But his ruling did not address whether Trump’s intent in imposing the directive was to discriminate against Muslims. He said the president had merely exceeded the authority Congress had given him in immigration law.

The Justice Department already had vowed to appeal Watson’s ruling, which the White House said “undercuts the President’s efforts to keep the American people safe and enforce minimum security standards for entry into the United States.” Both Watson’s temporary restraining order and Chuang’s preliminary injunction are also interim measures, meant to maintain the status quo as the parties continue to argue the case.

The administration had cast the new measure as one that was necessary for national security, implemented only after officials conducted an extensive review of the information they needed to vet those coming to the United States. Those countries that were either unwilling or unable to produce such information even after negotiation, officials have said, were included on the banned list.

“These restrictions are vital to ensuring that foreign nations comply with the minimum security standards required for the integrity of our immigration system and the security of our Nation,” the White House said after Watson’s ruling. “We are therefore confident that the Judiciary will ultimately uphold the President’s lawful and necessary action and swiftly restore its vital protections for the safety of the American people.”

Like Watson’s order, Chuang’s 91-page ruling also found Trump had exceeded his authority under immigration law, but only partially.

The order — which has “no specified end date and no requirement of renewal” — violated a nondiscrimination provision in the law in that it blocked immigrants to the United States based on their nationality, Chuang wrote.

But Chuang said he could not determine, as Watson did, that Trump had violated a different part of federal immigration law requiring him to find entry of certain nonimmigrant travelers would be “detrimental” to U.S. interests before blocking them.

Chuang instead based much of his ruling on his assessment that Trump intended to ban Muslims, and thus his order had run afoul of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. When Trump was a presidential candidate in December 2015, Chuang wrote, he had promised a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” and all of his comments since then seemed to indicate his various travel bans were meant to fulfill that promise.

After his second ban was blocked, Chuang wrote, Trump described the measure as a “watered down version” of his initial measure, adding, “we ought go back to the first one and go all the way, which is what I wanted to do in the first place.” The president had then revoked and replaced his first travel ban, which had also been held up in court.

In August, with courts still weighing the second version, Chuang noted that Trump “endorsed what appears to be an apocryphal story involving General John J. Pershing and a purported massacre of Muslims with bullets dipped in a pig’s blood, advising people to ‘study what General Pershing . . . did to terrorists when caught.’ ”

In September, as authorities worked on a new directive, Trump wrote on Twitter “the travel ban into the United States should be far larger, tougher and more specific — but stupidly, that would not be politically correct!

Chuang had pressed challengers at a hearing this week on what the government would have to do to make the new ban legal, and he noted in his ruling that the new directive had changed from the previous iterations. The government, for example, had undertaken a review process before inking the new measure, and had added two non-Muslim majority countries to the banned list.

But Chuang wrote that he was unmoved that government had simply relied on the results of their review, and instead believed they made “certain subjective determinations that resulted in a disproportionate impact on majority-Muslim nations.” He wrote that the government offered “no evidence, even in the form of classified information submitted to the Court, showing an intelligence-based terrorism threat justifying a ban on entire nationalities,” and asserted that even the new measure “generally resembles President Trump’s earlier description of the Muslim ban.”

“The ‘initial’ announcement of the Muslim ban, offered repeatedly and explicitly through President Trump’s own statements, forcefully and persuasively expressed his purpose in unequivocal terms,” Chuang wrote.

The suits in federal court in Maryland had been brought by 23 advocacy groups and seven people who said they would be negatively impacted by the new ban.

I'm surprised there hasn't been a twitter tantrum.

Yet. He's still rewriting history on the whole disrespecting of fallen soldiers. He'll jump tracks soon enough.

 

(And how is he still able to Tweet anything. You think he would've broken their terms of service ages ago. Ages. He's been in office less than a year and it feels like forever. "Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends...")

[VixenToast]

I wish Trump had McCain's brain cancer.

Fuck brain cancer. How long does McCain have I wonder? He was diagnosed before my aunt, however she had 5 tumors. I have no idea how many he has or whether it is operable. My aunts weren't operable, so she l head radiation. If McCain has had radiation, I wonder if it's made the wiring in his brain somewhat different like it didn't my aunt.

There ends the similarities and wondering. While my aunts death has only affected her friends and family, John McCains inevitable rendezvous with La Morte will affect the nation. People better take heed: he won't be around in 5 yrs to exhort us to not fall into "phoney nationalism." Among other things.

Lordy, Ihope Trump just shuts his yap and breaks his fingers once McCain dies.... I can't bear to see man such as him so dishonored by the sitting president. My Daddy got a Purple Heart in Vietnam, McCain was a POW, that gets some major respect from me. And Mr Draft-Dodger has the gall to say stupid and heartless things to gold star families. Good gravy.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Trump Doctrine"

Spoiler

Well, it took almost a year, but we now have the “Trump Doctrine.” It’s very simple. And, as you’d expect, it fits neatly into a tweet. On nearly every major issue, President Trump’s position is: “Obama built it. I broke it. You fix it.”

And that cuts right to the core of what is the most frightening thing about the Trump presidency. It’s not the president’s juvenile tweeting or all the aides who’ve been pushed out of his clown car at high speed or his industrial-strength lying.

It’s Trump’s willingness to unravel so many longstanding policies and institutions at once — from Nafta to Obamacare to the global climate accord to the domestic clean power initiative to the Pacific trade deal to the Iran nuclear deal — without any real preparation either on the day before or for the morning after.

Indeed, Trump has made most of his climate, health, energy and economic decisions without consulting any scientists, without inviting into the White House a broad range of experts, without putting forth his own clear-cut alternatives to the systems he’s unraveling, without having at the ready a team of aides or a political coalition able to implement any alternatives and without a strategic framework that connects all of his dots.

In short, we’re simply supposed to take the president’s word that this or that deal “is the worst deal ever” — backed up by no serious argument or plan about how he will produce a better one.

I’m open to improving any of these accords or institutions. I’m even open to the possibility that by just tipping over all these accords at once, and throwing away his steering wheel, Trump will get people to improve the Iran deal or Obamacare out of sheer panic at the chaos that might ensue if they don’t.

But I am equally open to the possibility that unraveling all of these big systems at once — health, energy, geopolitics — without a clear plan or a capable team will set in motion chain reactions, some of them long term, that Trump has not thought through in the least. Moreover, when you break big systems, which, albeit imperfectly, have stabilized regions, environments or industries for decades, it can be very difficult to restore them.

Question: We’re told by our secretary of state that he’s been engaged in some secret contacts with North Korea, exploring the possibility of a diplomatic solution that might dramatically reduce North Korea’s nuclear arsenal in return for U.S. promises of regime security. If, at the same time, Trump unilaterally pulls out of the deal we’ve already signed with Iran to prevent it from developing nukes — and Trump moves to reimpose sanctions — how does that not send only one message to the North Koreans: No deal with the U.S. is worth the paper it’s written on, so you’d be wise to hold on to all your nukes?

Question: Iran controls tens of thousands of Shiite militiamen in Iraq and Syria who were our tacit allies in defeating ISIS. Tehran also has huge influence over Iraq’s government and over certain regions of Afghanistan as well. Can we stabilize Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan — post-ISIS — and keep our troop presence low and safe, without Iran’s help — and will that help be coming after Trump rips up the nuclear deal? If you think so, please raise your hand.

And since our European allies as well as Russia and China have indicated that they will not follow us in backing out of the Iran deal or reimposing sanctions, Iran would have all the moral high ground and money it needs, and the U.S. would be isolated. Are we going to sanction E.U. banks if they deal with Iran?

Trump came into office vowing to end the trade imbalance with China — a worthy goal. And what was his first move? To tear up the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade deal that would have put the U.S. at the helm of a 12-nation trading bloc built around U.S. interests and values, potentially eliminating some 18,000 tariffs on U.S. goods and controlling 40 percent of global G.D.P. And China was not in the group. That’s called leverage.

Trump just ripped up the TPP to “satisfy the base” and is now left begging China for trade crumbs, with little leverage. And because he needs China’s help in dealing with North Korea, he has even less leverage on trade.

Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord and, at the same time, restricted U.S. government funding for birth control both at home and abroad. Question: What is driving so many immigrants and refugees in Africa, the Middle East and Central America to try to get out of their world of disorder and into America and Europe and the world order?

Answer: It is a cocktail of climate change, environmental degradation, population explosions and misgovernance in these countries. So Trump’s policy is to throw away every tool we have to mitigate climate change and population growth and try to build a wall instead, while also trying to bully Mexico’s unpopular president into trade concessions, which could help elect a radical populist in next year’s Mexican election — a successor who would be anti-American — and destabilize its economy as well.

At a time when China has decided to go full-bore into clean tech and electric cars, at a time when all of the tech giants are building data centers that they want powered by clean energy, at a time when solar and wind power are growing increasingly competitive with fossil fuels (and America still has a technological lead in many of these areas), at a time when climate change may be stimulating bigger hurricanes and forest fires that are costing us hundreds of billions of dollars, Trump’s central energy initiative is to reverse Obama’s and bring back coal-fired power.

None of these dots connect. And we will pay for that. “Whiplash” was a great movie. But it’s a terrible organizing principle for our foreign or domestic policy.

Excellent op-ed.

[GreyhoundFan]

You could remove the "on health care" from this title, and it would still be true: "Trump is totally clueless on health care. The last 24 hours proved it.'

Spoiler

President Trump has seemed clueless about health care before — but perhaps never so much as over the last 24 hours.

Early Tuesday, Trump decided upon a justification for his controversial decision to cancel Obamacare payments to insurers that subsidized policies for low-income Americans: The insurance companies are getting rich off this stuff, he claimed.

His argument was dubious at best; insurance companies are making lots of money, but not on Obamacare plans. And not only that, but Trump then suggested at a news conference that he actually supported a newly struck deal that would restore the payments that he had said were lining insurance-company pockets.

And then he did a 180. He told the Heritage Foundation later Tuesday that “Congress must find a solution to the Obamacare mess instead of providing bailouts to insurance companies.” Then he tweeted the same Wednesday morning.

... < tweets from twitler >

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) who spearheaded the deal with Democratic Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), is now suggesting Trump pulled the rug out from underneath him.

... < tweet >

It's a whole lot of self-inflicted confusion. Let's sort through it.

During an appearance Tuesday morning on Brian Kilmeade's Fox News Radio show, Trump pointed to soaring stock prices for the insurance companies, even bringing along visuals.

“Look at these insurance companies. This is since Obamacare started. Anthem, big company, 270 percent increase. 270 percent. And that’s since ACA, that’s Obamacare,” Trump said. “So since Obamacare, Humana, 420 percent increase. Aetna, 470 percent increase. Cigna, 480 percent increase.”

He added: “They got a great deal with Obamacare. The one beneficiary — the great beneficiaries for Obamacare is not the people.”

First things first: Trump is cherry-picking his data. He appears to be using numbers since Obamacare was passed — back in March 2010 — rather than when it was actually implemented and most of its provisions took effect in 2014. For example, Humana's stock price is up about 140 percent since the start of 2014, rather than the 420 percent since 2010, when the economy was still climbing out of the recession. Cigna is up about 220 percent over that shorter span since the law was put into effect.

And secondly, while it's certainly true that insurance companies' stock prices have spiked in recent years — even more than the thriving stock market as a whole — there is very little indication this owes much to Obamacare. In fact, it seems to be despite it, with insurers generally taking losses from their Affordable Care Act plans.

A report the rating company A.M. Best released in June showed the health insurance industry made $13.1 billion in 2016, even as it lost nearly $900 million on its commercial business lines, which include Obamacare policies. The nation's top six insurers went on to make a combined $6 billion in the second quarter of this year, according to a CNBC report, but the biggest insurers still lost money on Obamacare plans.

The fear among Obamacare proponents and even many Republicans is that losing these subsidies could tempt insurers who have already been pulling out of some Obamacare marketplaces to pull out even more and/or raise costs for low-income policyholders. In other words, they might continue to make massive profits, but if Obamacare is putting a dent in those profits, Trump's decision might still “blow up” Obamacare, as former top White House aide Stephen K. Bannon argued it would.

At least by the end of the day, Trump wound up making a consistent argument for what he wants to see from the health-care deal: He doesn't support “bailouts” for insurance companies. But his characterization of those “bailouts” is highly misleading, at best.

Very little of it makes sense, and coming from a president who seemed to vacillate daily on what he wanted from an Obamacare replacement, it suggests Trump doesn't really have a game plan or understanding of how all of this works.