Trump 36: We Shall Overcome

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm sure Dumpy is going to get upset because Ted Lieu states actual facts:

 

[47of74]

19 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'm sure Dumpy is going to get upset because Ted Lieu states actual facts:

 

Between that and the suit against fuck head's "foundation" not being dismissed we should be seeing some more deranged meltdowns soon...

I'm ready

[GreyhoundFan]

What a contrast with the tangerine golf pro:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

From the WaPo Editorial Board: "Trump’s ‘America First’ means Americans lose"

Spoiler

“THE WORLD is a very dangerous place!”

Thus President Trump begins the statement in which he seeks to justify accepting what he had previously called unacceptable: the state-sponsored murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

He is right: The world is dangerous and always has been. But his craven capitulation to Mr. Khashoggi’s murderers will make the world more dangerous, not less. This is not a case in which tender concern for human rights must be weighed against U.S. strategic goals. On the contrary, what Mr. Trump presents as hardheaded realism is, in fact, a grave attack on U.S. national interests.

We say this not simply because Mr. Trump’s justifications are factually fraudulent. He wildly inflates the amount of business Saudi Arabia has sent America’s way. He falls for royal flattery and fatuously allows himself to be lied to. He fails to see that Saudi Arabia is far more dependent on the United States than the reverse. He neglects the plain fact that every major action taken by the reckless crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, even before this murder, has harmed U.S. interests: his disastrous war in Yemen, which has redounded to Iran’s benefit; his failed effort to subjugate the small neighboring nation of Qatar, a U.S. ally; and his bizarre kidnapping of the Lebanese prime minister, also a U.S. ally.

No, Mr. Trump’s strategic blindness runs far deeper than just misreading this alliance. He is also undermining the basic understanding that has worked to the United States’ advantage since World War II under presidents both Republican and Democratic.

Those leaders all accepted that, with less than 5 percent of global population but more than 20 percent of the global economy, the United States, more than any other nation, depends on and benefits from predictable rules. It needs a world where business executives can go forth and come home without fear of kidnapping, where ships can ply the oceans without armed escorts, where contracts are honored and disputes fairly adjudicated. It needs a world where journalists can report and inform Americans on the true conditions on the ground.

Previous presidents understood that the way to achieve such a world was to enlist allies who would live by the United States’ rules in return for protection — safe in knowledge that the United States would not use its preeminence to squeeze them for every last dollar. They would go along because the United States stood not just for itself but for rules that benefited everyone and for values they cherished, as well: freedom, human dignity, the rule of law. By championing good — albeit imperfectly and inconsistently — the United States did well.

Now comes Mr. Trump, in all his obtuseness, to announce that this has been a sucker’s game. He will squeeze every other country as hard as he can. He cares not a fig for American values. He will no longer pledge U.S. forces to maintain world order. And if he can sell one or two more fighter jets, who cares if a journalist is murdered?

The result will be not only moral abdication but diminished prosperity, too. No corner of the world will be safe — not Salisbury, England, where Russian President Vladi­mir Putin feels liberated to send his agents with poisonous weapons; not Thailand, from where China feels free to kidnap a Swedish citizen; not Istanbul, where Saudi Arabia will defile what should be the sanctuary of a diplomatic compound with the premeditated murder and dismemberment of a respected journalist.

Anti-Americanism will grow as people overseas see the United States wielding power for purely selfish motives. Nations will find alternatives to the U.S. dollar rather than accepting it as international currency. And, as the United States pulls back from support of democracy, stability and development, pirates will reclaim the sea lanes; poverty and mass migration will rise; and terrorism and extremism will follow.

What Mr. Trump proposes, in short, is to destroy the American brand, and the Khashoggi case crystallizes the danger. The post-truth approach he has brought to domestic governing — lying about everything from crowd sizes to climate change — he now introduces to foreign affairs. “Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” he writes, with respect to the crown prince’s knowledge of the plot. “That being said, we may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi.”

But the facts are knowable and mostly known. A truly hardheaded president, mindful of U.S. interests, would insist on accountability for those who planned and committed the murder. He would understand that the U.S.-Saudi relationship, which is indeed important, cannot and does not depend on any single person. He would understand that U.S. standing in the world — and, therefore, U.S. influence and prosperity — will dwindle if the United States offers no objection to the murder of a peaceful, 59-year-old resident of Northern Virginia who was trying to bring a bit of light into a confusing world.

This president does not understand any of that. It falls to Congress, therefore, to decide. It can follow Mr. Trump down the path of phony realism, and decline; or it can take a stand to help defend American values — and interests.

 

[Howl]

One point that's been made is that if blah blah blah Saudis will (clutches pearls) turn to Russia or China for their weapons systems.  The reality is that it would take many years to transition over to completely new weapons systems.  Parts/systems are not interchangeable/compatible.  

Also, Trump may be protecting Jared, who, let's face it,  hasn't really made THAT much progress on his peace in the Middle East portfolio. 

[fraurosena]

The Mystery of Donald Trump’s Secret Kremlin Ties Just Got a Lot Deeper

Quote

Many Americans regard President Donald Trump’s relationship with the Kremlin as uncomfortably cozy. Some, top intelligence officials among them, believe our president has a concealed relationship with Russia, and that it’s nothing new.

To anyone versed in counterintelligence, Trump’s summer 1987 inaugural visit to the Soviet Union, ostensibly to develop Moscow’s never-developed Trump Tower, looks like Ground Zero. The KGB habitually monitored visits by Western VIPs, and since Trump’s junket came by invitation of the Soviet foreign ministry, it’s certain that his trip did not escape the KGB’s attention.

KGB veterans have said as much. Oleg Kalugin, once the youngest general in the KGB and an expert on counterintelligence, confirmed to author Craig Unger “that Trump had fun with lots of girls during that trip and he was almost certain that the KGB had kompromat [compromising material] on that.” Since Kalugin spent several years in the 1980s as the deputy chief of the KGB’s office in Leningrad—a city visited by Trump in 1987—it’s safe to assume that his comment was not speculative.

It’s always seemed suspicious that, a few weeks after returning from the USSR, the notoriously skinflint Trump spent over $94,000 for full-page ads in major newspapers across the country lambasting American alliances around the globe. Urging Washington to ditch freeloading allies—a mantra our president has stuck with to the present day—just happened to mesh nicely with Moscow’s foreign policy goals. Any investigation into President Trump’s possible secret relationship with Russian intelligence should therefore begin in the fateful summer of 1987.

Or should it? There’s new evidence that Moscow’s spies may have gotten close to Donald Trump years earlier, long before he sojourned to the Soviet Union.

In The Guardian today, Luke Harding explains that Czechoslovak intelligence, a junior partner of the KGB, seems to have been rather close to Donald Trump as far back as the late 1970s. During the Cold War, Prague’s State Security or StB cultivated Western rising stars (including current British Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn) as possible spies. They had high interest in Donald Trump, given his bright future in New York and beyond.

Trump came to the StB’s attention due to his relationship with his first wife Ivana (née Zelníčková), a Czech model he was married to from 1977 to 1992. When Ivana moved to America to live with her new husband, the StB kept tabs on her and her family, as has been known for some time. Her father, Miloš Zelníček, collaborated with the StB, sharing information on his daughter and her new life.

This was normal in the East Bloc during the Cold War, when the Communist state security apparatus had enormous power and citizens with relatives living in the West had little choice but to collaborate if they wished to stay in touch with loved ones abroad. Most of what Zelníček shared with the StB about his daughter and son-in-law appears mundane, of interest only because decades later Trump became the American president.

Harding’s report cites secret StB write-ups of operational contacts between their agents and Donald Trump, including the improbable September 1989 visit to Trump Tower in Manhattan by three officials from Czechoslovakia’s model collective farm. The junket was an StB secret operation, though what intelligence value they gained isn’t obvious.

More interesting is an StB report from November 1979—its source was Ivana’s father—detailing Mrs. Trump’s recent visit to her family in Moravia, accompanied by her then-two-year-old-son, Donald Jr. Its assessment appears anodyne:

The StB discovered that Ivana was no longer a model and was now “helping her husband in his business activities”—designing the interiors of Trump-financed buildings. Donald Jr. had two nannies—one American, one Swiss—and had recently fractured his leg. And: “Her husband is connected to the election campaign of the current US president [Jimmy] Carter”.

Many StB foreign intelligence operations focused on monitoring citizens living abroad like Ivana, keeping tabs while trying to leverage them for espionage purposes. Although existing StB files don’t indicate that Donald Trump himself was ever recruited by the StB, the November 1979 report includes a tantalizing fact, namely that among the StB organizations copied on it for distribution was the service’s 1st Directorate, the foreign intelligence arm. Specifically, its 23rd Department was copied on the report.

The highly secretive 23rd Department was no ordinary StB office, but part of the elite Illegals sub-directorate. Illegals were the StB’s crème de la crème, hand-selected deep-cover spies dispatched to the West, without the benefit of diplomatic protection; if caught, they were on their own. They posed as ordinary people, often immigrants, but they reported to the StB. The 23rd Department had the demanding job of selecting, training, and managing Illegals in the field. There was no more sensitive office in the service.

Why was the super-secret 23rd Department copied on a mundane information report about the Trump family? To those versed in the ways of Soviet bloc espionage, there can only be one answer: Because the StB either had (or was planning to have) an Illegal close to the Trump family. The service’s effort to keep tabs on Ivana Trump and her husband in America, mainly through her father, was not the real secret here.

Who was this mystery spy? It wasn’t Ivana, given how the StB refers to her in its paperwork. We may never know. Although many StB files survive, some were destroyed with Communism’s collapse. We know that Prague had a star Illegal operating in the United States in 1979:  Karl Koecher, who emigrated to America in 1965 and worked his way into power circles on the Potomac. Koecher managed to get a job with the CIA, a coup for the StB, who ran Koecher jointly with the KGB (a common arrangement, since the Soviets were the senior spy partner here), although the Soviets had intermittent doubts about Koecher’s loyalties.

Until his arrest by the FBI in 1984, Koecher passed numerous American secrets to Prague and Moscow, and in the late 1970s he was living in New York City, where he moved after leaving the CIA. He taught philosophy while his wife Hana sold diamonds; libertines by night, they were stars in the disco-era swinging scene. Was Karl Koecher in contact with the Trump family in 1979? If not, then who was the StB Illegal in question?

At last report, Karl Koecher is in his mid-80s, living in the Czech Republic, laying low and avoiding the limelight. Jaroslav Jansa, an StB officer who worked the Trump case in the 1980s, recently refused to discuss the matter, telling reporters“You are trying to put me in the tomb.”

It’s worth asking what’s so dangerous about a legacy spy case almost three decades after the Cold War’s end.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Get off your knees, President Trump"

Spoiler

After crawling over hot sands to kiss the, er, ring of the blundering Saudi crown prince — the most appalling grovel in the history of the U.S. presidency — President Trump must demand something in return. Otherwise, he has traded what remains of the dignity of his office for mere humiliation.

I’m not talking about a deal for Saudi Arabia to buy more U.S. weapons, though Trump flaunts this justification for his simpering weakness in response to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a contributor to The Post. According to Trump, the United States must either cower before Mohammed bin Salman or the prince will take his $110 billion elsewhere.

Please. Even if the United States would sell its honor at that paltry price, there is no $110 billion. The number emerged half-baked from Trump’s overheated hype kitchen. Much like the president’s claims about his personal net worth, his creditworthiness and his business acumen, this Saudi largesse resembles reality the way a circus tent resembles a Chanel frock.

As for taking Saudi treasure elsewhere: After 75 years of partnership, there is no “elsewhere.” The kingdom’s warriors have been trained by U.S. officers on U.S. systems employing U.S. arms. Modern weapons must be interoperable. Russian or Chinese arms would not fit. Ask Gillette: You sell a razor so that the customer must buy your blades.

Trump’s spinelessness is so appalling in part because it’s needless. Years of cooing into the ears of Saudi sybarites, hoping to sell them luxury condos, have ill prepared the man for the immense strength of the presidency. The petulant potentate of Riyadh cannot walk away from a presidential scolding, were Trump sufficiently principled to deliver one. The Saudis are desperate for U.S. arms, with or without this kowtowing by the president. They need the stable global oil market that American power and leadership has established, and that the United States maintains. And they rely on American mentors to help them become stakeholders in the post-petroleum future.

But Trump has knelt. There’s no taking it back. He can now redeem the national honor only by demanding Saudi cooperation on Mideast peace in Israel and Palestinian territories.

Do I think it’s likely? No. But fey Jared Kushner, Trump’s kindergarten Kissinger, believes that MBS, as the Saudi prince is known, holds the key to peace.

So let’s see it.

Kushner is correct up to a point. Saudi Arabia is the heart — and by “heart,” I mean wallet — of the cynical cabal of Arab leaders who have used generations of suffering Palestinians to distract their own people from kleptocratic misrule. Across the Middle East, unpopular leaders have directed popular discontent away from themselves and toward Israel. The farther they are from the suffering, the easier this cynicism has been. Egypt and Jordan, next-door neighbors to the Palestinians, have sought a lasting peace for decades. The Saudis and Iranians have not.

So it was that the distant Arabs scuttled the near-deal at Camp David in 2000. They could have cut off money for Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organization and directed it instead to building an independent Palestinian state. But to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist would have cost them their scapegoat. They chose instead to deepen the pain of the West Bank and Gaza, indeed to wallow in it.

Trump’s man-crush on MBS will smell better if, and only if, it compels Saudi Arabia to push sincerely for peace. In a region of failing powers, the Saudis are failing more slowly than their neighbors — which gives them a measure of clout. They must use that to bring the Palestinians to the bargaining table and pave the way to a deal by recognizing Israel’s right to a secure existence.

Which brings us to an earlier Trump capitulation. How can anyone think this president is strong when he runs around the world surrendering? Last year, Trump gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a pearl of great price — the announcement of the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to the contested capital of Jerusalem — while asking bupkis in return.

The time has come to send Netanyahu the invoice: one more push to achieve a lasting two-state solution.

Trump, the self-styled Artist of the Deal, has applied fattier grease to the Saudis and Israelis than ever before. Will he now let them slip away? If these two players in Mideast politics are not leveraged for peace, Trump will be one of history’s great chumps. Having given all, he will have gained nothing.

The president’s strange official statement explaining his whitewash of the Khashoggi murder bore the unmistakable markings of authentic Trump. The non sequiturs. The exclamation points. The insecure bluster of a man in way over his head. If that’s his final word, we’re left with a petty prince grinding his heel in the face of a president of the United States.

So it cannot be the final word. Get off your knees, President Trump, and demand peace. Nothing less can redeem this embarrassing submission.

 

[Rachel333]

He's upset that French protesters aren't protesting American issues.

And with this one it took me a moment to realize he was thanking himself. I guess he calls himself "President T" now.

 

[Cartmann99]

President Jackass is holding rallies in Mississippi tomorrow for that vile  woman.

Apologies in advance for the sane Mississippians .

[GreyhoundFan]

There were a few good tweets about "President T". These were my favorites:

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump says he’s thankful for himself. But he has nothing to strut about."

Spoiler

Strutting isn’t just for turkeys anymore.

We’re reminded of this nearly every day, but Donald Trump outdid himself Thanksgiving Day when a reporter asked the president what he’s most grateful for. In a nutshell, with only a tiny bit of editing: himself. Okay, he mentioned his family first, but then he went on to extol his own virtues.

Of course he did. Thanksgiving, after all, is really about Trump, n’est-ce pas? One can hardly wait for Christmas, when we’ll learn, oh joy, that unto the world a Trump was born.

Meanwhile, we have a few weeks to digest his self-appraisal. Elaborating upon his gratitude, Trump told a press gaggle at Mar-a-Lago: “This country is so much stronger now than it was when I took office that you wouldn’t believe it.”

Correct. You wouldn’t believe it.

He also said, “I’ve made a tremendous difference in the country.”

Indeed. (See midterm elections 2018.)

And when it comes to foreign policy and America’s status in the world, not that anyone asked, he said: “When I see foreign leaders, they say, ‘We cannot believe the difference in strength between the United States now and the United States two years ago.’ ”

If this is true, he surely was referring to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, commonly referred to as MBS, and not the nations of NATO, many of which have lost faith in the United States since Trump took office.

He can’t have been referring to Germany, which recently canceled arms sales to Saudi Arabia given MBS’s apparent responsibility for last month’s murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. German Chancellor Angela Merkel did the thinkable — cut off all weapons sales to Saudi Arabia — while Trump has done the unthinkable: dismiss the Central Intelligence Agency’s conclusion that MBS ordered the Post contributing columnist’s killing and dismemberment.

Give the president credit where due: He tells it like it is, which is that we’re going to pretend the CIA report is wrong and continue as before. Maybe MBS knew about the murder, maybe he didn’t, says Trump. Sure, and maybe some Mexicans are nice people, maybe not. Yes, sure, sure, that awful slaughter and dismemberment thing was bad, really bad, but let’s not allow an over-there thing to interfere with arms sales and, who knows, perhaps some future Trump developments.

Merkel earlier had said Germany would cancel future arms sales pending the investigation into Khashoggi’s death. She has now ended current sales, and Denmark and Finland have followed suit. But the United States, England and France, as of this writing, have failed to take such measures. Obviously, geopolitical considerations are complex, but there are surely other options than suspending arms sales, though such a move by the United States would doubtless be welcome in other parts of the Arab world. Yemen comes to mind.

Since 2015, when Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries formed a coalition to combat Yemen’s Houthi insurgency, the civilian cost has been devastating. The situation is beyond dire, with hundreds of thousands dislocated and tens of thousands killed, including nearly a generation of children. The London-based organization Save the Children estimates that 85,000 children may have died of hunger and disease since the conflict began.

This is no mere sidebar to U.S. strength, as Trump measures it, but is paramount to his flawed argument that we can’t afford to criticize MBS lest we blow a big, big deal. Apparently, he’d rather implicitly condone the murder of a journalist (and U.S. resident) and turn a blind eye to what some have termed genocide in Yemen, assisted by the United States.

Unsurprisingly, the White House refuses any suggestion that taking a moral stance is appropriate or necessary. But if strength is what Trump wants to convey, he should do exactly that. He could say that America is committed to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and considers a free press essential to a free society. Therefore, either the arms deal is dead or MBS is no longer our negotiating partner.

Trump might further add that the United States will cease providing spare parts to the Saudi military — that America won’t play a role in a war made worse by the coalition’s involvement. For real strength is about taking a moral hard line even when it hurts. As improbable as these scenarios are, they’d at least give Trump something to strut about.

 

[47of74]

Wait til fornicate head hears about this...

Quote

Michael Obama's book, 'Belonging', flew off the shelves to sell over 1.4 million copies in the first week of its release, easily surpassing the number of copies sold by Donald Trump's 1987 book 'Trump: The Art of the Deal', which has barely managed to sell 1.1 million copies since its release.

According to reports, the former First Lady's books sold out at the rate of almost nine copies per second, on its very first day, making her memoir the fastest-selling book of the year so far; while in the UK, the memoir is close to the top of the book charts.

On Amazon.com, more than 200 user reviews gave it five stars. After the initial print run of 1.8 million copies across the US and Canada, publishing company Penguin Random House had already ordered an additional 800,000 hardbacks of 'Becoming'. 

On Monday, the company declared that the memoir had sold out almost 725,000 copies in its first 24 hours on sale, which made it the biggest single-day sell of the year, making chief executive Madeline McIntosh address the response as "extraordinary".

Awaiting the 2am tweet storms that are sure to result...

[fraurosena]

Fucking fucker-fuck fuck-stick of a fucking bastard. Yeah, I'm angry. I'd like to teargas him, and the whole lot of his sycophantic administration!

 

[Penny]

If he permanently closes the border, there will be hell to pay. Do it and you will be out of office faster than you can find your phone to tweet.

[onekidanddone]

8 minutes ago, Penny said:

If he permanently closes the border, there will be hell to pay. Do it and you will be out of office faster than you can find your phone to tweet.

I'd love to see him out of office with an orange jumpsuit to match his orange skin, but I just don't see how it would work if he tried to close the border. Nobody, not one Republican would stand up to him, and he is pretty much buying his judges at all levels of the U.S. courts. 

I echo your sentiments on this, but I feel so discouraged and defeated. 

[fraurosena]

54 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

I'd love to see him out of office with an orange jumpsuit to match his orange skin, but I just don't see how it would work if he tried to close the border. Nobody, not one Republican would stand up to him, and he is pretty much buying his judges at all levels of the U.S. courts. 

I echo your sentiments on this, but I feel so discouraged and defeated. 

Except closing the borders has devastating economical consequences too. Hit in the pockets, it's quite possible the GOP will finally start to act.

[GreyhoundFan]

"This is the only Trump syndrome we need to worry about"

Spoiler

Critics of President Trump are regularly accused of exaggerating his corruption, his predilection toward autocratic rule and his affection for dictators.

They are told that their apprehension about the threat he poses to our constitutional democracy is not a form of vigilance but a disease: “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” “All they can do is attack the president all day long on the scandal of the day,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) who became an aficionado of the term.

This is the same Cruz who, in 2016, called Trump a “pathological liar,” “utterly amoral,” a “narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen” and “a serial philanderer.” Perhaps the senator suffers from Trump Rearrangement Syndrome, a disorder common among Republicans who disown every criticism they ever offered of Trump so he’ll help them win reelection.

In fact, the president’s offensive personal traits are less important to political freedom than his authoritarian habits. They lead him to regard murder as a matter that should not get between friends who do business together.

The past week has shown that those who feared Trump’s despotic inclinations were neither deluded nor alarmist. His shameful indifference to the killing and dismembering of the Saudi journalist and Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi was an act of cold collaboration with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s coverup.

The Central Intelligence Agency concluded that the murder could not have happened without the prince’s authorization. Trump — hostile as always to facts that run against his own interests — didn’t even bother to offer an alternative theory. In the manner of tyrants, he simply sought to sow confusion and uncertainty. “Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” Trump said of the power-hungry leader known as MBS. On Thanksgiving, he dismissed the CIA’s carefully considered conclusions as mere “feelings.”

For Trump, it’s always about money. Breaking with Saudi Arabia, he said, might cost us $110 billion in sales to American military contractors and $340 billion in other investments. In a nice bit of understatement, the New York Times wrote: “Economists and military analysts said those numbers were so exaggerated as to be fanciful.”

The business Trump did not mention were his own personal dealings with the Saudis. As David A. Fahrenthold and Jonathan O’Connell wrote in The Post in October, “Saudi royalty has been buying from Trump dating to 1995,” Saudi lobbyists spent $270,000 last year to reserve rooms in Trump’s hotel in Washington, and “Trump’s hotels in New York and Chicago reported significant upticks in bookings from Saudi visitors” this year.

Fear of foreign leaders lining the pockets of our public officials is the reason the founders put the emoluments clause in our Constitution. It declares that “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States] shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign state.”

Remember that Trump has refused to divest from his businesses — and that word “prince” reminds us of the ongoing relevance of this constitutional prohibition.

On the same day Trump was standing in solidarity with a regime implicated in assassination, the New York Times reported that the president told White House counsel Donald McGahn this spring that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute Hillary Clinton and former FBI director James B. Comey.

McGahn held Trump off, but nothing could be more autocratic than proposing to corrupt the criminal-justice system by weaponizing it against political opponents.

Trump’s crude statement backing the Saudis was too much even for many in the GOP. “I never thought I’d see the day a White House would moonlight as a public relations firm for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) wrote on Twitter.

But Republicans have said all sorts of things about Trump and then backed off when it mattered. (See: Cruz, above.) They have long tolerated the praise he regularly lavishes on dictators. They have been eager to moonlight themselves as Trump PR firms as long as he delivered tax cuts and judges.

But all the tax cuts and judges in the world won’t compensate for the cost to the United States of abandoning any claim that it prefers democracy to dictatorship and human rights to barbarism. The syndrome we most need to worry about is denial — a blind refusal to face up to how much damage Trump is willing to inflict on our system of self-rule, and on our values.

 

[fraurosena]

Who's a scared chickenshit who deserves to be teargassed out of the WH today?

 

He finally finished the follow-up tweet...

He is scared shitless, the whining witless fanta-faced fucker...

[fraurosena]

Meanwhile, in the Tariff War:

That is 14,700 factory and white collar jobs, about 15% of jobs at GM. 

[Rachel333]

3 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Who's a scared chickenshit who deserves to be teargassed out of the WH today?

 

He finally finished the follow-up tweet...

He is scared shitless, the whining witless fanta-faced fucker...

Yeah... I'm sure there were hundreds of people in his campaign who didn't talk to Russians. That in no way disproves the allegations that others in his campaign did collude with Russians.

[GreyhoundFan]

20 minutes ago, Rachel333 said:

Yeah... I'm sure there were hundreds of people in his campaign who didn't talk to Russians. That in no way disproves the allegations that others in his campaign did collude with Russians.

Exactly -- it's like during the Kavanaugh shit-show, he kept yammering about the 35 women who said he didn't rape them. Um, I'm pretty sure he didn't rape every single woman in the world, so finding 35 shouldn't be that difficult. So, I'm sure there are plenty of Dumpy campaign workers who didn't talk to Russians, though it seems like many senior campaign people did.

[fraurosena]

Compared to Fanta Face, yeah, I suppose toddlers in diapers must seem very tough. Very tough indeed.

 

[fraurosena]

Anyone have a spare can of teargas they’re willing to lend me? Cause I’m ready to lob it straight at him! 

 

[Howl]

First, friends have been crossing the border back into Texas at the Columbia border crossing (about 20 miles west of Laredo) with zero problems and zero wait. 

However, you don't want to be screwing around with border crossings as you get into the two weeks of Christmas holidays.  Families are travelling back and forth, it could get crazy fast.  Also, there are a lot of businesses that rely on this increased traffic, on both sides of the border.  

There is an incredible amount of commercial traffic that crosses at all border crossings all the time. Closing the border could be even more stupid than closing down the government.

But when has Trump ever care about the petty problems he's creating for millions of people. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Good grief. 'nuff said. "‘They said I looked like Elvis,’ Trump tells Tupelo before emerging like Santa in Biloxi"

Spoiler

President Trump walked out of a fake brick chimney at a rally in Biloxi, Miss., like Tim Allen on his first night as Santa Claus: without a beard or explanation.

It was Trump’s second rally of the night in Mississippi on Monday as he campaigned for Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) on the eve of the election, and the arena was like a snow globe, full of cheer and festivity and insulated from the contentious political brawls over tear gas at the border or the racial politics that have clouded Hyde-Smith’s campaign.

Christmas stockings and a fake wreath hung from the chimney. Life-size nut crackers and Christmas trees decorated the stage. A costumed Santa and Mrs. Claus in Make America Great Again hats catapulted MAGA apparel into the crowd like presents as Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'" blared from the speakers. And as Trump made his St. Nick-like entrance, artificial snow floated from the rafters, mystifying seemingly everyone but Trump, who tried to swat it away.

“Look, snow — I didn’t know what was going on,” said Trump, who last year claimed to be saving the phrase “Merry Christmas” from politically correct “Happy Holidays”-wishers. “I said, You sure this is indoor? That beautiful snow looks so real. That’s the end of my suit. That’s the end of the hair for tonight.”

So much for the Santa act.

Trump, master of the grand entrance, has been regaling supporters with theatrical appearances at political rallies or events from the moment he descended down an escalator to announce his candidacy for president. During the 2016 Republican National Convention, he took the stage to the tune of Queen’s “We Are The Champions” as if he were an ominous Freddie Mercury impersonator, emerging as a slow-moving black silhouette in the glow of blinding white light. Earlier this month, Trump emerged from Air Force One against the backdrop of a radiant, canvas-worthy sunset in front of a crowd of thousands who watched in amazement, leaving some with goosebumps, as The Post’s Philip Rucker reported then.

Earlier in the evening, during Trump’s first rally in Tupelo, Miss., his entrance didn’t rival the Santa Claus bit. But still Trump kicked off the night with an immediate crowd-pleaser (or, alternatively, a comparison sure to provoke local skepticism): He compared himself to Elvis, Tupelo’s most beloved hometown son.

“I shouldn’t say this," Trump said almost immediately upon taking the podium, just after professing his love for the King. “You’ll say I’m very conceited, because I’m not, but other than the blond hair when I was growing up they said I looked like Elvis. You see that? Can you believe it? I always considered that a great compliment.”

Trump appears to be a big Elvis fan: He awarded the rock star a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom earlier this year, citing his enduring contributions to music, his service in the Army as well as his “soaring” television ratings as both a musician and actor.

Predictably, both the Elvis and Santa comparisons lit up the Twitterverse with jokes.

“He could hand out Chevy Impalas,” one user wrote in response to a tweet from CBS News, asking, “Are you on Pres. Trump’s ‘Naughty’ or ‘Nice’ list this year?”

“Better be good. Or Santa Trump will bring you a lump of clean, beautiful coal,” said another.

Save for some of Trump’s supporters, who said they did see a resemblance, few were sold on the Elvis comparison.

“Unlike Elvis, Trump wouldn’t dream of shooting his beloved TV,” one man said.

George Takei, the activist and former Star Trek actor, chimed in to say that, in fact, when he was “fully grown I looked like John Lennon. Or was that Yoko?”

Hyde-Smith, who appeared with Trump at both rallies, faces Democratic challenger Mike Espy, who, if elected, would become the first black candidate to win a seat in a statewide office in more than a century.

Far from the Christmas cheer found in Biloxi Monday night, the campaign has been wrought with controversy swirling around race as Hyde-Smith has come under scrutiny for her nostalgia for the Confederacy and for attending and enrolling her daughter in a so-called “segregation academy,” a private school intended to skirt around integration by enrolling all or overwhelmingly white students.

On Monday night, Trump acknowledged one of Hyde-Smith’s earlier blunders, in which she jokingly said she would follow a close friend to a “public hanging” and sit in the front row.

“She certainly didn’t mean that,” Trump said.