TRUMP is seriously dangerous

[Iamwhomiam]

Yes, it's very difficult to keep up, grizzly, as so much is floating around. I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your graphic memorial in the 'images only' thread to note Richard Adams passing this past Christmas Eve.

slad, I'm reeling from learning the invocation will be presented by Paula White, Patron Saint of the Gullible.

[SonicG]

From Grizzly's post:

And I am not talking only about gun-toting hillbillies here, I am talking about the local, state and county authorities, who often care much more about what their local constituents think and say than what the are up to in DC. If a coup is staged against Trump and some wannabe President à la Hillary or McCain gives the order to the National Guard or even the US Army to put down a local insurrection, we could see what we saw in Russia in 1991: a categorical refusal of the security services to shoot at their own

Nope. Ain't going to happen...No uprising if Trump is impeached. Some isolated acts of hysteric right-wing terrorism? Most definitely but I think the writer greatly greatly overestimates the amount of investment the regular Trump voter has for the confusing contradictory agenda of Trump, which really boils down to, "How can I max my business profits from this..."

[82_28]

They are fully "invested" in backwoods rascism, pu##y grabbing, NON STOP PORNOGRAPHY in which this urination thing is either funny or a FUCK YEAH BRO or "fake news". If you have lived here (USA) for any amount of appreciable time, it is everywhere. I don't know if it is more of a joke, an urban legend, a fad, a classic tradition, probably the latter, but he appeals to the most disgusting of all human traits. Everything he stands for is debased because of his lack of turning a good joke, laughing at anything other than suffering of the other.

I had a boss like him for a time. His name happened to be Donald. It makes me wonder if there is something to a name that sort of brands you for life with some kind of ephemeral or subconscious identity. It could be!

[Nordic]

Grizzly did you hear Jeb Bush is the one that hired the guy that compiled the dossier?

have you been reading the Election thread?

So? Jeb Bush is a neocon, from a of neocons.

McCain was involved too. One of the main neocon henchmen.

[liminalOyster]

French far right leader Le Pen visits Trump Tower but no Trump talks

French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was seen at Trump Tower on Thursday, but a spokesman for President-elect Donald Trump said she did not meet with him or his team.

"No meetings with anyone," transition spokesman Sean Spicer said. "It's a public building."

Le Pen, whose National Front party holds anti-immigrant and anti-European Union views, was seen entering an elevator at the building, according to a Reuters witness, but she did not speak to reporters gathered there.

George Lombardi, a Trump friend who lives in Trump Tower, told reporters that he had coffee there Thursday with Le Pen, who he said he has known for 20 years. He said Le Pen did not request a meeting with Trump.

A day earlier, Lombardi said, they attended a party with people they believe might raise money for her campaign, including business people and diplomats.

"This is a perfectly privately encounter that she had with some friends of ours," Lombardi said. "Some people had been asking to meet her a long time ago, and she just happened to be here because I happen to live here."

Le Pen, who is currently projected to lose a runoff with conservative former prime minister Francois Fillon in next May's election, has struggled to raise money for her campaign both in France and abroad.

She has also sought to burnish her credentials with foreign appearances. Her staff in April announced that she would go to Britain to campaign for that country's exit from the European Union but she ended up not going after being shunned by the Brexit campaign.

Le Pen was seen at Trump Tower with Lombardi, Louis Aliot, her partner and vice president of National Front, and Ludovic De Danne, her international affairs adviser.

Her staff confirmed her visit to New York, characterizing it as a private trip.

"She took two days to have a break," campaign director David Rachline said.

Trump Tower has been the site of a series of meetings between Trump, a Republican, and business and political leaders as he assembles his administration ahead of his Jan. 20 inauguration. It also has become a tourist destination since Trump's surprise November election victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The group Human Rights Watch mentioned both Trump and Le Pen in a report warning that the rise of populist leaders threatens global human rights. It cited Trump's victory as well as Britain's move to leave the European Union led by Nigel Farage, who Trump has praised.

Le Pen is expected to earn enough votes in the first round of presidential voting in April to enter a second round election set for May 7.

Last summer Le Pen told a French magazine that if she were American, she would vote for Trump rather than Clinton. A week after Trump's victory, Le Pen said she, Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin "would be good for world peace."

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-t ... SKBN14W2EO

[kelley]

the first thing trump might want to consider upon being sworn in is drafting an executive order demanding loyalty oaths from his cabinet and congress:


http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2 ... ffice.html


A Likely Way that Trump Would Be Forced Out of Office
ERIC ZUESSE | 10.01.2017 | OPINION

It is clear, from the overwhelming opposition to Donald Trump’s taking office on January 20th as the U.S. President, opposition on the part of the entire U.S. Establishment — the aristocrats and their agents in the government and media and think tanks — that any opportunity to replace Trump with the Democratic Party’s Establishment Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, or any other Establishmentarian, would be welcomed by the Establishment. First, there were the efforts to have vote-recounts in the three states where Trump’s victory over Clinton were the narrowest; then, there was the orchestrated campaign to switch to her enough Electoral College electors for her to ‘win’; then, there was the effort to portray Trump’s win as having been engineered in Moscow and thus illegitimate. But now, could come the tactic that actually has the highest likelihood of succeeding, and it would replace Trump with his own Establishment Republican Vice President, Mike Pence. Here’s how it would work:

Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution asserts:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of... the principal officers of the executive departments… transmit to the president pro tempore of the Senate and the speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the president pro tempore of the Senate and the speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department, or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the president pro tempore of the Senate and the speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session.

. . .

because authority?

why not make it legit

WTF

[seemslikeadream]

Turkey’s press-critical president lauds Trump for putting CNN reporter ‘in his place’

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.2945265

10 times Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks directly disputed him
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the ... f5ff30b715

HOW TRUMP COULD KILL THE INVESTIGATION OF JAMES COMEY’S ACTIONS
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk ... ys-actions

The Trump Story the Media Dare Not Utter
They sacrificed democracy for ratings.
By Thom Hartmann / AlterNet January 11, 2017


The media are engaged in an orgy of navel-gazing about the Trump presidency, but they're totally, utterly, absolutely, no-way-in-hell willing to gaze at their own navel.

Did Russian hackers revealing that Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Donna Brazile had put their thumb on the scale over at the DNC against Bernie cause Trump to win? Did he win because working white men are “angry”? Did he win because Hillary failed to campaign in the critical Rustbelt swing states? Did he win because of the Russians' media operations? Is he going to be president because so many people are so upset with “gummint”?

These (among others) are the memes that you'll find virtually every hour on TV news. But have you ever, anywhere (other than Free Speech TV), seen a TV conversation about the role the media itself played in getting Trump elected, and why they did it?

The numbers are easy to find online Trump got between $2 and $3 billion in free media coverage, while Hillary struggled to break into the evening news, and Bernie was largely ignored until the final months of the Democratic primary.

And it's not a secret: Les Moonves, the Executive Chairman and CEO of CBS, said, as reported by the Hollywood Reporter about Trump's candidacy: "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS." He added: “Donald's place in this election is a good thing. … Man, who would have expected the ride we're all having right now? ... The money's rolling in and this is fun... I've never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It's a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”

The networks – whose first priority since Reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine is profitability rather than informing the public – are no doubt salivating about the next 4 years of daily eruptions from the White House. They're clearly betting The Donald Trump Reality Show - POTUS Version will provide an ongoing revenue stream, whereas a Hillary presidency would merely have been competent and boring, and thus not as profitable for the media.

Which raises an important question in this post-Fairness Doctrine, post-consolidation media landscape in the United States.

The media is the only industry that's mentioned in our Constitution, because the Founders and Framers, as much as they may have hated the coverage they were getting from newspapers (see Jefferson), believed that a “free” and vibrant press would serve as a check on the 3 branches of government: a Fourth Estate, if you will.

In a letter about Shay’s Rebellion, which some argued was incited by newspapers, Thomas Jefferson wrote:

“The people are the only censors of their governors; and even their errors will tend to keep them to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs, through the channel of public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people.

“The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide, whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Had TV existed in 1783, Jefferson would have probably expressed similar sentiments about it.

As Jefferson wrote in 1786 to his close friend Dr. James Currie, “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

But ever since Ronald Reagan functionally stopped enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and killed off the FCC's Fairness Doctrine, leading to an explosion of acquisitions and mergers, and Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, leading to an even more startling concentration of media in a very few hands, freedom of the press in America has become as much an economic as a political issue.

This is problematic, because no democracy can survive when most of the media has a sole commitment to profit with little consideration for the public good.

The Trump presidency is virtually entirely a product of our modern for-profit, highly-consolidated media.

As such, now may be an important time to reconsider how that media – particularly TV – is “free” (from corporate boards' profit interests) with regard to ownership and programming.
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/trump-tv-ratings

Chaffetz threatens to subpoena federal ethics watchdog over Trump criticism

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/j ... ump-233575

NEWS & POLITICS
Ethics Watchdog Blasts Trump's 'Wholly Inadequate' Plan to Eliminate Conflicts of Interest
The head of the federal Office of Government Ethics demands the president-elect divest completely from private businesses.
By Alexandra Rosenmann / AlterNet January 12, 2017

President-elect Donald Trump's feud with reporters during his much-anticipated press conference overshadowed what was supposed to be its main focus: a plan to eliminate his worldwide conflicts of interests.

"They want a president to run the country... I could actually run my business and run government at the same time. I don't like the way that looks, but I would be able to do that if I wanted to," Trump said in the January 11 press conference.

"My two sons are going to be running the company. They are going to be running it in a very professional manner," Trump promised.

Trump’s attorney, Sheri Dillon, also addressed Trump's plans for handling his extensive business empire.

"The president-elect has also already disposed of all of his investments in publicly traded or easily liquidated investments," Dillon said.

The trust will hold both liquid assets as well as Trump's preexisting, illiquid assets, including Trump-owned properties, hotels and goods.

"Through instructions in the trust agreement, President-elect Trump first ordered that all pending deals be terminated. This impacted more than 30 deals, many of which were set to close by the end of 2016. As you can well imagine, that caused an immediate financial loss of millions of dollars, not just for President-elect Trump but also for Don, Ivanka and Eric," continued Dillon.

Dillon also pointed out that the trust agreement imposes strict restrictions on new deals. But for ethics watchdog Walter Shaub, it's simply "meaningless.”

“The ethics program starts at the top,” the head of the federal Office of Government Ethics said at a Brookings Institution forum in Washington.

Shaub called Trump’s plan “wholly inadequate" and demanded Trump divest completely from his 500 private businesses.

"The president-elect is now entering a world of public service. He's going to be asking his own appointees to make sacrifices. So, no, I don't think the divestiture is too high a price to pay to be the president of the United States of America," Shaub said.

Trump's predecessors have generally liquidated their personal assests in a blind trust. This month, he will become the wealthiest president in U.S. history.

Watch:
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politi ... s-interest

[seemslikeadream]

Grizzly did you hear Jeb Bush is the one that hired the guy that compiled the dossier?

have you been reading the Election thread?

So? Jeb Bush is a neocon, from a of neocons.

McCain was involved too. One of the main neocon henchmen.

Bill Perry Is Terrified. Why Aren’t You?
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40304

Trump does Poor imitation of Tin-Pot Dictator at “Press Conference”
By Juan Cole | Jan. 12, 2017 |

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –
In his first news conference in months, president-elect Donald J. Trump engaged in a series of petulant tirades. For anyone like myself, who has lived under dictators in the global South, his performance was unpleasantly reminiscent of their authoritarian publicity techniques.
Instead of letting a wide range of reporters attend, he limited their spots so that he could pack the hall with his own supporters. Those supporters were the ones applauding, and since the cameras were not turned on the audience, television viewers may have thought the cheers came from reporters. This effect was intended. There are some allegations that some of the Trump supporters in attendance were actually part of a rent-a-crowd, a common technique among Middle Eastern dictators. And then there was the typical technique of painting dissidents and critics as themselves authoritarian. Innocent Japanese were interned during WWII on unsupported charges that they were imperialists. Members and former members of the 50,000-strong Communist Party in the US were accused of trying to take over the US government. Trump on Wednesday characterized the leak of the intelligence report as “Nazism,” as though he were a victim of an authoritarian genocide being perpetrated by a web news site. The charge is ironic, as Rula Jebreal pointed out:

1. Disagreement is treason. Trump’s spokesman slammed Buzzfeed for publishing the annex to the US intelligence report on Russian hacking of the US election, complaining that it was false and not verified by the intelligence agencies. I said yesterday that I found the dossier unconvincing. But Buzzfeed’s conviction that the document was of public interest and the at the public should be able to see and judge it for themselves can be argued about. Buzzfeed did not certify it as true. Trump essentially put them on trial for treason. As for inaccuracy, Trump and his people want a monopoly on it. Let’s remember that Trump denied for years that President Obama was born in the United States, that he keeps saying that the murder rate in the US has risen (it has fallen dramatically since the 1990s), that he denies that humans burning hydrocarbons causes climate change, that he says that unemployment is 42%, and that there are 30 million undocumented workers in the US (it is about 11 million and has fallen). His campaign allies at the Neo-Nazi Breitbart rag accused Hillary Clinton (edited by Steve Bannon) of practicing voodoo and/or of being part of a pedophilia ring run from a Washington, DC pizzeria. At least the report on Trump’s having been compromised by Russian intelligence on his escapades in Russia actually exists.
2. Divide and rule. Trump tried to single out Buzzfeed for publishing the document and CNN for reporting that it was part of the intelligence community’s report by denouncing them as “fake news” and refusing them the opportunity to question him. He instead allowed the white supremacist Breitbart (a chief producer of fake news from its inception) to toss him a softball. Creating disfavored and favored news outlets is a typical authoritarian move. Trump is punishing CNN to create an incentive for other news outlets to treat him with kid gloves, and he is hoping the other reporters will climb over the prostrate bodies of the Buzzfeed and CNN journalists on their way up to White House access. The reporters and news organizations will have to stick together to overcome this tactic. Trump is also trying to legitimize his buddy Steve Bannon’s Neofascist monstrosity, Breitbart, by favoring it over CNN in public. (The Breitbart reporter suggested that Trump crack down on all those mainstream ‘fake news’ outlets, which is sort of like a wine-seller arguing for prohibition). Incidentally, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper confirmed CNN’s story later in the day. CNN did not publish the two pages of salacious material and were treated completely unjustly by Trump.
3. The Big Lie. Trump contradicted the US intelligence community, which maintained that Russian hackers also broke into the servers of the Republican National Committee but declined to leak those documents– in contrast to the way they treated the Hillary Clinton campaign. Trump said, “had they broken into the Republican National Committee, I think they would’ve released it just like they did about Hillary . . .” But they did and they didn’t. Trump continues to manufacture his own reality, in his own interests. (If the Russians treated their hacked information differently, some would argue, that his how they threw the election to Trump. He wants to deny that he had any help and so denies the facts of the case.)
4. Weasel words. Aware of arguments being made that he is beholden to Russian financial concerns, Trump said “As a real estate developer, I have very, very little debt. I have assets that are — and now people have found out how big the company is, I have very little debt — I have very low debt. But I have no loans with Russia at all.” This assertion is disingenuous because he might have partnerships or Russian investors without categorizing that money as “loans.” In fact, Trump owes at least $300 million to creditors, and if you total up the debts held by all the companies in which he has at least a 1/3 stake, the debts may come to $1.5 billion! One of the New York City buildings he has a part ownership of carries a $950 million debt, some of which is held by the Bank of China. Trump may presently have no Russian creditors or projects (and his finances are so Byzantine that it is impossible to know), but that does not rule out his having Russian partners or investors in US or European projects. As for investments inside Russia, he certainly has tried. Contrary to what he said, he has tried on several occasions to build Trump Towers in Russia. The deals collapsed, but not for lack of trying. in 2008 he made $54 million on a sale of a Florida mansion for $95 million to a Russian billionaire. That’s a suspiciously large profit in Florida in 2008, and there have been questions about Russian or former Soviet Union businessmen laundering money through joint ventures with Trump. Trump also had a $30 million deal to put on a Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013 and wanted to invited and befriend Vladimir Putin.
5. Substituting spectacle for substance. Trump had one of his attorneys put on a dog and pony show about how he will handle his finances during his presidency, implying that he thereby put to rest the worries about his business conflicts of interest. No one who knows about the pertinent laws appears in the least convinced that Trump’s proposals resolved these issues. The attempt to use smoke and mirrors to finesse this matter is typical of authoritarian regimes, who deny their own corruption via public spectacle and the strong-arming of critics. The big piles of Manila folders were apparently empty and just for show.
Empty and just for show will be some of the words inscribed on the tombstone of Trump’s presidency.
——
Related video:
PBS: “Donald Trump’s first press conference as president-elect”
http://www.juancole.com/2017/01/imitati ... rence.html

[PufPuf93]

Trump is firing the (black) General over the DC National Guard effective mid-way through the inauguration ceremony on January 20th. I( can think of a number of reasons to be concerned.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/pu ... 70871e50ed


Commanding general of D.C. National Guard to be removed from post

By Peter Hermann and Aaron C. Davis January 13 at 1:55 PM

The U.S. Army general who heads the D.C. National Guard and is an integral part of overseeing the inauguration said Friday he has been ordered removed from command effective Jan. 20, 12:01 p.m., just as Donald Trump is sworn in as president.

Maj. Gen. Errol R. Schwartz’s departure will come in the midst of the presidential ceremony, classified as a national special security event — and while thousands of his troops are deployed to help protect the nation’s capital during an inauguration he has spent months helping to plan.

“The timing is extremely unusual,” Schwartz said in an interview Friday morning, confirming a memo announcing his ouster that was obtained by The Washington Post. During the inauguration, Schwartz would command not only the members of the D.C. guard but also an additional 5,000 unarmed troops sent in from across the country to help. He also would oversee military air support protecting the nation’s capital during the inauguration.

“My troops will be on the street,” Schwartz, who turned 65 in October, said, “I’ll see them off but I won’t be able to welcome them back to the armory.” He said that he would “never plan to leave a mission in the middle of a battle.”

Schwartz, who was appointed to head the guard by President George W. Bush in 2008, maintained the position through President Obama’s two terms. He said his orders came from the Pentagon but that he doesn’t know who made the decision. It is unclear whether he is part of a larger class of federal workers who have been asked to leave their jobs as a new president takes office.

The two entities have been able to work together to make that happen quickly in response to unfolding natural disasters, such as last year’s record January snow fall. During that storm, which dumped 22 inches of snow, the Guard was activated in anticipation of the storm’s arrival, and troops helped shuttle officials, plow drivers and supplies back-and-forth across the city.

Schwartz began his military career in 1976 by enlisting in the guard, formally called the Militia of the District of Columbia National Guard. He also oversees the Air National Guard, which combined with the Army guard has an authorized strength of 2,700. He has served in several leadership positions, including commanding the 372nd Military Police Battalion.

He graduated in 1980 from the University of the District of Columbia with a degree in electrical engineering and earned master’s degrees in business management from Central Michigan University and in national security strategy from the National Defense University at Fort McNair, Washington.

Schwartz said that he is most proud of the Youth Challenge Academy, a school for teenage dropouts run by the guard with an infusion of federal money that is separate from both D.C. public and charter schools. It is located at the former Oak Hill facility, the District’s old juvenile jail. He said that about 60 percent of the school’s student body have obtained high school diplomas, and some have gone on to college.

“These are kids with high potential,” Schwartz said. “They just need to be steered a little bit. That’s what guardsmen can do.” He said he has already told his wife that even while retired, he might stay active in the school.

“I don’t mind walking the halls and knocking on doors wearing a suit and tie,” he said.

[justdrew]

Notice that his desperation to fire immediately everyone appointed by Obama does not extend to the FBI. Interesting.

I think we're looking at a Hitler style takeover. In a year this country will be unrecognizable.

Low intensity civil war is likely, I for one am not willing to go along with one inch of this.

I have zero effective representation in the federal government, less than a third of the population actually voted for this shit wad.

EXPECT WAR

So far his actions are beyond the pale of normal acceptability.

Things are likely to go full scale bat shit crazy.

This illegitimate treasonous piece of human garbage needs to hang from the nearest light pole asap.

Well, looks like I finally let my feelings out a bit

something odd is going on:

On Thursday night, MSNBC’s signal abruptly froze during a broadcast of Hardball with Chris Matthews and repeated the word “Russia” over and over.

As Mediaite.com reported, the broadcast froze just as Washington Post columnist David Ignatius was saying the word “Russia,” which was repeated over and over during the freeze.

On Thursday, C-SPAN’s broadcast of proceedings in the U.S. House of Representatives got bumped off the air during an anti-Trump speech by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA). C-SPAN’s signal was replaced by approximately 10 minutes of programming from Russia Today, the English language cable network owned by the Russian government.

C-SPAN blamed “an internal routing error” for the glitch in an afternoon statement.

Mediaite also said that on Thursday, “(T)he lights mysteriously went out during the confirmation hearing for Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) while he was being vetted by the Senate Intelligence Committee.”

The topic of conversation during the temporary blackout was the role Russian hackers may have played in the outcome of the 2016 U.S. election.

[seemslikeadream]

On Thursday night, MSNBC’s signal abruptly froze during a broadcast of Hardball with Chris Matthews and repeated the word “Russia” over and over.

yes I was watching at the time and that did happen

Trump has declared war on the American people


I said it here and I meant it

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40289

[Agent Orange Cooper]

I think we're looking at a Hitler style takeover. In a year this country will be unrecognizable.

We've been living under an effigy of Hitler at least since the full-on, literally Nazi-backed military coup in 1963. We are just now finally on the verge of breaking free of it and I can hardly believe people are so delusional to miss this, and are in fact clinging to their fascist overlords. It's like a collective stockholm syndrome.

[seemslikeadream]

really just how is that going to happen?

please explain and give some detail

[liminalOyster]

On Thursday night, MSNBC’s signal abruptly froze during a broadcast of Hardball with Chris Matthews and repeated the word “Russia” over and over.

yes I was watching at the time and that did happen

[justdrew]

I think we're looking at a Hitler style takeover. In a year this country will be unrecognizable.

We've been living under an effigy of Hitler at least since the full-on, literally Nazi-backed military coup in 1963. We are just now finally on the verge of breaking free of it and I can hardly believe people are so delusional to miss this, and are in fact clinging to their fascist overlords. It's like a collective stockholm syndrome.

That is one possible interpretation, but within that perspective, I think you'd just be looking at replacing one set with another even worse set.