rigorousintuition.ca

Is Trump Close to $2 Billion in Debt?
The president-elect has declared $315 million of debt, but the actual amount may be five times higher.
By Matthew Rozsa / Salon January 11, 2017

President-elect Donald Trump may have declared that he has $315 million of debt owed to ten separate lenders, but a new report suggests that his conflicts of interest in this regard could be much, much higher.

A new report by The Wall Street Journal suggests that, when you include businesses in which Trump has at least a 30 percent stake, the president-elect’s companies owe roughly $1.5 billion in additional debt to more than 150 institutions. Most of that debt has been repackaged and purchased by investors.

His debtors include Wells Fargo & Co, a bank which is under investigation for fraudulent practices including opening up to two million accounts without the knowledge or consent of their customers. The report claims that Wells Fargo is the trustee or administration of $282 million of loans to Trump and his companies, as well as $950 million of debt paid to a property partly owned by the president-elect. He also owes money to JP Morgan, BlackRock, Deutsche Bank and Prudential.

“The problem with any of this debt is if something goes wrong, and if there is a situation where the president is suddenly personally beholden or vulnerable to threats from the lenders,” said Trevor Potter, a former legal adviser to George H. W. Bush and John McCain, to The Wall Street Journal.

Lawrence Noble, a former lawyer to the Federal Election Commission, echoed these sentiments. “The appearance of potential conflicts is dangerous and seriously exists in this situation.”

Concerns about Trump’s numerous conflicts of interest have dogged the president-elect since his election on Nov. 8. Despite having businesses and debts spread throughout the world due to his business empire, Trump has only taken minimal steps to address these concerns.

There are even reports that he has used his political power to bring profit to businesses like his hotel in Washington DC.
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/d ... -estimated

For Russian hold on Trump, follow the Money, not the Sex tapes
By Juan Cole | Jan. 11, 2017 |

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –
Buzzfeed has published the unverified allegations by a former MI6 analyst with good Russian contacts, contained in a two-page hitherto secret annex to the US intelligence community’s report on Russian hacking and interference in the 2016 election. These two pages have circulated in Washington for months. David Corn talked about them, though not with salacious detail, in October, and then Senate minority leader Harry Reid wrote a sharp letter to FBI director James Comey about them.

The notion that Donald J. Trump might have been recorded doing kinky things on business trips to Moscow or St. Petersburg is plausible, but people should be careful here. It isn’t proven, and intelligence professionals gather a lot of raw intelligence that is nonsense. The specific allegations in the annex don’t make much sense (urolagnia is a fetish for sexual satisfaction, not an instrument of revenge on a political opponent).
Note, too, that it is just as plausible that the National Security Agency and/or the Central Intelligence Agency have data on Trump in Russia. If Trump were in contact with Russians whom the NSA was monitoring then they would have ended up monitoring him, as well.
That is,if the worry is that foreign intelligence agencies could blackmail someone like Trump, why isn’t it equally worrying that the US government could? J. Edgar Hoover used to blackmail congressional representatives all the time.
The unusual thing here is that even if Russia had such video, it is difficult to see how they could damage Trump. The people who elected him knew that he had appeared in pornographic videos, liked to tour the dressing rooms of the Miss Teen contests when the contestants were naked, and gropes random women in public places. That he paid for a golden shower or two isn’t even the most disgusting thing in his closet (at least if it was paid for it was consensual). So I think if Russia threatened him with being outed, he could just brush them off. The evangelical ministers who encourage their flocks to vote Republican have decided that they are all about forgiveness when it comes to Trump. I wouldn’t have said this last year this time, but the guy is teflon on the right.
If Trump has a vulnerability with regard to Russia, it is far more likely to be financial. He kept going bankrupt (six times!) as a strategy to avoid paying creditors, and understandably real banks stopped wanting to lend to him. The Financial Times alleges that Trump then got in bed with very wealthy figures from, e.g., Kazakhstan, who loaned him money or licensed his name for, e.g., the Trump Soho, in which he was a partner with a shadowy Kazakh figure. But FT suggests that the quid pro quo was that he got them into the New York real estate market, which they then used for money laundering. Money earned from embezzling (say, from the Kazakh ministry of petroleum) or criminal activity needs to be laundered before it can be openly invested. The criminal claims that the ill-gotten funds are profits from an investment, e.g. The FT thinks Trump may have, knowingly or naively, facilitated this kind of activity. If it was knowingly, of course, that was a heavy duty crime.
Or there is the Washington Post‘s expose of Trump’s relationship with a Russian “businessman” whom the Post characterizes as possibly having links to organized crime and whom, the Post alleges, former business partners accuse of routinely threatening to kill them.
In fact, big business people often seal deals at strip clubs, and sex parties in St. Petersburg were likely to be sweeteners for a business deal. Only puritan Americans would think it was the sex party that was the important thing.
James S. Henry in The American Interest surveyed several cases of Trump’s sketchy financial relationships with Russian or Former Soviet Union Oligarchs. Henry doesn’t allege criminality in these relationships, though the accounts he gives heavily hint at it. And if there was ever a place where Honore de Balzac’s maxim in Le pere Goriot was true, it is post-Soviet lands. Balzac said, “the secret of great fortunes with no apparent explanation is a crime forgotten because it was well executed.” Mario Puzo paraphrased it to “behind every great fortune there is a crime.”
Mark Sumner at Daily Kos also rounds up these oligarch/ organized crime links.
So if Russia has a hold on Trump, I’d look at the business angle, myself. The idea that they could shame him by attacking his reputation for sexual propriety seems a little far-fetched.
—-
Related video:
USA Today: “Intel chiefs told Trump that Russia targeted him”
http://www.juancole.com/2017/01/russian ... ollow.html

I love that the term, 'fake news', has actually stuck to THEM instead of their chosen victims.

Regardless of where this Trump thing goes, as far as the MSM goes, they will be toting that 'fake news' label around for the foreseeable future. The days of their controlling the narrative are OVER.

No one will ever believe them without double-checking, not anymore. Their supporters will be especially vigilant, as more and more are humiliated publicly when their accusations implode under the light of truth. And the reporters who try to pull 'stunts', will get caught quick, within the same news cycle, so no running away. When they report a story, more and more people will start looking for the REST of the story...the part the MSM is NOT telling them. No more a 'final word', from now on their reporting will be the start point for digging in to a story.

Here's a little example from my own world...I've always been for Trump, but was kinda bothered by that whole 'making fun of the reporter' thing...it just looked bad, and I couldn't fit it in to my whole view, this odd little outlier behavior with its sudden and casual meanness. It seemed pretty cut and dried...and it bothered me that I was supporting, well, a jerk. Even though I still preferred him over Clinton, it was a dark little 'spot' that was very troublesome...what kind of a person DOES something like that? Even the women-thing didn't bother me as much...guys will be guys. But the handicapped? That was too much I thought...not cool at all, and surely he should know better. I wasn't upset that Trump was tarnished, never expected (or would believe) perfection, but I wanted him NOT to be cruel or callous, wanted him to be basically a good guy at heart.

Well, well, well...imagine my relief when I found about a half-dozen other times Trump did the same thing, to other people, people who were definitely NOT disabled. Turns out that this 'spaz-thing' he did was NOT a dig at the disabled, but simply his way of making fun of people who get flustered when they are caught up trying to explain themselves after a blunder...the fact that the reporter DID have a disability was just a fluke. He got "the treatment" because he got caught up in some 'spin' and had a hard time explaining himself. (And he's not even spastic, doesn't even move the way Trump did...it was just 'lucky' he had the disability so they could point to THAT and ignore what Trump was referring to altogether..)

In the old days, I might have thought Meryl Streep had a good point when she brought that up even though I disagree with her politics...but now I can immediately see that she, and all the others, are simply full of shit. All their 'compassion' is phony, an act, a put-on. And I now know to pay more attention to the stories they DON'T tell than to the distractions they shout about...The coverage of Streep's little speech immediately brought to mind the incident with the young mentally-disabled man kidnapped and abused, and made me wonder if she even heard about it, or would care if she did since it couldn't be used against Trump...like only the disabled who are of USE get the attention.

Whatever Trump does as President isn't as important as what he has done so far. He has...

1) Trashed the credibility of BOTH parties. Usually its one or the other, but this time he has nailed BOTH of them.

2) Trashed the credibility of the MSM, and broken the chokehold they had over the narrative.

3) Exposed the whole PC doctrine as the hypocrisy it IS, and made it fashionable again to speak honestly about sensitive topics.

4) Ended both the Clinton and Bush 'dynasties' in a way that makes it difficult for either to just bounce back to national politics...knocked them off their pedestals, then smashed the pedestal. Left them so tarnished that any meaningful comebacks are unlikely. The significance of this should not be missed...those two clans have dominated this country for DECADES, Trump's takedown is a very big deal.

5) Broken the 'spell' of the notion that it is unpatriotic to question and criticize our military and intelligence agencies, and even to suggest that parts of them may be incompetent and corrupt and need to be fixed...Who is the last President to speak openly about NATO in a critical light? This is also a very big deal, as it makes it easier for people in higher places to speak out about what's going on, as it won't be so easy to smear them as treasonous or anti-American anymore. And it might also mean some future funding issues for these bloated agencies, and leadership changes...Dare I hope for a paring-down of some of those "17 different intelligence agencies" we apparently have?

If he has a massive coronary right after being sworn in, and drops dead on the spot without ever setting foot in the Oval Office, he will still have accomplished a lot more in his short term than most other Presidents manage to do in 4-8 years...Even if nothing actually changes, at least it will never be the same again.

kool maudit » Thu Jan 12, 2017 4:31 am wrote:свинья русский?



http://www.clickhole.com/article/troubl ... -has--5181

Troubling Sign: Donald Trump Is Shaking Hands With A Pig That Has “Corruption” Written On It And Is Holding A Bag That Reads “Kickbacks”

Well, this isn’t good.

From a slew of controversial cabinet appointments to Trump University’s fraud settlement, the president-elect’s transition to power has been riddled with causes for alarm. Now, for anyone harboring doubts about a Trump presidency, this may be the biggest red flag yet: Donald Trump is shaking hands with a pig that has “corruption” written on it and is holding a bag that reads “kickbacks.”

Ugh. If this is any indication, it’s going to be a long, long next four years.

Whoever hoped that the GOP candidate would bring real change to Washington must be shoving their feet in their mouths now, because Trump and the smirking pig are shaking hands in front of a tombstone reading “American Democracy 1776-2016,” onto which the pig is kicking mud with its hind legs. To make matters worse, Trump’s standing on a tattered copy of the Constitution, and several sad ghosts with the words “progress,” “diplomacy,” and “Obama’s legacy” on them are flying out of the grave.

Even Trump’s most vocal proponents are bound to take issue with the fact that three weasels with Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Jr. scrawled on them are standing under the “kickbacks” bag, collecting the dollar bills and gold coins overflowing from it. And for anyone putting their hope in Mike Pence to ground the Trump presidency, he is also at the center of this scandal after a miniature version of him in a devil’s outfit was spotted on Trump’s right shoulder.

Wow. This might just be bad enough to bring Trump’s whole presidency down before it even begins.

The president-elect’s team truly has their work cut out for them right now. How they’re going to explain why Vladimir Putin is next to Trump in a “Make America Great Again” hat and yanking on the leashes of a frightened elephant and donkey is anyone’s guess. And that’s still not even including the thorny weeds labeled “white supremacism” coming out of the steps around where Trump is standing.

If Trump truly intends to be the transformational leader that his campaign promised he’d be, he better publicly condemn all pigs with “corruption” written on them and start living up to the values Americans expect from their president. The whole country is counting on him.

Trump’s Climate Change Denial Could Cost Us $100 Trillion
The housing bubble mess that Obama had to clean up was piddling compared to the potential crash of conventional fuel prices that lurks in the very near future.
Mark Hertsgaard
MARK HERTSGAARD

01.10.17 12:46 PM ET
Like Barack Obama before him, Donald Trump comes to power amid an inherited emergency. When Obama took office in January 2009, the U.S. economy was in freefall. massive housing bubble had burst. Banks were failing, stock markets tumbling. Millions of people were losing their jobs, homes, and life savings.
The emergency Trump inherits also involves a bubble, but his bubble is made of carbon. This bubble nevertheless threatens many of the same catastrophes Obama’s did, including the evaporation of trillions of dollars worth of wealth and terrible human suffering. Trump seems oblivious to the danger, judging from his nomination of ExxonMobil’s CEO Rex Tillerson and other fossil fuel champions to his cabinet. But the confirmation hearings that begin this week enable the Senate and the press to publicize the emergency, demand answers, and reject any nominee unfit to manage the crisis.
A financial bubble occurs when the price of a given asset rises well above the asset’s actual value. In the case of the 2008 housing bubble, homebuyers, financial institutions, and other investors embraced the enticing but dubious assumption that U.S. housing prices only went up, never down. This assumption became a self-fulfilling prophecy, for a while, as a surge in investment drove housing values higher. But reality eventually asserted itself. When there were not enough buyers to keep the bubble expanding, housing prices imploded, punishing investors and bringing the economy as a whole to the brink of collapse.
Today’s carbon bubble operates on the same economic principles, as Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, has explained. In a landmark 2015 speech to the venerable Lloyd’s of London insurance company, Carney, Britain’s central banker, highlighted the scientific finding that humanity cannot burn most of the earth’s reserves of carbon-based fuels without risking a catastrophic increase in global warming. According to studies by the International Energy Agency and others, said Carney, only about one-third of the remaining oil, gas, and coal can be burned without pushing temperature rise beyond 2 degrees Celsius, the internationally agreed threshold where, scientists warn, climate change may well be unsurvivable. These two-thirds of unburnable reserves are the source of the carbon bubble.
The financial implications of the carbon bubble are immense, dwarfing those of the 2008 housing bubble, according to Carney and the Who’s Who of global financial leaders that have echoed his warnings, including private banks Citigroup and HSBC and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Citigroup estimated in 2015 that the “total value of stranded assets could be over $100 trillion.”
$100 trillion. It’s one of those figures it’s hard to get one’s head around. Just how much money is that? By way of comparison, $100 trillion is nearly five times the size of the losses associated with the housing bubble that nearly crashed the economy in 2008. One hundred trillion dollars is larger than the combined value of all the stock markets on earth. It is nothing to play with.
Meanwhile, a staggering one-third of global wealth is invested in oil, gas, coal, and other “carbon-heavy” companies, Carney has calculated. These companies, including ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel giants, will be vulnerable to significant financial devaluations if governments limit carbon emissions in accordance with the latest scientific findings, as 196 countries agreed to do at the United Nations climate summit in Paris in December 2015.
The projected devaluations for ExxonMobil and the rest of the fossil fuel industry derive from a peculiar but widespread accounting practice. The financial value and thus the stock market prices of such companies are based largely on the fuel reserves they claim to control and be able to bring to market. A prime example are the reportedly massive reserves in Russia that Putin and Tillerson agreed ExxonMobil would help develop, only to have the deal stalled after the U.S. imposed economic sanctions following Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. If large portions of these and other reserves around the world must in fact go unburned, the companies’ valuations will decline accordingly.
As in the housing crisis, a bursting of the carbon bubble will not only punish the companies and investors directly involved. Countless pension funds, mutual funds, and mom-and-pop investors are counting on solid future returns from carbon-based assets that may in fact end up stranded and all but worthless. If Carney is correct that one-third of the world’s wealth is invested in such assets, a devaluation of those assets could crater the entire global economy.
What is Trump’s position on this gigantic threat to economic stability and prosperity? He has spent his adult life in the real estate business, so he certainly knows about bubbles and the havoc they can wreak. Yet he appears to be willfully blind to the perils of the carbon bubble.
Like the fossil fuel advocates chosen for his cabinet, Trump denies the foundational premise for a carbon bubble: the scientific finding that there are strict limits to how much carbon can be released into the atmosphere without imperiling human civilization. If no such limits exist, a carbon bubble by definition cannot arise.
That certainly seems to be Rex Tillerson’s view, judging from his public statements and ExxonMobil’s actions since he became CEO in 2006. Breaking with the company’s past decades of climate denial and deception, Tillerson does not dispute that ExxonMobil’s products will raise global temperatures; he simply insists that the resulting impacts—shifts in food growing areas, harsher droughts and storms, rising seas—will be “manageable” through skillful adaptation. As Tillerson assured the Council on Foreign Relations in 2012, “Changes to weather patterns that move crop production areas around, we’ll adapt to that. It’s an engineering problem, and it has an engineering solution.”
That may make sense to an engineer who has spent his entire adult life at ExxonMobil, but no farmer with dirt under his fingernails would voice such nonsense. Sure, in theory a Midwestern farmer could move north as temperatures rise. But doing so would mean leaving behind some of the most fertile soil on earth in favor of some of the poorest. You don’t need a PhD to realize that your crop yields would plummet.
Tillerson, Trump, and their fellow carbon boosters have gotten away with their outlandish views partly because they are not alone in underestimating the climate emergency. Upon his inauguration on January 20, Trump will become the only head of state in the world who denies climate science, the Sierra Club has pointed out. His denialism is shared by virtually every Republican on Capitol Hill, not to mention his other Cabinet nominees—notably Rick Perry for energy secretary and Scott Pruitt for Environmental Protection Agency administrator.
Nor are Republicans the only ones sleepwalking towards disaster. The U.S. news media barely mentioned climate change while covering the 2016 presidential campaign. And even many politicians, journalists, and other opinion leaders who acknowledge the dangers of climate change nevertheless act as if violating the 2 degrees limit is no big deal.

Physics, however, does not compromise. Anyone who believes that the 2 C target is somehow optional should look hard at the climate impacts unfolding today, when temperatures have risen by a “mere” 1 degree C.
To cite but one example: In November, Secretary of State John Kerry visited Antarctica, where he learned that the Pine Island Glacier “is moving very fast, and when it goes, we will see 1.5 meters of sea level rise by 2050,” his aide Jonathan Pershing reported at the UN climate conference in Marakesh. “Five feet of sea level rise in less than 35 years, that is really soon,” Pershing said in an epic understatement. If this scenario indeed comes to pass, houses going “underwater,” as the phrase went during the 2008 housing bubble, will no longer be a mere figure of speech.
Five feet of sea level rise would put huge swaths of New York, Washington, Miami, London, Shanghai and many other coastal cities under water. Erecting sea walls might protect high-value locations, though the engineering and financial challenges of managing five feet of sea level rise would be extraordinary. (Just ask the Dutch, the world’s experts.) But 140 million people around the world live fewer than three feet above sea level, Pershing noted, often in places that have neither the money nor the expertise to manage any amount of sea level rise, much less five feet of it. Many of these people will have no choice but to re-locate, unleashing streams of refugees immeasurably larger than the emigrations seen today. Which is why the U.S. Department of Defense has called climate change a “threat multiplier” that poses “an urgent and growing threat” to national security.
The rest of the world has long grasped the climate problem, and many governments, businesses, communities, and ordinary people are fast transitioning from carbon-based fuels to solar, wind, and other clean energy alternatives. China, the other climate change superpower along with the U.S., is shifting course at dizzying speed, shutting its coal mines while vastly expanding renewable energy. China expects to create an eye-popping 13 million jobs and construct 1,000 solar power plants by 2020, the government’s National Energy Administration announced last week.
For Trump and his team to accelerate oil, gas and coal production in the face of all these trends would be economically self-defeating and morally indefensible. It would cede leadership of the 21st century clean energy sector to China (and Germany). It would make the U.S. economy the foremost victim when the carbon bubble does eventually burst. Above all, it would make catastrophic climate change that much harder for everyone on earth to avoid.
The senators conducting this week’s confirmation hearings, as well as the journalists covering them, should demand answers from Tillerson and Trump’s other nominees on how they plan to address the carbon bubble and the emergency it represents. If the answers merely reiterate the climate denial that has caused our current predicament, citizens should pressure their elected representatives to reject these nominations. In 2017, the signs of climate emergency are all around us. Anyone who refuses to see, and to respond accordingly, is not qualified for leadership in Washington.
Mark Hertsgaard is the author of seven books, including HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... llion.html

U.S. Intelligence Officials Reportedly Warn Israeli Counterparts Against Sharing Info With Trump Administration
Shared information could be leaked to Russia and onward to Iran, American officials implied to Israelis in closed meeting, saying Kremlin has 'leverages of pressure' over Trump, Ronen Bergman reports.

Haaretz Jan 12, 2017 5:21 PM

Controversial dossier on Trump alleges that Russia targets Jewish-American businessmen
Author of controversial Trump-Russia dossier identified as former MI-6 Agent
'Kompromat:' The frequent apperances of compromising material in Russian politics
DiscoverRonen BergmanClassified informationDonald TrumpUnited States
Israeli intelligence officials are concerned that the exposure of classified information to their American counterparts under a Trump administration could lead to their being leaked to Russia and onward to Iran, investigative journalist Ronen Bergman reported on the Ynet news website on Thursday.

The intelligence concerns, which have been discussed in closed forums recently, are based on suspicions of unreported ties between President-elect Donald Trump, or his associates, and the government of Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
As Russian intelligence is associated with intelligence officials in Tehran, highly classified information, such as Israel's clandestine methods of operation and intelligence sources, could potentially reach Iran. Such information has been shared with the United States in the past.
American intelligence officials expressed despair at the election of Trump during a recent meeting with their Israeli counterparts, Bergman reported. They said that they believed that Putin had “leverages of pressure” over Trump, though they did not elaborate. The American media reported on Wednesday that Russia has embarrassing intelligence about the president-elect.
According to Bergman, the American intelligence officials implied that Israel should “be careful” when transferring intelligence information to the White House and the National Security Council (NSC) following Trump's inauguration – at least until it is clear that Trump does not have inappropriate connections with Russia.
Cooperation between the Israeli and U.S. intelligence communities has intensified over the past two decades, with most of the joint operations directed, according to reports, against Iran. Hezbollah and Hamas were also intelligence targets. An official agreement in 2008 for comprehensive cooperation, including the exposure of sources and methods of action, reportedly led to impressive results, including the disruption of the Iranian nuclear program.
President Barack Obama put an end to offensive activity against Iran in 2013, at the start of secret talks between the U.S, and Iran over a nuclear agreement. However, the exposure of Israeli intelligence to the U.S. continued.
American officials are convinced that whistleblower Edward Snowden handed over intelligence to Moscow – in return for which he received political asylum – and that some of it was handed over to Tehran, in the context of Putin’s policy of increasing Iranian dependence on Moscow.


read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.764711

Trump's 'failing pile of garbage' quote earns $25K for journalists
Eli Blumenthal , USA TODAY Published 10:33 a.m. ET Jan. 12, 2017 | Updated 16 minutes ago

(Photo: Buzzfeed)
Looking for a "Failing pile of garbage" t-shirt? How about one for "CNN/ the fake news network"?

In the aftermath of President-elect Donald Trump's press conference Wednesday, t-shirts with the quotes or slogans began appearing online, ready for purchase by those against, or for, the incoming President.

Trump to CNN: ‘You are fake news’
The shirts are the latest round of political apparel, following Trump's "Make America Great Again" hats and the "bad hombre" and "nasty woman" t-shirts and mugs that appeared following the final presidential debate in October.

While addressing the unverified intelligence reports published Tuesday by Buzzfeed and CNN, the President-elect singled out the two media properties, calling website Buzzfeed a "failing pile of garbage" and CNN a "fake news" network.

The bizarre allegations about Trump and Russia, explained
In response, Buzzfeed began selling a series of shirts featuring the quote, as well as bumper stickers and a garbage can, on its online store shortly afterward. The shirt sells for $30, the bumper stickers go for $5 and the trash can for $49.

BuzzFeed told USA TODAY in a statement that it would be "donating 100% of the proceeds" from purchases of the limited-edition items "to the Committee to Protect Journalists." Within 12 hours all of Buzzfeed's items had sold out, with the site prompting interested buyers to instead look into making a donation to the organization.

By Thursday afternoon Buzzfeed confirmed to USA TODAY that it had raised $25,000 for CPJ from the flash sale, the second big donation for the organization this week.

CPJ, which describes itself as "an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide," was praised during Meryl Streep's acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement at the Golden Globes on Sunday. That shoutout brought in over $60,000 in donations by Monday morning.

Meryl Streep shout out to journalism group brings $$$
While for some the shirts are a way to raise awareness, others, such as Sarah Chrzanowski, maker of the "CNN, fake news network" shirt, are hoping to capitalize on the interest. Chrzanowski, a mother of three from Southern California, has been selling the shirts on online retailer Etsy in the hopes of helping support her family.

Going by the username "SupportVeterans," Chrzanowski has been selling shirts on the service for the past five months after her husband, a veteran of the Iraq war, began suffering from PTSD and subsequently lost his job at the DEA.

The "CNN" shirt isn't her first. In emails with USA TODAY, she says a prior shirt featuring the phrase "Obama played the race card/ Clinton played the woman card/ Americans played their Trump card" was a particularly hot item over the holidays.

"No one else was selling it when I made it election night," writes Chrzanowski, noting that she sold over 400 of the shirts over the holidays.

'Deplorable' and proud: Some Trump supporters embrace the label
Political paraphernalia doesn't seem to be going away. A search for "Trump" on Etsy reveals over 7,000 items while other groups, such as the Democratic National Committee have joined in on the action with their own "official" political shirts and apparel including a "stop the GOP" bumper sticker and a "popular vote" t-shirt that reads "I'm one of the 65,844,610 Americans against Trump."

The country may be deeply divided on how it feels about the incoming President-elect, but there is one thing that's become clear: there doesn't seem to be any issues with people wearing those feelings (literally) on their chests.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017 ... /96471518/

Trump Appointee Crowley Espoused Anti-Muslim Conspiracy Theories

by Eli Clifton

President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to name Monica Crowley to lead communications for the National Security Council (NSC) has resulted in a plagiarism scandal for the Fox News personality and Washington Times columnist. A CNN review of her columns for the Times revealed at least seven instances of plagiarism. Politico found that she also plagiarized sections of her PhD dissertation for Columbia University. And HarperCollins announced that it is suspending sales of Crowley’s 2012 book, What the (Bleep) Just Happened? in response to a CNN report that the book contained more than 50 examples of plagiarism.

Crowley is a controversial pick for the top communications post at the NSC for reasons that go beyond her serial plagiarism. Video and audio recordings reviewed by LobeLog show Crowley effusively praising anti-Muslim advocates Frank Gaffney, Andrew McCarthy, and Steve Emerson, and espousing a fringe conspiracy theory about “Islamist infiltration in the U.S.”

Crowley made a career out of criticizing the Obama administration’s foreign policy—particularly its efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear program through diplomatic means—and providing hawkish soundbites on Fox News. In 2015, she even went so far as assert that a “President Crowley” would have conducted an “airborne military strike” on Iran’s nuclear facilities “years ago,” a move almost certain to spark retaliation by Tehran against U.S. targets, including U.S. troops in Iraq, or against neighboring countries allied with Washington.

Her casual attitude toward a destabilizing war might be partly informed by her choice of role models and associates who espouse a paranoid worldview filled with Islamist conspiracies designed to undermine the United States.

In CSP’s Orbit

In 2012, the Center for Security Policy (CSP), an anti-Muslim think tank whose research Donald Trump cited in his plan to ban all Muslim immigration to the U.S., gave Crowley its Mightier Pen award. Crowley offered kind words for Islamophobic advocate Frank Gaffney, who heads up CSP. She praised The Investigative Project on Terrorism’s Steve Emerson, who famously spread unsubstantiated allegations of Middle Eastern connections to both the 1995 Oklahoma City federal building and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings in live television interviews shortly after the attacks. And she lauded Andrew McCarthy, a key advocate of the conspiracy theory that Muslims here are trying to supplant the U.S. Constitution with “totalitarian” Sharia law.

Crowley told the audience:

Andy, God bless you, you are such a dear personal friend of mine and you are such a hero to this republic. Andy McCarthy was one of very few voices, pre-9/11, after 9/11 everyone’s attention was really focused on radical Islam and the fact that we are in the crosshairs of radical Islam, which not a lot of people were focused on before the September 11th attacks. Andy McCarthy was one of those voices in the wilderness. Frank Gaffney, Steve Emerson, a few others, but they were lonely out there.
Crowley went on to praise Gaffney’s role in advocating for the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, concluding:

Frank is to be commended and honored for his single-minded focus and total dedication to this nation’s security. He is often a one-man band. He’s often attacked in the most grotesque and vicious ways. And he’s also a voice in the wilderness. But he’s always right and he’s always vindicated.
Watch her:



But Gaffney’s track record is far from pristine.

In 2015, Donald Trump pointed to a CSP-sponsored poll that allegedly showed that “25% of [American Muslims] agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad” and 51%, “agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah.”

The poll, cited by Trump as justification for a proposed immigration ban, was an online opt-in survey of 600 Muslims, a fact that Gaffney’s organization did not initially disclose.

The American Association for Public Opinion Research, which sets ethical standards for pollsters, has denounced opt-in surveys as deeply flawed. “The pollster has no idea who is responding to the question,” it warned, noting that such surveys lack a “‘grounded statistical tie’ to the population. As a result, estimates from self-selected volunteers are subject to unknown error that cannot be measured.”

Gaffney has a well-established track record of pushing alarmist and misleading accusations about Muslims and their beliefs.

In 2008, he used a column in the Washington Times to question whether Obama “is a natural born citizen of the United States” and claimed “there is evidence Mr. Obama was born in Kenya rather than, as he claims, Hawaii.”

Neither Frank Gaffney nor Donald Trump, who made a similar claim but renounced it during last year’s presidential campaign, has ever produced any evidence to support that assertion.

Gaffney also repeatedly spread baseless claims that Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin was a Muslim Brotherhood operative. He also asserted in a 2010 Breitbart column that the Missile Defense Agency logo “appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo,” part of what he described as a “worrying pattern of official U.S. submission to Islam.”

His stream of claims about Muslim infiltration of various U.S. institutions have been denounced by the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the American Conservative Union, among others.

Crowley and Gaffney

Crowley, for her part, maintained a chummy relationship with Gaffney, appearing on his radio show, Secure Freedom Radio, at least ten times between 2010 and 2013.

In an August 2012 appearance, she embraced one of Gaffney’s central conspiracy theories—that there is an Islamist infiltration underway at the highest levels of the U.S. government. She offered her thoughts on how she would advise then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

She told Gaffney [my emphasis]:

Simultaneously in addition to focusing on the economy, focus on the grave national security threats we are facing both abroad and at home thanks to this president. And I would argue that he should take on the issue, Frank, that you have been on the forefront of for many, many years now, which is the Muslim infiltration by the Islamists here in the United States through the Muslim Brotherhood and their associated front groups here in the United States such as [the Council on American Islamic Relations]….
None of the [domestic policy issues] matter if we are all dead. Now that sounds a little bit like hyperbole but actually, Frank, given the nature of the threats we face from Iran with a nuclear weapon to the Islamist infiltration here in the United States, it’s really not that far off the mark. We are being destroyed from within, and he should have the courage to make that argument.
Listen to her, beginning eight minutes into the recording:



In fact, Iran did not have a nuclear weapon in 2012, nor did it obtain one in the following four years; nor is there evidence of an “Islamist infiltration” of the kind she describes. But Crowley’s aspersions against Muslim-Americans and embrace of conspiracy theories may have launched her into the political orbit surrounding Trump and his national security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn (ret.), who are now rewarding her with a post at the NSC.

How credible she will be, given her record of plagiarism, conspiracy-propagation, and Islamophobia, remains to be seen.
http://lobelog.com/trump-appointee-crow ... -theories/

Comments

After several rather lame false starts, the Neocons have now taken a step which can only be called a declaration of war against Donald Trump.

It all began with CNN published an article entitled “Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him” which claimed that:

Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN. The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible (…) The two-page synopsis also included allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, according to two national security officials.

Grizzly » Thu Jan 12, 2017 10:24 pm wrote:Shit is getting funky. ...

The Neocon’s declaration of war against Trump
http://thesaker.is/the-neocons-declarat ... nst-trump/

After several rather lame false starts, the Neocons have now taken a step which can only be called a declaration of war against Donald Trump.

It all began with CNN published an article entitled “Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him” which claimed that:

Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN. The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible (…) The two-page synopsis also included allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, according to two national security officials.

to complicated to copy the whole article on my stupid 'smart phone', just to cumbersome...

As I predicted it before the election, the USA are about to enter the worst crisis in their history. We are entering extraordinarily dangerous times. If the danger of a thermonuclear war between Russia and the USA had dramatically receded with the election of Trump, the Neocon total war on Trump put the United States at very grave risk, including civil war (should the Neocon controlled Congress impeach Trump I believe that uprisings will spontaneously happen, especially in the South, and especially in Florida and Texas). At the risk of sounding over the top, I will say that what is happening now is putting the very existence of the United States in danger almost regardless of what Trump will personally do. Whatever we may think of Trump as a person and about his potential as a President, what is certain is that millions of American patriots have voted for him to “clear the swamp”, give the boot to the Washington-based plutocracy and restore what they see as fundamental American values. If the Neocons now manage to stage a coup d’etat against Trump, I predict that these millions of American will turn to violence to protect what they see as their way of life, their values and their country. In spite of the image which Hollywood likes to give of them, most Americans are peaceful and non-violent people, but if they are pushed too far they will not hesitate and grab their guns to defend themselves, especially if they lose all hopes in their democracy. 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 people. That is the biggest and ultimate danger for the Neocons: the risk that if they give the order to crack down on the population the police, security and military services might simply refuse to take action. If that could happen in the “KGB-controlled country” (to use a Cold War cliché) this can also happen in the USA.

I sure hope that I am wrong and that this latest attack against Trump is the Neocon’s last “hurray” before they finally give up and leave. I hope that all of the above is my paranoia speaking. But, as they say, “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they are not after you“.[/quote ]