April 13, 2017

Trump says he's "proud" of "very successful job" the military did with the use of 'The Mother of All

Source: CNBC

JUST IN: Trump says he's "proud" of "very successful job" the military did with the use of 'The Mother of All Bombs'

https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/852596088330694656

Read more: https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/852596088330694656

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Ughh! Trump says he authorized "my military"

April 13, 2017

Trump Withholds Syria-Sarin Evidence

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/12/trump-withholds-syria-sarin-evidence/

By Robert Parry

After making the provocative and dangerous charge that Russia is covering up Syria’s use of chemical weapons, the Trump administration withheld key evidence to support its core charge that a Syrian warplane dropped sarin on a northern Syrian town on April 4. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis welcomes Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman to the Pentagon, March 16, 2017. (DoD photo by Sgt. Amber I. Smith)

A four-page white paper, prepared by President Trump’s National Security Council staff and released by the White House on Tuesday, claimed that U.S. intelligence has proof that the plane carrying the sarin gas left from the Syrian military airfield that Trump ordered hit by Tomahawk missiles on April 6. The paper asserted that “we have signals intelligence and geospatial intelligence,” but then added that “we cannot publicly release all available intelligence on this attack due to the need to protect sources and methods.”

I’m told that the key evidence was satellite surveillance of the area, a body of material that U.S. intelligence analysts were reviewing late last week even after the Trump-ordered bombardment of 59 Tomahawk missiles that, according to Syrian media reports, killed seven or eight Syrian soldiers and nine civilians, including four children. Yet, it is unclear why releasing these overhead videos would be so detrimental to “sources and methods” since everyone knows the U.S. has this capability and the issue at hand – if it gets further out of hand – could lead to a nuclear confrontation with Russia.

In similarly tense situations in the past, U.S. Presidents have released sensitive intelligence to buttress U.S. government assertions, including John F. Kennedy’s disclosure of U-2 spy flights in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and Ronald Reagan revealing electronic intercepts after the Soviet shoot-down of Korean Airlines Flight 007 in 1983. Yet, in this current case, as U.S.-Russian relations spiral downward into what is potentially an extermination event for the human species, Trump’s White House insists that the world must trust it despite its record of consistently misstating facts.

April 13, 2017

They are kleptocrats and not even subtle about it

This isn't America first. It's Trump's business first. Just disgusting and appalling. These horrible people have to go.

https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/852330541227659264

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-bannons-struggle-from-shadow-president-to-trumps-marked-man/2017/04/12/1f5aabc0-1f99-11e7-ad74-3a742a6e93a7_story.html?utm_term=.1f177eece99c

Trump’s three oldest children — Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric — and Kushner have been frustrated by the impression of chaos inside the White House and feel that their father has not always been served well by his senior staff, according to people with knowledge of their sentiments. The Trump heirs are interested in any changes that might help resuscitate the presidency and preserve the family’s name at a time when they are trying to expand the Trump Organization’s portfolio of hotels.

“The fundamental assessment is that if they want to win the White House in 2020, they’re not going to do it the way they did in 2016, because the family brand would not sustain the collateral damage,” said one well-connected Republican operative, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s family. “It would be so protectionist, nationalist and backward-looking that they’d only be able to build in Oklahoma City or the Ozarks.”

April 11, 2017

Spicer Says Hitler Didnt Use Chemical Weapons 'In The Way Assad Used Them' (VIDEO)

Source: TPM

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that not even Adolf Hitler used chemical weapons. The remark was striking given the German ruler's infamous legacy of killing millions of Jews, many in gas chambers.

During his daily press briefing Tuesday, Spicer was asked why he thought Russia would drop its support for Syrian President Bashar Assad after an alleged poison gas attack last week, despite the decades-long relationship between the two nations.

“I think a couple things. You look — we didn’t use chemical weapons in World War II,” Spicer began. “You had a — someone as despicable as Hitler, who didn't even sink to using chemical weapons. So you have to, if you're Russia, ask yourself, is this a country that you — and a regime that you want to align yourself with?”

In fact, Hitler killed millions of innocent civilians, including German Jews, during World War II using poisons like Zyklon-B and carbon monoxide in concentration camps.

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/spicer-says-hitler-didnt-use-poison-gas

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This White House is just freaking nuts. They have to go.

April 9, 2017

Hasn't the US been trying to overthrow the Assad regime since the beginning of the conflict?

Our main strategy has been funding rebel groups, and according to some sources, arming them. And of course we sell arms to the Saudis, who pass them on to Syrian rebels.

But it's weird how no one talks about this, and acts as if we have been on the sidelines.

Of course it's arguable about how much effect we've had on the conflict. Some people think not much, some people think we should have done more, some people think the civil war would not have persisted without our influence.

However, there's little doubt that the US has been trying to overthrow and support efforts to overthrow Assad for quite some time, to some degree.

But like there was this long discussion on Democracy Now about how Syrians wanted Assad gone and were happy Trump did something (appallingly IMO), with no discussion of what we have done. And this doesn't seem to be in the mix with any of the talk about Trump's missile strike.

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/7/trump_shocks_world_in_direct_us

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/7/peace_advocates_if_trump_wanted_to

ALIA MALEK: Yes, that is what he said. But what his actual motivations were, I think, remain to be seen. My reaction is that there are a few things that are clear—one, that President Trump has distinguished himself from his predecessor, in that he’s shown he’s a man of action. He has asserted—or the appearance—or, you know, he’s created the appearance of sort of asserting a kind of independence from Russia, which, given the intrigue surrounding the Russian involvement with his election, is something that would have a benefit to him.

Just seems bizarre how this fact of US policy is ignored.

April 8, 2017

At U.S.-China summit, Trump presses Xi on trade, North Korea; progress cited

Source: Reuters

President Donald Trump pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping to do more to curb North Korea's nuclear program and help reduce the gaping U.S. trade deficit with Beijing in talks on Friday, even as he toned down the strident anti-China rhetoric of his election campaign.

Trump spoke publicly of progress on a range of issues in his first U.S.-China summit – as did several of his top aides – but they provided few concrete specifics other than China's agreement to work together to narrow disagreements and find common ground for cooperation.

As the two leaders wrapped up a Florida summit overshadowed by U.S. missile strikes in Syria overnight, Xi joined Trump in stressing the positive mood of the meetings while papering over deep differences that have caused friction between the world's two biggest economies.

Trump's aides insisted he had made good on his pledge to raise concerns about China's trade practices and said there was some headway, with Xi agreeing to a 100-day plan for trade talks aimed at boosting U.S. exports and reducing China's trade surplus with the United States.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-idUSKBN1792KA

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Interesting how the missile strike in Syria totally obscured these huge talks... my guess is the Trump people really wanted to deflect attention away from the meeting, in case they didn't go well. And people were predicting Trump would get taken advantage of by the Chinese, since Trump is so clueless.

Certainly, Trump talked so much smack about the Chinese during the campaign, saying really crazy inflammatory things, but seems to have been very low key in this summit.

April 7, 2017

Sean Hannity had the best take on Trump

https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/375071259643879425

Oh wait, that was in 2013 on Obama!

April 6, 2017

The Rude One on our Stupid Fuckin' President

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2017/04/this-stupid-fuckin-president.html

Goddamn, you know what's worse than being led by a stupid, evil man? Being led by an evil man who is so stupid that he doesn't realize that he's stupid or evil. Don't believe it? Here ya go:

Trump claimed that Representative Elijah Cummings, a Democrat who is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said to him, "You will go down as one of the great presidents in the history of our country." Anyone who read that knew instantly that it was a damned lie. But, even worse, it was a demonstration of just how pathetically myopic Trump's ego forces him to view the world.

Because Cummings actually said that "he could be a great president if...IF...he takes steps to truly represent all Americans rather than continuing on the divisive and harmful path he is currently on."

But the nude Ivanka angels in Trump's head just sang sweetly to him that he was a great man before rubbing their tits his face.

April 6, 2017

The Long, Lucrative Right-wing Grift Is Blowing Up in the World's Face

A good read...

http://fusion.net/the-long-lucrative-right-wing-grift-is-blowing-up-in-t-1793944216

Alex Pareene:

If you want to understand intra-GOP warfare, the decision-making process of our president, the implosion of the Republican healthcare plan, and the rest of the politics of the Trump era, you don’t need to know about Russian espionage tactics, the state of the white working class, or even the beliefs of the “alt-right.” You pretty much just need to be in semi-regular contact with a white, reasonably comfortable, male retiree. We are now ruled by men who think and act very much like that ordinary man you might know, and if you want to know why they believe so many strange and terrible things, you can basically blame the fact that a large and lucrative industry is dedicated to lying to them.

Because there was a lot of money in it for various hucksters and moguls and authors and politicians, the conservative movement spent decades building up an entire sector of the economy dedicated to scaring and lying to older white men. For millions of members of that demographic, this parallel media dedicated to lying to them has totally supplanted the “mainstream” media. Now they, and we, are at the mercy of the results of that project. The inmates are running the asylum, if there is a kind of asylum that takes in many mostly sane people and then gradually, over many years, drives one subset of its inmates insane, and also this asylum has the largest military in the world.

For years, the conservative movement peddled one set of talking points to the rabble, while its elites consumed a more grounded and reality-based media. The rubes listened to talk radio, read right-wing blogs, watched Fox News. They were fed apocalyptic paranoia about threats to their liberty, racial hysteria about the generalized menace posed by various groups of brown people, and hysterical lies about the criminal misdeeds of various Democratic politicians. The people in charge, meanwhile, read The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard, and they tended to have a better grasp of political reality, as when those sources deceived their readers, it was mostly unintentionally, with comforting fantasies about the efficacy of conservative policies. From the Reagan era through the Bush administration, the system seemed to be performing as designed.

But if this was a reasonably useful arrangement for Republicans, who won a couple close elections with the help of their army of riled-up kooks, it was a fantastic deal for the real engine of the right-wing propaganda machine: companies selling newly patented drugs designed to treat the various conditions of old age, authors of dubious investing newsletters, sellers of survival seeds, hawkers of poorly written conservative books, and a whole array of similar con artists and ethically compromised corporations and financial institutions. The original strategy behind demonizing the “mainstream media” may have purely political, to steer voters away from outlets that tended to present information damaging to the conservative cause, but the creation of the conservative media was also a revenue opportunity for shameless grifters from the very start, as Rick Perlstein showed in his classic Baffler piece on the snake oil-salesmen of the right.

April 5, 2017

No nuclear option? 2/3 majority vote is needed to change Senate procedure and override a filibuster

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/326423-what-if-theres-no-nuclear-option

In the absence of a plausible constitutional issue raised by the Gorsuch filibuster, the 2013 precedent is simply inapplicable. If the Republicans, nevertheless, insist on invoking the Nixon rule, respect for Rule XXII mandates that, in the absence of plausible allegations of unconstitutional abuse, the scripted point of order at the heart of the nuclear option be sustained by 2/3 of the senators present and voting before it morphs into a binding Senate precedent. At a minimum, unlike the sleepy Republicans in 2013, the Democratic Senate leadership should counter with points-of-order demanding debate on any appeal to the Senate that does not require a 2/3 vote.

Basically, the normal procedure can only be done if the Dems are doing something *unconsitutional* with their filibuster. And it's doesn't seem like they are doing that.