Quotes of the Week

"And so it turns out that not only is Barnaby Joyce a shocking hypocrite, he's also a repulsive cliche."  [Journalist Clementine Ford describing Australian Deputy Prime Minister and MP for New England Barnaby Joyce, The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 February 2018]

“Barnaby Joyce has a history of screwing over women.”  [Journalist Kasey Edwards writing about Australia’s deputy prime minister in The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 February 2018]

"During the 2016 presidential campaign and into the White House, Trump and his aides have defended a male aide accused of domestic violence, a male Senate candidate accused of pursuing inappropriate relationships with teens and a male campaign manager accused of assaulting a reporter. In each case, Trump and his top staffers used strikingly similar language to defend the accused, noting that he had denied it, defending his integrity and casting doubt on the women's claims."  [Journalist Ryan Teague Beckwith writing in Time magazine, 8 February 2018]

In the same week Wall Street was finally spooked by the sheer weight of Donald Trump's inadequacies as the 45th US President.....

.....and the Dow Jones Index indicated that financiers and big business might be seriously worried about possibly higher than expected interest rates, rising national debt and the size of the US federal budget deficit Trump created in his first twelve months in office - he also rather unwisely performed in front of the cameras on the subject of treason.

YouTube, Time, 5 February 2018:

CNN, 5 February 2018:

 (CNN)President Donald Trump wasn't -- and, apparently, still isn't -- happy that Democrats in Congress didn't stand to applaud him in his State of the Union address last week.

Here's what Trump told a crowd in Cincinnati in a speech on Monday afternoon:

"They were like death and un-American. Un-American. Somebody said, 'treasonous.' I mean, Yeah, I guess why not? Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean they certainly didn't seem to love our country that much."

So, here we are. Again.

Let's quickly define "treason," shall we?

Here's how Merriam-Webster does it:

"The offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's family."

Trump loyalists will dismiss all of this as much ado over nothing. He was joking! He didn't even say that it was treasonous! He was just agreeing with people who said it was treasonous!

Fine. Also, wrong. And missing the point in a major way.

The point? It's this: Not standing during applause lines for the State of the Union isn't treasonous or un-American. Not even close.

If it was, all of the Republicans in that chamber are treasonous and un-American as well because when former President Barack Obama would tout his accomplishments in office -- as Trump was doing last Tuesday night -- lots and lots of Republican legislators would sit on their hands while the Democratic side of the aisle erupted in cheers. And so on and so forth for every president before him (and after).

The Washington Post, 6 February 2018:

This isn’t the first time Trump has used the T-word as president. Just last month, he accused FBI agent Peter Strzok of treason for sending negative text messages about him during the 2016 election to a lawyer at the FBI who he was having an affair with. “By the way, that’s a treasonous act,” the president told the Wall Street Journal. “What he tweeted to his lover is a treasonous act.”

Now that's a bad hair moment!

Makeup line exposed along with a considerable amount of bald pate....

https://youtu.be/vHwOMWGAg_o

There's nothing even remotely funny about Trump's profound ignorance about climate change

https://youtu.be/naR2V6UOjkA

Quotes of the Week

"The Cozy Bear [Russian] hackers are in a space in a university building near the Red Square. The group's composition varies, usually about ten people are active. The entrance is in a curved hallway. A security camera records who enters and who exits the room. The AIVD hackers manage to gain access to that camera. Not only can the intelligence service now see what the Russians are doing, they can also see who's doing it. Pictures are taken of every visitor. In Zoetermeer, these pictures are analyzed and compared to known Russian spies. Again, they've acquired information that will later prove to be vital."  [De Volkskrant, on the subject of Russian interference in 2016 presidential election, 25 January 2018]

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"The separation of powers doctrine dictates that the judiciary should not be the subject of improper influence by the other branches of government – being the executive and legislature. Comments by Dutton and other Coalition ministers to the effect that members of the judiciary should be selected on the basis of their ideological leanings and ability to deliver "tough" sentences – rather than independently look at all factors and apply the law – seek to undermine this doctrine and unduly influence both the selection process and practices of the judiciary. Dutton's populist political grandstanding may have some members of the public "egging him on", but the reality is that such rhetoric seeks to undermine one of the central pillars of our democracy." 

[Sydney Criminal Lawyers, 23 January 2018]

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“No president in history has burned more public money to sustain his personal lifestyle than Donald Trump”  [former George W. Bush staffer David Frum in his book Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic]

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“The events I’ve described in these pages are based on conversations that took place over a period of eighteen months with the president, with most members of his senior staff—some of whom talked to me dozens of times—and with many people who they in turn spoke to. The first interview occurred well before I could have imagined a Trump White House, much less a book about it, in late May 2016 at Trump’s home in Beverly Hills—the then candidate polishing off a pint of Häagen-Dazs vanilla as he happily and idly opined about a range of topics while his aides, Hope Hicks, Corey Lewandowski, and Jared Kushner, went in and out of the room.

Conversations with members of the campaign’s team continued through the Republican Convention in Cleveland, when it was still hardly possible to conceive of Trumps election. They moved on to Trump Tower with a voluble Steve Bannon—before the election, when he still seemed like an entertaining oddity, and later, after the election, when he seemed like a miracle worker.

Shortly after January 20, I took up something like a semipermanent seat on a couch in the West Wing. Since then I have conducted more than two hundred interviews.” [Author Michael Wolff from his book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” published 5 January 2018]

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The American Resistance has many faces and these are just some of them (20)

Why only rallies AGAINST Trump have to be held outside:#WomensMarch2018 pic.twitter.com/y2hgM51bAz

— Mrs. Betty Bowers (@BettyBowers) January 20, 2018

United Nations spokesperson calls US President Donald J Trump a racist

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights was established in 1946 to weave the international legal fabric that protects our fundamental rights and freedoms and, this is what it said in the wake of US President Donald J Trump's remarks concerning 'non-white' countries in January 2018.

Watch The United Nations lay out exactly why @realDonaldTrump can't be labeled anything other than a racist in 1 minute. pic.twitter.com/1Bc0e7zg4d

— UnsilentMajority  (@The_UnSilent_) January 13, 2018

Rupert Colville, spokesperson for UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights:

"These are shocking and shameful comments from the President of the United States. I'm sorry, but there's no other word one can use but 'racist'.

"You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as 'shitholes', whose entire populations are not white are therefore not welcome. 

"The positive comment on Norway makes the underlying sentiment very clear.

"Like the earlier comments made vilifying Mexicans and Muslims, the policy proposals targeting entire groups on grounds of nationality or religion, and the reluctance to clearly condemn the antisemitic and racist actions of the white supremacists in Charlottesville, all of these go against the universal values the world has been striving so hard to establish since World War Two and the Holocaust.

"This isn't just a story about vulgar language, it's about opening the door to humanity's worst side.

"It's about validating and encouraging racism and xenophobia that will potentially disrupt and even destroy the lives of many people, and that's perhaps the single most damaging and dangerous consequence of this type of comment by a major political figure."

U.S. Political Retrospective: those first investigations into presidential candidate Donald J Trump

Sometime in September or October 2015 Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS began a broad investigation of then Republican presidential candidate nominee Donald J Trump under contact for an unspecified client and later commenced another investigation of Trump as official Republican presidential candidate for a different client in the first half of 2016.

Simpson later confirmed the clients to be in the first instance The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded by a major Republican donor and in the second instance the Democratic National Committee and Clinton presidential campaign.

Excerpts from Christopher Steele’s 35-page ‘dossier’ created under contract for research company Fusion GPS:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html

U.S. SENATE, WASHINGTON, D.C., SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE, excerpts from a partial transcipt of INTERVIEW OF: GLENN SIMPSON, 22 August 2017 (released 9 January 2018 in response to his request) , in which he explains how and where he looked for initial information about Donald Trump:

“In the early -- the very first weekend that I

started boning up on Donald Trump, you know, I

found various references to him having connections

to Italian organized crime and later to a Russian

organized crime figure named Felix Sater,

S-A-T-E-R. It wasn't hard to find, it wasn't any

great achievement, it was in the New York Times,

but as someone who has done a lot of Russian

organized crime investigations as a journalist

originally that caught my attention and became

something that, you know, I focused on while other

people looked at other things.

So from the very beginning of this organized

crime was -- Russian organized crime was a focus of

interest. I guess I should just repeat, you know,

this is a subject that I covered extensively at the

Wall Street Journal. I wrote a series of front-

page articles about various corrupt politicians

from Russia, oligarchs, and one of the things that

I wrote about was the connections between western

politicians and Russian business figures. So, you

know, I was sort of an amateur student of the

subject and I had written about some of these same

Russian crime figures, you know, years earlier in

the U.S. and various frauds and things they were

involved in……

You know, we also conducted a much broader

sort of look at his entire career and his overseas

investments in places like Europe and Latin

America. You know, it wasn't really a Russia

focused investigation for the first half of it.

That was just one component of a broader look at

his business career, his finances. We spent a lot

of time trying to figure out whether he's really as

rich as he says he is because that was the subject

of a libel case that he filed against a journalist

named Tim O'Brien for which there was quite a lot

of discovery and litigation filings detailing

O'Brien's allegation that he was worth, you know,

maybe a fifth to a third of what he claims and

Trump's angry retort that he was worth far more

than that.

So we did things like we looked at the golf

courses and whether they actually ever made any

money and how much debt they had. We looked at the

bankruptcies, how could somebody go through so many

bankruptcies, you know, and still have a billion

dollars in personal assets. So those are the kinds

of things. We looked at a lot of things like his

tax bills. Tax bills are useful because you can

figure out how much money someone is making or how

much they're worth or how much their properties are

worth based on how much they have to pay in taxes.

One of the things we found out was that, you

know, when it comes to paying taxes, Donald Trump

claims to not have much stuff. At least the Trump

organization. So they would make filings with

various state and local authorities saying that

their buildings weren't worth much……

For instance, in the early stage of an

investigation, you know, particularly of Donald

Trump you want to get every lawsuit the guy's ever

been in. So, you know, we collected lawsuits from

around the country and the world. And I do

remember one of the earlier things we did was we

collected a lot of documents from Scotland because

he'd been in a big controversy there about land

use. There had been another one in Ireland. There

was a lot of Freedom of Information Act requests

and that sort of thing.

So in the early phases of something you're

collecting lots of paper on every subject

imaginable. So in the course of reading that

litigation we would follow up on things that were

interesting, such as a libel case against a

journalist that he settled, which, in other words,

he didn't prevail in his attempts to prove that he

was a billionaire.”……

It was, broadly speaking, a kind of

holistic examination of Donald Trump's business

record and his associations, his bankruptcies, his

suppliers, you know, offshore or third-world

suppliers of products that he was selling. You

know, it evolved somewhat quickly into issues of

his relationships to organized crime figures but,

you know, really the gamut of Donald Trump.

What we generally do at the beginning of a

case if it's possible is to order all the books

about the subject from Amazon so we're not

reinventing the wheel and we know what's been

written and said before. So this was typical. We

ordered every Donald Trump book and, to my

surprise, that's a lot of books. I was never very

interested in Donald Trump. He was not a serious

political figure that I'd ever had any exposure to.

He's a New York figure really.

So anyway, we read everything we could read

about Donald Trump. Those books cover his

divorces, his casinos, his early years dealings

with labor unions and mafia figures. I'm trying to

think what else. His taxes certainly have always

been a big issue. Again, it was sort of an

unlimited look at his -- you know, his business and

finances and that sort of thing……

That calls for a somewhat long answer. We

had done an enormous amount of work on Donald Trump

generally at this point in the project and we began

to drill down on specific areas. He [Christopher Steele] was not the

only subcontractor that we engaged. Other parts of

the world required other people. For example, we

were interested in the fact that the Trump family

was selling merchandise under the Trump brand in

the United States that was made in sweat shops in

Asia and South America -- or Latin America. So we

needed someone else for that. So there were other

things. We were not totally focused on Russia at

that time, but we were at a point where we were --

you know, we'd done a lot of reading and research

and we were drilling down on specific areas.

Scotland was another one

So that's the answer. What happens when you

get to this point in an investigation when you've

gathered all of the public record information and

you've begun to exhaust your open source, you know,

resources is that you tend to find specialists who

can take you further into a subject and I had known

Chris since I left the Wall Street Journal. He was

the lead Russianist at MI6 prior to leaving the

government and an extremely well-regarded

investigator, researcher, and, as I say, we're

friends and share interest in Russian kleptocracy

and organized crime issues. I would say that's

broadly why I asked him to see what he could find

out about Donald Trump's business activities in

Russia……

I mean, one of the key lines here in the

second paragraph says "However, he and his inner

circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence

from the Kremlin, including on his democratic and

other political rivals."

So the issue with the Trump Tower meeting, as

I understand it, is that the Trump people were

eager to accept intelligence from a foreign

government about their political rivals and that

is, you know, I would say, a form of interference.

If you're getting help from a foreign government

and your help is intelligence, then the foreign

government's interfering. I mean, you know, I

think that also -- of course, in retrospect we now

know this was pretty right on target in terms on

what it says. So anyway --

I mean, it clearly refers to, you know,

them being interested in and willing to -- it

depicts them as accepting information. What we

have seen to date with the disclosures this year is

they were at a minimum super interested in getting

Information……

We've seen hacking in politics before, but this

kind of, you know, mass theft of e-mail and then to

dump it all into, you know, the public sphere was

extraordinary and it was criminal.

So the question by now of whether this was

Russia and whether this might have something to do

with the other information that we'd received was,

you know, the immediate question, and I think this

is also -- by the time this memo was written Chris

had already met with the FBI about the first memo.

So he's -- if I can interpret a little bit here.

In his mind this is already a criminal matter,

there's already a potential national security

matter here.

I mean, this is basically about a month later

and there's a lot of events that occurred in

between. You know, after the first memo, you know,

Chris said he was very concerned about whether this

represented a national security threat and said he

wanted to -- he said he thought we were obligated

to tell someone in government, in our government

about this information. He thought from his

perspective there was an issue -- a security issue

about whether a presidential candidate was being

blackmailed. From my perspective there was a law

enforcement issue about whether there was an

illegal conspiracy to violate the campaign laws,

and then somewhere in this time the whole issue of

hacking has also surfaced.

So he proposed to -- he said we should tell

the FBI, it's a national security issue. I didn't

originally agree or disagree, I just put it off and

said I needed to think about it. Then he raised it

again with me. I don't remember the exact sequence

of these events, but my recollection is that I

questioned how we would do that because I don't

know anyone there that I could report something

like this to and be believed and I didn't really

think it was necessarily appropriate for me to do

that. In any event, he said don't worry about

that, I know the perfect person, I have a contact

there, they'll listen to me, they know who I am,

I'll take care of it. I said okay. You know, I

agreed, it's potentially a crime in progress. So,

you know, if we can do that in the most appropriate

way, I said it was okay for him to do that……

A second and complete interview transcript is available:

Glenn Simpson Testimony by Anonymous MS54FL on Scribd

Trump's wild and inappropriate response to the release of Glenn Simpson interview transcript:

In response to Trump's fake news awards the Committee to Protect Journalists announced Press Oppressors awards

After a couple of date deferrals, well-known right wing ratbag US President Donald J Trump finally released his so-called 2017 Fake News Awards on a Republican web site on 18 January 2017 (Sydney time) announcing "the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media".

As one has come to expect from this inadequate man it was an eleven point non-event with no red carpet, no 'ceremony', absolutely no evidence of corruption being presented and containing a number of distortions of fact.

Trump's awards had been left in the shade weeks ago by Stephen Colbert's mocking off Times Square billboard and the Committee to Protect Journalists' pre-emptive strike.

Shareblue Media, 9 January 2018:

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Monday released a list of the world’s worst press oppressors — and Donald Trump took home the top honor, beating out dictators like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

The list of global press oppressors recognizes world leaders “who have gone out of their way to attack the press and undermine the norms that support freedom of the media.” It was released in response to Trump’s upcoming “fake news” awards ceremony.

Trump was named the winner of the “Overall Achievement in Undermining Global Press Freedom” award for going “above and beyond to silence critical voices and weaken democracy.”

Among other things, Trump has popularized the term “fake news,” using it to describe any news that he doesn’t like — at times, even his own words. He uses the bully pulpit to openly promote Fox News as his personal propaganda arm while denigrating other news sources and calling for the firing of journalists who make honest mistakes.

Most recently, Trump called for banning the book “Fire and Fury” because he doesn’t like its unflattering portrayal of his first year in office.

Winners in CPJ Press Oppressors Award Categories, 8 January 2017 :

Most Thin-skinned - Winner: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey, Runner-Up: President Donald Trump, United States

Most Outrageous Use of Terror Laws Against the Press - Winner: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey, Runner-Up: President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt

Tightest Grip on Media (This category excludes countries with no independent media, such as North Korea and Eritrea)  - Winner: President Xi Jinping, China, Runner-Up: President Vladimir Putin, Russia

Biggest Backslider in Press Freedom - Winner: State Counselor and de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar, Runner-Up: President Andrzej Duda, Poland

Overall Achievement in Undermining Global Press Freedom - Winner: President Donald Trump, United States

The United States, with its First Amendment protection for a free press, has long stood as a beacon for independent media around the world. While previous U.S. presidents have each criticized the press to some degree, they have also made public commitments to uphold its essential role in democracy, at home and abroad. Trump, by contrast, has consistently undermined domestic news outlets and declined to publicly raise freedom of the press with repressive leaders such as Xi, Erdoğan, and Sisi. Authorities in China, Syria, and Russia have adopted Trump's "fake news" epithet, and Erdoğan has applauded at least one of his verbal attacks on journalists. Under Trump's administration, the Department of Justice has failed to commit to guidelines intended to protect journalists' sources, and the State Department has proposed to cut funding for international organizations that help buttress international norms in support of free expression. As Trump and other Western powers fail to pressure the world's most repressive leaders into improving the climate for press freedom, the number of journalists in prison globally is at a record high.

Will Steve Bannon's predictions come true?

On 17 May 2017 Robert S. Mueller III was appointed by acting Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to serve as Special Counsel investigating any links and/or coordination bet ween the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,  any matters that arose or may arise directlyfrom the investigation and, any other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. §600.4(a).

Thus far Mueller has indicted four individuals - Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn (Ret.) (plead guilty), Paul J. Manafort, Jr., Richard W. Gates III and George Papadopoulos (plead guilty).

Former White House adviser Steve Bannon's predictions concerning this DOJ/FBI investigation and Donald J. Trump's future had remained semi-private until the release on 5 January 2018 of Michael Wolff's book, "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House".

Here are two examples.....

That 'very stable genius' in Washington DC has a few health issues

Well Donald John Trump had an official medical exam on 12 January 2018 and the spin began almost immediately.

First for media consumption he grew one inch taller reaching 6ft 3in in height and he became yugely healthy.

A more honest assessment is found in the written medical summary prepared by the senior naval doctor who examined him, Rear-Admiral Ronny L. Jackson.

This reveals that at 71 years of age, 75 inches or 6 foot 3 inches (190.5cm) tall and weighing 239 pounds or 17.07 stone (108.4kg) Trump has an estimated body mass index of between 29.9 to 30.9 BMI (when adjusted to height recorded on current drivers licence), which means he is at least 3 stone (19kg) over a healthy weight level.

Or to put it more baldly – he is obese.

His cholesterol level is too high even though he is taking medication, Crestor 10mg daily. 

He also takes Aspirin 81mg daily as a blood thinner for what has been describd as non-clinical coronary atherosclerosis and, uses an invermectin cream for acne rosacea.

The medication, Propecia 1mg daily, he takes for prevention of male pattern baldness is known to have a side effect of impotence or other sexual dysfunction in some individuals.

While the medication, Ambien, his doctor states he occasionally takes to help him sleep can lead to episodes of confusion, loss of coordination, balance problems, mood change, nasal irritation, dry mouth, sore throat and other possible side effects.

His diet is unhealthy and he gets insufficient physical exercise.

Trump underwent a basic cognitive test and his result score was 30 out of 30 points.

No psychiatric examination was included in the range of tests that have been made public.

The medical information Trump consented to release…….

Summary of Physical Exam for President Trump, 12 January 2018 by clarencegirl on Scribd

https://www.scribd.com/document/369372192/Summary-of-Physical-Exam-for-President-Trump-12-January-2018

The American Resistance has many faces and these are just some of them (19)

Successful resistance at state level.....

Chicago Tribune, 4 December 2018:

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order disbanding his voter fraud commission.

A White House statement is blaming the decision on numerous states that have refused to provide voter information to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders says that, "Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense," Trump has signed an order to dissolve the commission and asked the Department of Homeland Security to determine the administration's next steps.

Critics saw the commission as part of a conservative campaign to strip minority voters and poor people from the voter rolls, and to justify unfounded claims made by Trump that voter fraud cost him the popular vote in 2016.

Past studies have found voter fraud to be exceptionally rare. [my yellow highlighting]

 BACKGROUND

The Hill, 3 January 2018:

It was established months after Trump claimed without citing evidence that millions of people voted illegally in 2016, depriving him of a popular-vote victory against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a vocal supporter of voter ID laws, led the commission. It was made up of Republicans and Democrats.

The panel met twice, but was quickly bogged down amid states’ unwillingness to comply with its requests and lawsuits alleging it did not follow federal record-keeping laws.

The Government Accountability Office announced last October it was opening an investigation into the commission at the request of three Democratic senators who said the panel did not properly disclose its work.

Democrats and civil-rights groups described the commission as part of a broader conservative effort to deprive minorities of voting rights and a cover to back up the president’s claims.

"The claim of widespread voter fraud in the United States is in fact, fraud. The demise of this commission should put this issue to rest," Michael Waldman, president of the liberal Brennan Center for Justice, said in a statement.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) celebrated the panel's end, calling it a "front to suppress the vote, perpetrate dangerous and baseless claims" that "was ridiculed from one end of the country to the other."

Some leading Republicans, including Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), also urged Trump last year to drop his claims of widespread fraud.