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Showing posts with label Donald Trump. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donald Trump. Show all posts
Sunday 26 August 2018
The American Resistance has many faces and this is just one of them……(23)
Text
of open letter to US President Donald J.
Trump by William H. McRaven, a
retired Navy admiral, who was commander of the U.S. Joint Special Operations
Command from 2011 to 2014. He oversaw the 2011 Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan that
killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Published in The Washington Post on 16 August
2018:
Dear
Mr. President:
Former CIA Director John
Brennan, whose security clearance you revoked Wednesday, is one of the finest
public servants I have ever known. Few Americans have done more to protect this
country than John. He is a man of unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and
character have never been in question, except by those who don’t know him.
Therefore, I would
consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I
can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your
presidency.
Like most Americans, I
had hoped that when you became president, you would rise to the occasion and
become the leader this great nation needs.
A good leader tries to
embody the best qualities of his or her organization. A good leader sets the
example for others to follow. A good leader always puts the welfare of others
before himself or herself.
Your leadership,
however, has shown little of these qualities. Through your actions, you have
embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage
and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.
If you think for a
moment that your McCarthy-era tactics will suppress the voices of criticism,
you are sadly mistaken. The criticism will continue until you become the leader
we prayed you would be.
Labels:
Donald Trump,
US politics
Saturday 25 August 2018
Tweet of the Week
So far what grade do you give Donald Trump as president. retweet everyone.......— Trump Administration Supporter (@Robfortrump2020) August 15, 2018
Labels:
Donald Trump
Thursday 2 August 2018
Just how lazy is US President Donald J Trump?
On 30 July
2018 US President Donald J. Trump
decided to share with the world at a prodigious rate.
Ten ranting tweets in
two and a half hours about people, newspapers and law enforcemnt agencies on his personal enimies list.
When the media - driven
insane by their Trump Derangement Syndrome - reveals internal deliberations of
our government, it truly puts the lives of many, not just journalists, at risk!
Very unpatriotic! Freedom of the press also comes with a responsibility to
report the news...
...accurately. 90% of
media coverage of my Administration is negative, despite the tremendously positive
results we are achieving, it’s no surprise that confidence in the media is at
an all time low! I will not allow our great country to be sold out by
anti-Trump haters in the...
...dying newspaper
industry. No matter how much they try to distract and cover it up, our country is
making great progress under my leadership and I will never stop fighting for
the American people! As an example, the failing New York Times...
...dying newspaper
industry. No matter how much they try to distract and cover it up, our country is
making great progress under my leadership and I will never stop fighting for
the American people! As an example, the failing New York Times...
...dying newspaper
industry. No matter how much they try to distract and cover it up, our country is
making great progress under my leadership and I will never stop fighting for
the American people! As an example, the failing New York Times...
...dying newspaper
industry. No matter how much they try to distract and cover it up, our country is
making great progress under my leadership and I will never stop fighting for
the American people! As an example, the failing New York Times...
...and the Amazon
Washington Post do nothing but write bad stories even on very positive
achievements - and they will never change!
There is No Collusion!
The Robert Mueller Rigged Witch Hunt, headed now by 17 (increased from 13,
including an Obama White House lawyer) Angry Democrats, was started by a
fraudulent Dossier, paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC. Therefore, the
Witch Hunt is an illegal Scam!
Is Robert Mueller ever
going to release his conflicts of interest with respect to President Trump,
including the fact that we had a very nasty & contentious business
relationship, I turned him down to head the FBI (one day before appointment as
S.C.) & Comey is his close friend..
....Also, why is Mueller
only appointing Angry Dems, some of whom have worked for Crooked Hillary,
others, including himself, have worked for Obama....And why isn’t Mueller
looking at all of the criminal activity & real Russian Collusion on the
Democrats side-Podesta, Dossier?
This is a man who has been on Twitter for almost the entire 559 days of his presidency, on the golf course for about 24 per cent of those days and has also attended approximately 21 self-promotional rallies since his inauguration.
Where is he finding time to do the job he was elected to do?
On an average day he reportedly doesn't start his working day until 11am, takes an hour of private time before sitting down to an hour long lunch hour and is back in his residence by 6pm - that's just five hours a day at his desk on days he is not golfing or attending rallies.
Labels:
Donald Trump,
US politics
Saturday 28 July 2018
Political Cartoons of the Week
These cartoonists can be found at:
Kasia Babis https://thenib.com/kasia-babis
Ed Hall @halltoons
Cathy Wilcox http://cathywilcox.com.au/
Glen LeLievre https://www.lelievrecartoons.com/
Friday 27 July 2018
Turnbull invites Trump to Australia - expected to arrive in November 2018
This unstable individual is a threat to the US-Australia alliance, a serious security risk, as well as danger to world peace and international trade - an erratic politician Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull insists on publicly supporting as an "American patriot", who he is prepared to follow into a war of Trump's own making and, who he will be hosting on a proposed visit to Australia.
The
New York Times,
18 July 2018:
WASHINGTON — Two weeks
before his inauguration, Donald J. Trump was shown highly classified
intelligence indicating that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had
personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election.
The evidence included
texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a
top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the
Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.
Mr. Trump sounded
grudgingly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence
briefing. But ever since, Mr. Trump has tried to cloud the very clear findings
that he received on Jan. 6, 2017, which his own intelligence leaders have
unanimously endorsed.
The shifting narrative
underscores the degree to which Mr. Trump regularly picks and chooses
intelligence to suit his political purposes. That has never been more clear
than this week.
On Monday, standing next
to the Russian president in Helsinki, Finland, Mr. Trump said he accepted Mr.
Putin’s denial of Russian election intrusions. By Tuesday, faced with a
bipartisan political outcry, Mr. Trump sought to walk back his words and sided
with his intelligence agencies.
On Wednesday, when a
reporter asked, “Is Russia still targeting the U.S.?” Mr. Trump shot back, “No”
— directly contradicting statements made only days earlier by his director of
national intelligence, Dan Coats, who was sitting a few chairs away in the
Cabinet Room. (The White House later said he was responding to a different
question.)
Hours later, in a CBS
News interview, Mr. Trump seemed to reverse course again. He blamed Mr. Putin
personally, but only indirectly, for the election interference by Russia,
“because he’s in charge of the country.”
In the run-up to this
week’s ducking and weaving, Mr. Trump has done all he can to suggest other
possible explanations for the hacks into the American political system. His
fear, according to one of his closest aides who spoke on the condition of
anonymity, is that any admission of even an unsuccessful Russian attempt to
influence the 2016 vote raises questions about the legitimacy of his
presidency.
The Jan. 6, 2017,
meeting, held at Trump Tower, was a prime example. He was briefed that day by
John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director; James R. Clapper Jr., the director of
national intelligence; and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National
Security Agency and the commander of United States Cyber Command.
The F.B.I. director,
James B. Comey, was also there; after the formal briefing, he privately told
Mr. Trump about the “Steele dossier.” That report, by a former British
intelligence officer, included uncorroborated salacious stories of Mr. Trump’s
activities during a visit to Moscow, which he denied.
According to nearly a
dozen people who either attended the meeting with the president-elect or were
later briefed on it, the four primary intelligence officials described the
streams of intelligence that convinced them of Mr. Putin’s role in the election
interference.
They included stolen
emails from the Democratic National Committee that had been seen in Russian
military intelligence networks by the British, Dutch and American intelligence
services. Officers of the Russian intelligence agency formerly known as the G.R.U. had
plotted with groups like WikiLeaks on how to release the email stash.
And ultimately, several
human sources had confirmed Mr. Putin’s own role.
That included one
particularly valuable source, who was considered so sensitive that Mr. Brennan
had declined to refer to it in any way in the Presidential Daily Brief during
the final months of the Obama administration, as the Russia investigation
intensified.
Instead, to keep the
information from being shared widely, Mr. Brennan sent reports from the source
to Mr. Obama and a small group of top national security aides in a separate,
white envelope to assure its security.
Mr. Trump and his aides
were also given other reasons during the briefing to believe that Russia was
behind the D.N.C. hacks.
The same Russian groups
had been involved in cyberattacks on the State Department and White House
unclassified email systems in 2014 and 2015, and in an attack on the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. They had aggressively fought the N.S.A. against being ejected
from the White House system, engaging in what the deputy director of the agency
later called “hand-to-hand combat” to dig in…..
Read the full
article here.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
The White House on Monday threatened to strike back at critics of President
Donald Trump’s contacts with Russia by revoking the security clearances of six
former U.S. officials, drawing accusations that he was abusing his power and
aiming to stifle dissent.
Donald Trump is
doing anything he can to hold on to his base ― even employing propaganda tricks
straight out of 1984.
On Tuesday, the
President spoke at a Veterans of Foreign Wars gathering in Kansas City and
told his followers to forget about anything else other than what he tells them.
“Just remember, what you
are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening,” he said.
…ThinkProgress chillingly notes that Trump’s demand
directly correlates to the “final, most essential command” of the ruling
totalitarian regime in George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984: “to
reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.”
Trump decided to jump
headfirst into that belief by telling the crowd, “We don’t apologize for
America anymore. We stand up for America. We stand up for the patriots who
defend America.”
Jake Tapper noted on
Twitter that those comments came eight days after he blamed the U.S. for poor relations with Russia.
Tuesday 24 July 2018
Counting Donald Trump's words and how he uses them......
The
Star, 14 July
2018:
Click on image to enlarge
There’s a lot of
dishonesty: Of all the words Trump said and tweeted as president as of
July 1, 5.1 per cent were part of a false claim.
Expressed differently: Trump uttered a false word every 19.4 words.
Expressed differently: Trump uttered a false word every 19.4 words.
Trump’s dishonesty
density is increasing: The issue isn’t just that he’s talking more these days.
It’s that what he’s saying is less truthful.
In weeks that started in
2017, 3.8 per cent of Trump’s words were part of a false claim. In 2018, it’s
7.3 per cent.
Expressed differently: in 2017, Trump said about 26 words for every one false word. In 2018, it’s down to about 14 words per one false word.
The analysis assessed
the first 30,000 words each president spoke in office, and ranked
them on the Flesch-Kincaid grade level scale and more than two dozen other
common tests analyzing English-language difficulty levels. Trump clocked in
around mid-fourth grade, the worst since Harry Truman, who spoke at nearly a
sixth-grade level.
Expressed differently: in 2017, Trump said about 26 words for every one false word. In 2018, it’s down to about 14 words per one false word.
Newsweek, 8 January 2018:
President Donald
Trump—who boasted over the weekend that his success in life was a result of
“being, like, really smart”—communicates at the lowest grade level of the last
15 presidents, according to a new analysis of the speech patterns of
presidents going back to Herbert Hoover.
Labels:
Donald Trump,
lies and lying,
statistics,
US politics
Saturday 21 July 2018
Quote of the Week
“There’s
also a profound lack of class or dignity. Trump’s narcissism diminishes the
presidency and America’s prestige around the world.”
[Former Australian
high commissioner to the UK Mike Rann,
The
Age, 14 July 2018]
Labels:
Donald Trump
Thursday 19 July 2018
It's business as usual as Trump appointees dismantle US environmental law and regulations
5 July 2018:
Scott Pruitt,
whose tenure at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was
tarred by corruption scandals and hostility to environmental regulation, offered his resignation today, effective July 6.
The EPA’s new
interim administrator, Andrew Wheeler, is a former coal lobbyist,
profiled by DeSmog.
DeSmog's prior profile
of Wheeler reports:
Wheeler is the latest former staffer of climate
change denier James Inhofe to join the EPA. Prior to
joining FaegreBD Consulting, Wheeler worked as majority staff
director, minority staff director and chief counsel at the Senate
Committee on Environment and Public Works for Inhofe. He worked in a similar
vein at the Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate Change, Wetlands and
Nuclear Safety under the chairmanship of Inhofe and
also that of George Voinovich. Before that, he worked as Inhofe's
chief counsel from 1995 to 1997.
Under Presidents
George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Wheeler spent four years as a staffer at the EPA's Office of
Pollution Prevention and Toxics before moving on to his position at
the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Until mid-2017, Wheeler lobbied
on behalf of Murray Energy, the nation's largest privately owned coal
company. Run by vocal climate change denier Robert
Murray, the energy company has fought against industry regulation and
climate change mitigation efforts. According to EcoWatch, Wheeler brought in at
least $3 million in income for his firm from Murray Energy.
Murray Energy, while
Wheeler's client, produced an “Action Plan” for the Trump Administration
including complete elimination of the Clean Power Plan, overturning the
endangerment finding for greenhouse gases, and eliminating tax credits for wind
and solar energy. In his confirmation hearing, Wheeler admitted to having seen
the plan.
According to his profile at Faegre Baker Daniels Consulting, Wheeler
“worked on every major piece of environmental and energy-related legislation
over the last decade, including greenhouse gas emissions legislation, the
Energy Policy Act of 2005, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007,
the Clear Skies Act and the Clean Air Interstate Rule.” The consulting firm
also notes that Wheeler has worked on 1998 and 2005 Highway Bill
reauthorizations, the Diesel Emissions Reduction SEP Bill,
and Renewable Fuel Standards. His regulatory work includes “all major
fuel related issues including Refinery MACT, Gasoline sulfur, and
the NSPS program.”
“Andrew Wheeler’s
nomination is very much in keeping with the Trump administration’s agenda of
fossil fuel exploitation and climate inaction,” Michael Mann, a climatologist
at Penn State University told HuffPost.
Read the full article here.
Wednesday 18 July 2018
An American pute politique went to Helsinki in July 2018......
Putin's putain is the one on the left in this picture, 16 July 2018 |
US National Public Radio, Transcript: Trump And Putin's Joint Press Conference, 16 July 2018, excerpts from President Trump’s remarks:
“During today's meeting,
I addressed directly with President Putin the issue of Russian interference in
our elections.
I felt this was a
message best delivered in person. I spent a great deal of time talking about it
and President Putin may very well want to address it and very strongly, because
he feels very strongly about it and he has an interesting idea…..
And that was a well
fought, that was a well fought battle. We did a great job. And frankly, I'm
going to let the president speak to the second part of your question. But just
to say it one time again and I say it all the time, there was no collusion. I
didn't know the president.
There was nobody to
collude with. There was no collusion with the campaign and every time you hear
all of these you know 12 and 14 - stuff that has nothing to do and frankly they
admit - these are not people involved in the campaign.
But to the average
reader out there, they're saying well maybe that does. It doesn't. And even the
people involved, some perhaps told mis-stories or in one case the FBI said
there was no lie. There was no lie. Somebody else said there was. We ran a
brilliant campaign and that's why I'm president….
I do feel that we have
both made some mistakes. I think that the probe is a disaster for our country.
I think it’s kept us apart. It’s kept us separated. There was no collusion at
all. Everybody knows it. People are being brought out to the fore. So far that
I know, virtually, none of it related to the campaign. They will have to try
really hard to find something that did relate to the campaign. That was a clean
campaign. I beat Hillary Clinton easily and, frankly, we beat her. And I’m not
even saying from the standpoint — we won that race. It’s a shame there could be
a cloud over it. People know that. People understand it. The main thing — and
we discussed this also — is zero collusion. It has had a negative impact upon
the relationship of the two largest nuclear powers in the world. We have 90
percent of nuclear power between the two countries. It’s ridiculous. It’s
ridiculous what’s going on with the probe….
My people came to me,
Dan Coats came to me and some others and said they think it’s Russia. I have
President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this. I don’t see any
reason why it would be….
I will tell you
that president Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.” [my yellow highlighting]
CNN, 17 July 2018:
The conservative
editorial page of The Wall Street Journal declared the news conference "a personal and
national embarrassment" for the President, asserting he'd "projected
weakness." Newt Gingrich, ordinarily a reliable voice of support, wrote on
Twitter the remarks were "the most serious mistake of his presidency."
Immediately after his
news conference, Trump's mood was buoyant, people familiar with the matter
said. He walked off stage in Helsinki with little inkling his remarks would
cause the firestorm they did, and was instead enthusiastic about what he felt
was a successful summit.
By the time he'd
returned to the White House just before 10 p.m. ET on Monday, however, his mood
had soured. Predictably, the President was upset when he saw negative coverage
of the summit airing on television aboard Air Force One. It was clear he was
getting little support, even from the usual places.
Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 17 July 2018:
Republican Speaker in the US House of Representatives Paul Ryan, Statement, 17 July 2018:
"There is no
question that Russia interfered in our election and continues attempts to
undermine democracy here and around the world. That is not just the finding of
the American intelligence community but also the House Committee on
Intelligence. The president must appreciate that Russia is not our ally. There
is no moral equivalence between the United States and Russia, which remains
hostile to our most basic values and ideals. The United States must be focused
on holding Russia accountable and putting an end to its vile attacks on democracy."
The
Guardian, 18
July 2018:
Newspapers around the
world have reacted to Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin’s performances
at the Helsinki summit, and are united in their assessment of which world
leader came out on top.
In the US, several
papers went in hard on Trump. The New York Daily News accused the president of
treason. Its front page featured an illustration of Trump holding hands with a
bare-chested Putin and shooting Uncle Sam in the head with a gun in the other hand.
The Washington Post’s
headline is: “Trump touts Putin’s ‘powerful’ denial”. The paper says Trump
handed the Russian president “an unalloyed diplomatic triumph” during
their summit as he refused to support the “collective conclusion” of the US
intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
The New York Post ran
with the headline: “See no evil”.
White House, Remarks
by President Trump in Meeting with Members of Congress, 17 July
2018:
It should have been
obvious — I thought it would be obvious — but I would like to clarify, just in
case it wasn’t. In a key sentence in my remarks, I said the word “would”
instead of “wouldn’t.” The sentence should have been: I don’t see any reason
why I wouldn’t — or why it wouldn’t be Russia. So just to repeat it, I
said the word “would” instead of “wouldn’t.” And the sentence should have
been — and I thought it would be maybe a little bit unclear on the transcript
or unclear on the actual video — the sentence should have been: I don’t see any
reason why it wouldn’t be Russia. Sort of a double negative.
So you can put that in,
and I think that probably clarifies things pretty good by itself.
I have, on numerous
occasions, noted our intelligence findings that Russians attempted to interfere
in our elections. Unlike previous administrations, my administration has
and will continue to move aggressively to repeal any efforts — and repel — we
will stop it, we will repel it — any efforts to interfere in our
elections.
We’re doing everything in our power to prevent Russian
interference in 2018." [my yellow highlighting]
Tuesday 17 July 2018
Time for a new US Air Force One
Air Force One is a fleet of at least two highly customised Boeing 747-200 commercial jets which the US Air Force is currently replacing with 747-8s.
On 12 July
2018 Axios
reported that: President Trump wants to update the paint
job on the next version of Air Force One, ditching the iconic robin's-egg blue
(which he calls a "Jackie Kennedy color") for a bolder, "more
American" look.
One of the
website’s illustrators lent a hand with visualizing a “more American” look.
These new aircraft are actually undelivered planes ordered by bankrupt Rusian airline, Transaero.
Labels:
Donald Trump,
US politics
Saturday 14 July 2018
Quotes of the Week
“The LNP state
conference was just 3 old real estate agents short of banning sex because it
might lead to dancing.” [Possum Comitatus, commenting on conservative politics in Queensland, Twitter,
8 July 2018]
“Trump is not an
unusual American president with contrarian ideas. He is an off-the-charts
repudiation of everything the United States has stood for since 1945:
representative government, liberty, the rule of law, free trade, a rules-based
international order, open societies, pluralism and human rights.” [Journalist Roger Cohan, writing in The
New York Times, 9 July 2018]
Labels:
Donald Trump,
Queensland LNP
Saturday 30 June 2018
Quotes of the Week
"We have, as
you know, taken a very strong line on national security and border protection
here and when I was speaking with Jared Kushner just the other day, and one of
your immigration advisers in the White House, we reflected on how our policies
have helped to inform your approach," Mr Turnbull told the president. We
are very much of the same mind." [Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull speaking with US
President Donald J. Trump in early 2017, quoted by
the Newcastle
Herald, 21 June 2018]
"You ever
notice they always call the other side 'the elite'…The elite! Why are they
elite? I have a much better apartment than they do. I'm smarter than they are.
I'm richer than they are. I became president and they didn't." [US President Donald
J. Trump speaking at a Minnesota rally, The
Sydney Morning Herald, 21 June 2018]
“It's what Labor used to stand for, but no more. This privileged elite
opposite wants to keep the workers in their place. I remember when the Labor
Party had members that had really worked. I look at this group of
university-educated apparatchiks and I don't see any Jack Fergusons there.
I see an educated, privileged class that wants to kick the ladder out so
that others can't realise their dreams.” [Malcolm Bligh Turnbull in a moment of political projection, Hansard,
19 June 2018]
Labels:
Donald Trump,
elites,
immigration,
Malcolm Bligh Turnbull
Saturday 23 June 2018
US President Donald Trump takes a well-deserved hit in the cojones
This little girl couldn't fight back against the full weight of Donald J. Trump's cruel racism.
Time magazine cover for 2 July 2018 issue |
Until an American late night show expressed its opinion...........
If only real life delivered such swift justice for little children.
Labels:
Donald Trump,
immigration,
racism,
US society
Thursday 21 June 2018
Trump's Truth
Trump’s ‘truth’
The Truth
Reuters, 15 June 2018:
MUNICH, Germany
(Reuters) - Jean-Claude Juncker has been called many things during his
premiership of Luxembourg and presidency of the European Commission, but
probably never what he says U.S. President Donald Trump called him at the
weekend: “a brutal killer”….
“I think he meant it as
a compliment, but I am not sure.”…..
European Union countries
on Thursday unanimously backed a plan to impose import duties on 2.8 billion
euros’ ($3.3 billion) worth of U.S. products in response to U.S. tariffs on EU
steel and aluminum, EU sources said.
Express
UK, 10 May
2018:
EU chief Jean-Claude
Juncker has said Europe needs to “replace” the United States as a world
superpower in the midst of an angry outburst after President Donald Trump
confirmed he was pulling the US out of the Iran nuclear deal.
Euro
News, 3 March
2018:
European Commission
chief Jean-Claude Juncker has vowed to fight back against US President Donald
Trump's threat of a 25% tariff on steel and 10% on aluminium imports.
"So now we will
also impose import tariffs. This is basically a stupid process, the fact that
we have to do this. But we have to do it. We will now impose tariffs on
motorcycles, Harley Davidson, on blue jeans, Levis, on Bourbon. We can also do
stupid. We also have to be this stupid," he said in Hamburg on Friday
evening.
Labels:
Donald Trump,
lies and lying
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