Sound The TRUMPets! A Thread for Presidential Pondering 2016-2020(?)

[Marc]

Eddie

Can I call you Eddie Baby?

[Florestan]

Eddie

Whom RUKidding, Varese?

[drogulus]

Ditto. The aristocratic club (AKA "swamp") comprises across the aisle members, exactly what McCain himself had been accused of.

     I value the cooperators because they are the ones who want the state to be deep enough to fight the swamp. The deregulators want it to be shallow enough for maximum cronyism. Everything is for the Leader and his family and associates, all policy is bent to that. Deregulation is recorruption. That's what it's for.

[arpeggio]

Well meaning as they are, Dem squishes are unable to articulate policy at the geostrategic level, they habitually "don't study war no more" to an alarming degree. I keep my expectations low for Dems.

I think I have told the story before of how I had a discussion with a conservative friend and he insisted all Democrats were "whatever" (I can not remember exactly what)  Even though I told him that there were probably some democrats who thought this way, I did not know of any or seen any who felt this way on MCNBC.  He did not believe me.

I am always running into people who have and inaccurate impressions of Democrats.  I personally know many Democrats who are ardent students of military history.  I have several who play historical wargames.  One is a retired Marine colonel and is quit an authority on WWII Eastern Front.  I am all of the time seeing military types on MSNBC. 

Yet alleged conservative military experts bungled the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And I am all of the time running into conservatives who embrace all sorts of inaccuracies concerning our own American Revolution.  Like generally our militia was not that effective in field battles against the British and the Continental Army American only started doing well when they started they learned how to fight like the British.  For example, most American Militia were not that well trained in the use of the bayonet.  By the end of the war our Continental Infantry was just as good as the British.  Yet I have met many conservatives who are hawks who harbor the myth that it was amateur backwoodsman who defeated the British and Hessian Mercenaries.

Do not get me started on all of the fantasies conservatives have about the Civil War.   

[drogulus]

I think I have told the story before of how I had a discussion with a conservative friend and he insisted all Democrats were "whatever" (I can not remember exactly what)  Even though I told him that there were probably some democrats who thought this way, I did not know of any or seen any who felt this way on MCNBC.  He did not believe me.

I am always running into people who have and inaccurate impressions of Democrats.  I personally know many Democrats who are ardent students of military history.  I have several who play historical wargames.  One is a retired Marine colonel and is quit an authority on WWII Eastern Front.  I am all of the time seeing military types on MSNBC. 

Yet alleged conservative military experts bungled the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And I am all of the time running into conservatives who embrace all sorts of inaccuracies concerning our own American Revolution.  Like generally our militia was not that effective in field battles against the British and the Continental Army American only started doing well when they started they learned how to fight like the British.  For example, most American Militia were not that well trained in the use of the bayonet.  By the end of the war our Continental Infantry was just as good as the British.  Yet I have met many conservatives who are hawks who harbor the myth that it was amateur backwoodsman who defeated the British and Hessian Mercenaries.

Do not get me started on all of the fantasies conservatives have about the Civil War.   

    The most effective anti-Communists were liberals before the '70s. The Watergate era sent a new generation of Dems into the government with ties to the civil rights and antiwar movements. Recently the Repubs have retreated from geostrategy and Dems have filled the vacuum. I hope they learn fast.

Yet alleged conservative military experts bungled the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

     I don't understand this "yet". Wars are bungled by the bunglers responsible, not by those outside looking in. And the experts on war and its aftermath at State and Defense were sidelined in favor of Repub campaign operatives. Bushies and Obama-ies treat wars the way they treat other programs, stretching them out to fit in budgets, postponing hard decisions necessary to conclude them. Obama did what Bush did in Syria, treat the Syria-Iraq border as if it was a border in Europe or N. America between nations that have sovereignty. They had to know this was a fiction, but they had to maintain it for the sake of constituents who think battlefields are countries with separate discrete wars.

[SimonNZ]

Bob Woodward: Trump's aides stole his papers 'to protect the country'

"President Donald Trump's closest aides have taken extraordinary measures in the White House to try to stop what they saw as his most dangerous impulses, going so far as to swipe and hide papers from his desk so he wouldn't sign them, according to a new book from legendary journalist Bob Woodward.

Woodward's 448-page book, "Fear: Trump in the White House," provides an unprecedented inside-the-room look through the eyes of the President's inner circle. From the Oval Office to the Situation Room to the White House residence, Woodward uses confidential background interviews to illustrate how some of the President's top advisers view him as a danger to national security and have sought to circumvent the commander in chief.

Many of the feuds and daily clashes have been well documented, but the picture painted by Trump's confidants, senior staff and Cabinet officials reveal that many of them see an even more alarming situation — worse than previously known or understood. Woodward offers a devastating portrait of a dysfunctional Trump White House, detailing how senior aides — both current and former Trump administration officials — grew exasperated with the President and increasingly worried about his erratic behavior, ignorance and penchant for lying.

Chief of staff John Kelly describes Trump as an "idiot" and "unhinged," Woodward reports. Defense Secretary James Mattis describes Trump as having the understanding of "a fifth or sixth grader." And Trump's former personal lawyer John Dowd describes the President as "a fucking liar," telling Trump he would end up in an "orange jump suit" if he testified to special counsel Robert Mueller.

"He's an idiot. It's pointless to try to convince him of anything. He's gone off the rails. We're in crazytown," Kelly is quoted as saying at a staff meeting in his office. "I don't even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I've ever had."

[SimonNZ]

The Proud Corruption of Donald Trump. The president has finally stated it plainly: He believes the government should subjugate rule of law to his political needs.

[EddieRUKiddingVarese]

Whom RUKidding, Varese?

Mostly but some times Flo 

[EddieRUKiddingVarese]

So you're in the space-time continuum!

Just call me Doctor Eddie Timelord

[SimonNZ]

Special counsel will accept written answers from Trump about Russia

[EddieRUKiddingVarese]

Special counsel will accept written answers from Trump about Russia

In Orange Ink?

[SimonNZ]

In Orange Ink?

What were your thoughts on the article?

[EddieRUKiddingVarese]

What were your thoughts on the article?

I'd much rather re-read Catch 22

I'd say Putin can dictate really well remotely 

[Karl Henning]

Special counsel will accept written answers from Trump about Russia

Because letting a chronic liar speak in an interview, is a "perjury trap."

[The new erato]

Mostly but some times Flo 

Why not Turtle, then?

[BasilValentine]

What were your thoughts on the article?

Jay Sekulow said Trump's legal team doesn't talk about ongoing negotiations with Mueller but Bob Woodward says otherwise, claiming Sekulow and John Dowd did a mock interview with Trump to see how he would fare with Mueller. Seems he repeatedly perjured himself despite their efforts at coaching. Supposedly Sekulow and Dowd reenacted this mock interview for Mueller, with Dowd doing the questioning and Sekulow playing Trump. What I wonder is if Mueller managed to keep a straight face watching this spectacle.

I'm guessing the written response idea will be a fiasco; The responses won't actually address the questions, clarification will be requested and Trump will claim his answers are perfectly clear.

[drogulus]

     I think Mueller is checking a box. He gave Trump a chance to explain himself, the lawyers will respond with chaff, and now Mueller can move to the next step. The case for obstruction is in plain sight, the campaign finance case will be documents and testimony by accomplices and others.

     Mueller is announcing he doesn't need Trump to tell him what his case will be by lying even more. He's got all that.

[ritter]

Any stateside opinions of this Nike brouhaha? We're kinda nonplussed here in Spain. Particularly, because if I ever found a firm's marketing tactics not to my liking, I'd just stop buying their products, rather than post videos of me burning them on YouTube or whatever.

[Karl Henning]

     I think Mueller is checking a box. He gave Trump a chance to explain himself, the lawyers will respond with chaff, and now Mueller can move to the next step. The case for obstruction is in plain sight, the campaign finance case will be documents and testimony by accomplices and others.

     Mueller is announcing he doesn't need Trump to tell him what his case will be by lying even more. He's got all that.

Sound analysis.

[Daverz]

Any  statside opinions of this Nike thing? We're kinda nonplussed here in Spain. Particularly, because if I ever found a firm's marketing tactics not to my liking, I'd just stop buying their products, rather than post videos of me burning them on YouTube or whatever.

Abraham Lincoln explained these people more than 150 years ago in his Cooper Union address:

"The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us."

Replace slavery with "police killing unarmed black men".