Various polls have suggested that President Donald J. Trump has an opportunity to get significant portion of the black vote. Why? Trump is actually doing something good for everyone, including blacks. Instead of accumulating power and influence, Trump is trying to make our government work. That includes maintaining law and order.
You want to help your country? Then contact your elected officials, especially Republicans, and insist that they back our president.
We are in the midst of a historic struggle over the future of America. If we want to preserve our republic, we must do what every generation of Americans has had to do. We must study what previous generations have accomplished, and we must beg our Creator for the wisdom to keep and protect the best of their work.
Is it wise for Illinois Democrat leaders to spurn the Presidents offer of help to reduce shootings in predominantly Black neighborhoods in Chicago?
The Chicago Tribune headline titled: Another Deadly Weekend, and an editorial titled: As Chicago Children Die, Trump and Lightfoot Spar rather than collaborate, reported the following letter offer made:
“Which brings us back to Trumps letter”. (link below)
The Purpose of This Post
Is to relate two ancient wisdom verses to political leaders offer and responses to President Trump’s offer to help in Chicago.
King Solomon
When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan. (Proverb 29:2)
Excerpt
When the righteous are in authority, Or “are increased” (g); either in number or in riches, or in power and dominion; are set in high places, and have the exercise of civil government and the execution of the laws in their…
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Citizen Tom 
Tom
Good news for religious freedom justice today.
Check out my post today
https://rudymartinka.com/2020/07/01/justice-at-last-for-religion-in-usa-king-solomon-blog/,
Regards, goodwill blogging, and Hallelujah
At the risk of stereotyping, it seems to me that Hispanics are generally more religious, family oriented and entrepreneurial than their WASP neighbors. My southern African American friends here in Mississippi are similar. They are natural voters for what used to be the Republican Party (as I once was). What’s surprising isn’t that Trump has some Hispanic supporters, it’s that he continues to race bait and divide everyone so much that the he’s losing most of them.
Trump is flailing from one debacle to another and is losing his grip even on his cowering Party. Especially in his visible desperation to constantly double down on hate and fear, Trump has become an increasingly dreadful caricature of a megalomaniacal reality TV star trying to upstage his same old schtick as he sees his chances at another season slipping away. Trump simply doesn’t have another act. With people dying every day and Putin’s owning Trump enough to feel safe paying for our soldier’s scalps, the Trump show isn’t funny or exciting any more – now a growing number of Americans are seeing it as just plain overdone, incompetent and pathetic.
It didn’t have to be this way. Even a mediocre politician from either political party could have taken advantage of the pandemic to slide into an easy second term. As a matter of basic character and competence, however, Trump is simply incapable of uniting the country to consistent action in the midst of numerous overlapping crises, and even though our country is simply begging to be united.
Seeing a Democratic tsunami coming at them in the Fall, Republicans are starting to stink with panic. Trump has absolutely no dedication to our constitutional institutions, and so it is fairly predictable that Trump and his most devoted acolytes in his cult of hate and fear will not accept even the most overwhelming landslide defeat, but Trump will do everything he can to foment imaginary plots and conspiracies against him. I’m only curious to see how long you all are you going to go along with playing Trump’s sad games before you realize you’re being conned, you’ve always been conned.
If that sounds harsh, it’s not meant to be. I really do think you think you are doing the virtuous thing. If I didn’t, I would not even bother commenting, or even “cackling” at your naivety. Blacks should join the Trump “white power” show. Ha, ha, ha, ha . . . . Sorry I just can’t stop laughing. 🙂
With people dying every day and Putin’s owning Trump enough to feel safe paying for our soldier’s scalps
Maybe I’ll post later, but for now I’ll just take this bit.
There have been 4 U.S. military hostile fire deaths in Afghanistan in 2020 and the last one was back in February. So if the Russians are supposedly wanting to pay the Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers they are not doing a very good job.
Never ceases to amaze me what people will believe from anonymous sources that have been proven absolutely wrong again and again and again.
The death toll for our soldiers in just the first two months and six days of 2012 (Obama’s second term) were higher than the total number of fatalities in Trump’s entire term so far.
here is the link: http://icasualties.org/App/AfghanFatalities?page=10&rows=0
Should’ve state, death toll for Afghanistan only. Don’t have the other numbers, but for juxtaposition it makes the point.
Think the death tolls would be even more striking looking at the whole picture.
By far.
This is not something the Democrats should want to draw attention to.
@tsalmon
@Liz
The Russians have to pay the Taliban to kill Americans? What is the point of paying someone to do something they want to do anyway?
When the USSR invaded Afghanistan, Reagan wanted the Afghans kick the USSR’s solders back to the USSR. So, he armed them with better weapons. Paying for scalps in this situation is just a waste of money, and Putin is not that stupid. Putin would just piss us off, and he would not get anything out of it.
You think you are qualified to conjecture on former KGB agent Putin’s plots, but I’m not supposed to believe all the people who have actually worked with Trump and continue to work for him, who know more about Putin than either of us ever will and who find everything about this story to be completely in character for Trump and for Putin? Yeah sure. . .
@tsalmon
@artaxes
Check out https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/30/media-are-playing-games-yet-again-with-anonymous-russia-leaks/.
Find out what Bolton said.
@tsalmon
That is an awful lot of words to say so little. All you doing is telling us how feel. Three words would have been sufficient: “I hate Trump.”
If you are going to hate someone, take every opportunity to say how bad you think they are, don’t you think you should verify what you have been told about them?
Why do I think Donald Trump has been a decent president? I think he has tried to keep his promises, and I like his promises. Did Trump promise us white supremacy? No. Of course not.
Democrats use race as a wedge issue. They have been doing that one way or another for the better part of 200 years, and they are still doing it. You are going to have to figure this out for yourself. You are going to have to figure out that the Liberal Democrat news media spreads lies. How? You are going to have to start doublechecking them by checking primary sources. Will it be easy? No. Even Google can’t be trusted.
We live on a fallen world. To a large extent Satan runs the little planet we inhabit. Consider Matthew 4:8-10.
Jesus did not deny Satan could give Him all that he promised. Jesus just refused to worship Satan.
Tom,
You say that you like Trump because you think, like the Devil in your Mathew quote, he his promises? I definitely see what you mean then – I too believe Trump keeps his promises about well as the Devil might.
“Democrats use race as a wedge issue.”
Trump is quite blatantly using race as a wedge issue . . . unless you believe Trump’s pandering to the whole idea of WASP Cultural Supremacy isn’t actually supposed to divide folks – that for some reason we are all just supposed to accept some concept of WASP cultural hegemony as the way it is always supposed to be, indeed the way that you think God wants it to be. In that case, yep, I think some people are likely to want to split off from that whole “white power” idea.
@tsalmon
You are just twisting what I said, and you are just making unsupported assertions. That’s unethical.
No Tom, I’m A just reframing the issue from the other side’s perspective. Have I misrepresented your views on WASP male cultural hegemony or have I hit too close to an uncomfortable truth? If the former, it should be simple to intellectually explain why that notion is wrong. If it is the latter, then you might welcome an opportunity to challenge your assumptions with a little constructive introspection. Without the intent to misrepresent or deceive on my part, I don’t see how any of that is unethical, but I’ll be happy to consider your objections if you will explain them better.
I get how a cynical person might try to divide us by race or class or religion in an attempt to gain attention or personal power. I honestly just don’t see that as the predominant motivation here. However, we should remember that in his time MLK was very unpopular and was often accused of being too aggressive in challenging the old order. I think that you would agree now that the old order needed some challenging. It was not good enough that we recognize that we are a great country. If we really are to be a “good” country rather than a just a powerfully great country, we also need to be able to look at the horrible sins that often advanced our greatness, and just be honest with ourselves. Sometimes that means having radicals like MLK (and Jesus for that matter) hold a mirror up to our souls as individuals and to the soul of the nation.
“With people dying every day and Putin’s owning Trump enough to feel safe paying for our soldier’s scalps …”
How does Putin own Trump?
“Trump will do everything he can to foment imaginary plots and conspiracies against him.”
Isn’t that what you are doing by jumping on stories based on anonymous sources and on intelligence that isn’t even sufficiently vetted?
“How does Putin own Trump?“
Maybe you could ask Trump’s former NSA, John Bolton? He got to be “in the room where it happened” and seems to explain pretty well how Xi and Kim Jong-un and Putin all own Trump.
The problem is that there is not one but several different John Boltons.
Bolton #1 said in an interview with ABC:
“I think Putin thinks he can play him like a fiddle. I think Putin is smart, tough — I think he sees that he’s not faced with a serious adversary here,” Bolton said of the president’s relationship with Putin. “I don’t think he’s worried about Donald Trump.”
Host Martha Raddatz asked Bolton why certain deals with other leaders like Putin have gone awry despite Trump seeing “himself as a dealmaker.”
“Well the president may well be a superb dealmaker when it comes to Manhattan real estate. Dealing with arms limitation treaties on strategic weapons, dealing in many many other international security issues are things far removed from his life experience,” Bolton said. “When you’re dealing with somebody like Putin who has made his life understanding Russia’s strategic position in the world, against Donald Trump, who doesn’t enjoy reading about these issues or learning about them — it’s a very difficult position for America to be in.”
Bolton #2 said in an interview with RFE/RL in 2019:
“Well I think the Trump administration has been very tough. It has imposed enormous sanctions on Russia, economic sanctions, expulsion of Russian diplomats, closing Russian diplomatic facilities and taken steps that really have had a dramatic impact on the Russian economy. So if you look at the actual steps we have taken, I think the record is very clear.”
In the same interview Bolton praised President Trump as a negotiator.
Which Bolton should we believe? Bolton #1 or Bolton #2?
Which of the two Boltons is lying?
Bolton admitted he would lie if necessary: “If I had to say something I knew was false to protect American national security, I would do it.”
How do we know that he is not lying now?
One could claim that he lied in 2019 for the sake of national security.
However one could claim with equal justification that he is lying now because he thinks that damaging President Trump and thus hastening his departure from power would serve national security.
Bottom line: We can not trust John Bolton.
“Bottom line: We can not trust John Bolton.”
Your assertion is that Bolton will lie if he deems it will serve the national security. Bolton’s assertion is that Trump will lie simply to promote himself, and the national security be damned. I think you both are right.
@tsalmon
I don’t think you checked what Bolton said. The article I sent you links to a CNN interview, undoubtedly one of your sacred, objective sources.
@tsalmon
The question is not “Will Bolton lie?”.
The question is “WHEN did Bolton lie?”.
It is already established that he lied. Why?. Because his statements from 2019 contradict his statements from 2020 and vice versa.
It is therefore not possible that both his statements from 2019 and his statements from 2020 are true.
So, either he lied in 2019 or in 2020 or he lied both in 2019 AND in 2020.
John Bolton has no credibility.
“The article I sent you links to a CNN interview, undoubtedly one of your sacred, objective sources.“
I don’t recall ever pointing to CNN as a news source, much less calling even the most objective new sources “sacred”.
You are just twisting what I said, and you are just making unsupported assertions. That’s unethical. 😉
I don’t know what your experience is with intelligence my friend, but a couple of decades ago in the Navy, intel was a big part of what I did in my job.
If by “vetted” you think that intelligence has to be 100 percent to be “actionable”, then I think you misunderstand how risk assessment in intelligence works. A collected item can only have a one percent probability of being true, but if the result if it being true has major, even catastrophic, policy consequences, it will be treated much more seriously and immediately moved to higher levels of actionability than something that has a much higher possibility of being true but is relatively inconsequential puzzle piece. Any information that Putin (cause he is the only one who could approve such a thing) was/is paying bounties for the heads of NATO troops has massively important policy ramifications for force protection, for diplomacy, for politics and for military morale, including the faith our service members put in their civilian leadership. It wouldn’t take much credibility at all for this intel to be immediately actionable with a menu of possible retaliations presented to the White House.
However, in this case, credibility seems pretty high. Almost by the minute, the truth of this intelligence gets additionally corroborated and confirmed with new facts (payments made, half a million dollars found, captives confessing) by numerous credible news sources, some of them with a fairly conservative bent. Furthermore, another sign that it isn’t just a conspiracy rumor is that there has been very little pushback by the administration on the facts as they keep coming out, just a lot of whining about what Trump says he didn’t know and about leaks by what could only be numerous insiders absolutely frustrated by the imbecility and/or the traitorous indifference of Trump.
Trump wants to deflect blame to someone else and the Dems want to pin the blame where the buck should stop, but ultimately, I’m thinking to an unequal extent, a pox on both their houses. IT’S NOT REALLY ABOUT TRUMP (regardless of this, unless a person with actual competence and integrity wakes up in his body tomorrow, Trump is over with – at this point, his presidency is a walking dead thing waiting to crawl off into a Fall grave with a headstone that says “Worst President Ever”). It’s about the possibility that some of our troops may have died at the urging of a malign adversary and what in the Hell are we going to do about it? How are we going to punish them? How are we going to make sure they or anyone else doesn’t think they can do this kind of thing again without severe consequences. That’s what this old retired Navy Commander is wondering anyway.
One last point. Nothing is really a secret simply because it embarrasses the President by exposing his dereliction of duty. All the enemies that matter already know about it because they are the ones doing it to us. All the onsight force commanders (if they did not want to be court marshaled) already know about it and would have taken all necessary steps at their level to warn and protect our forces. Our allies (and all their troops) already know because they are not lead by a corrupt incompetent who won’t protect them. It’s like Assad trying to keep it a secret from his own people that the Israelis bombed his base because he’s helpless to do anything about it. This is a “secret” that everybody on both sides of the battle field, all except Trump, apparently has know about for months. What kind of an idiot administration thinks that this ever really was or was going to be kept a “secret”?
Ok, so I’m done venting a little.
@tsalmon
I don’t claim to be an intelligence expert. I don’t think either of worked as intelligence analysts. So stop blowing smoke, trying claim expertise you don’t have anyway.
You made a mistake. Instead of just blowing smoke, telling us how much you hate Trump, you mentioned something that could be verified as true or false, what Bolton did or did not say. Now you don’t want to talk about that, and you are trying to cover up with a bunch of words.
When we don’t make any effort to deal with the truth, try to understand the purpose of our lives and live for that purpose, we signify nothing.
So, you hate Trump. You don’t know the man, and you are not interested in knowing the man. You are too busy hating and repeating hate-filled diatribes based solely upon the a figment of of the imagination of propagandists. Your words may be full of sound and fury, but they signify nothing, and where our words are meaningless so is our life.
Blowing smoke? Ha! As well as an aviation designator, I held Intel, ELINT and ASW subspecialty codes in the Navy. During my last three and a half years on active duty, I was, among other jobs, the Missions Department Head and an Aircrew Commander at a CNO sponsored JCS tasked intelligence collection unit. As such, I ran a SCIF and was responsible for analyzing and briefing intelligence, not only to our operators for mission purposes, but often also to our product consumers who we’re at every level on our chain of command.
That is not bragging or overstating what I did decades ago. It is just basically the PR information that was available on our unit at the time and the unclassified information available on my fitness reports and the commendation awards that hang on the “I Love Me” wall in my study. (I’ll send you a picture if you like). However, that is the most that I can say here. And it’s just one part of an operational Navy career that continuously involved various modes of intelligence collection and analyzation, as well as combat readiness and participation.
It was a long time ago, and still (like you, I believe) most of it I can’t talk about, but it is what it is and I’m not lying or exaggerating about what I’ve said here. In fact, it’s kinda just the opposite big brother. 🙂
@tsalmon
When you were an Intel briefer, did you make a practice of focusing upon the Intel that suited your preferences and ignoring the rest? That is exactly what you just did.
“You are too busy hating and repeating hate-filled diatribes based solely upon the a figment of of the imagination of propagandists. Your words may be full of sound and fury, but they signify nothing, and where our words are meaningless so is our life.“
I think you may be projecting a bit here brother.
@tsalmon
No. I am just pointing out something you already know. I cannot prove, for example, that Trump is not a white supremacist. I cannot prove a negative. If you think Trump is a white supremacist, then you have to prove it. You don’t because you can’t.
“When you were an Intel briefer, did you make a practice of focusing upon the Intel that suited your preferences and ignoring the rest?”
No, but I did try to bring it back to the big picture. This is something I did in trials as a Lawyer too. The big picture here is about accountability.
You seem to think that, if you can find Bolton or the Press or the Dems lying or doing anything wrong, that somehow negates the accountability of the Party and person in their current leadership roll. I don’t work for the Democrats and I’m not the one who picked a crazy like Bolton to be his National Security Advisor (“I have the best people”). I could care less about defending Bolton’s voracity – he’s ultimately your president and your Party’s responsibility, whether he’s lying or telling embarrassing truths about the idiot he worked for.
You are the one desperately trying to deflect because you don’t want to face the endlessly growing evidence that the leader of your Party lacks any level of integrity or competence to lead. It’s like Trump keeps running the ship of state on the rocks and you want to blame the ocean, the fish, the sky, the rocks, anything but the guy you put in charge.
@tsalmon
There is endlessly growing evidence? Then here is an easy challenge. If Trump is a white supremacist, then prove it.
“No. I am just pointing out something you already know. I cannot prove, for example, that Trump is not a white supremacist. I cannot prove a negative. If you think Trump is a white supremacist, then you have to prove it. You don’t because you can’t.“
Trump proves his into “white power” bigotry in big and small ways every day. Don’t you read anything?
But no, I don’t think Trump is an ideologue about anything, good or bad. He’s too self serving a narcissist to actually believe in anything but himself.
@tsalmon
I think I have my point.
Ick! Your big point is that Trump is not a White Supremacist ideologue, but that he only cynically uses white supremacy to advance his own selfish interests, and you don’t see that as worse? The actual believer who has deluded himself into a moral ideology to fight for his race as somehow superior is at least redeemable, but one has to wonder about someone who knows that ideology is wrong but foments it for his own political and financial self interest. It’s the difference between those Reinhold Niebuhr called “children of light” verses “children of darkness”. It’s the difference between a Trotsky and a Stalin.
Niebuhr considered the often foolish “children of light” as the builders of democratic civilization, a civilization that “has been under attack by the children of darkness, by moral cynics, who declare that a strong nation need acknowledge no law beyond its strength. It has come to almost complete disaster under this attack, not because it accepted the same creed as the cynics; but because it underestimated the power of self-interest, both individual and collective, in modern society. The children of light have not been as wise as the children of darkness.” Niebuhr goes on to say that, unlike the children of light who may lack a cynical wisdom, the “children of darkness are evil because they know no law beyond the self. They are wise, though evil, because they understand the power of self-interest.” According to Niebuhr, the children of light are virtuous because they at least “have some conception of a higher law than their own will”.
Donald Trump is almost the pure Id of self-interest. Luckily, I suppose we are only saved by the fact that Trump is too incompetent to use our own beguiled foolishness against us with the dark evil wisdom of a Putin or a Kim Jong-in.
@tsalmon
Where did that come from? My big point is quite simple. You are repeating a bunch of nonsense you have never bothered to investigate. Just because you see something in a news paper, hear something on the radio, or see something on TV does not mean what you read, heard or saw is true. If don’t verify someone was not taken out of context, for example, you don’t know what you are talking about.
If you cannot proved Trump is a white supremacist, for example, then you have no business calling him one.
You sometimes don’t appear to read for comprehension brother?
Does anyone seriously have to “prove” Stalin was a Marxist? Did he really “believe” in the ideology or did he just use it to grab and hold power? If there is a difference between such a self-interested cynic and the misguided true believer it’s that, as Niebuhr points out, the selfish cynic adapts the ideology to an intrinsically greater evil.
You like to try to claim that I’m so stupid that my weak intellect has been captured by some malign liberal media conspiracy. Aside from the ridiculousness of thinking the media (Left and Right) has more attention span than a cocker spaniel puppy, I’ll be happy to compare education, experience and reading lists with you anytime for breadth and for depth on the matters in question here. I’m no great scholar, but Im not an unread imbecile either.
Regardless, don’t believe me or the media in evaluating Trump’s shallow self-centeredness, listen to Trump’s last Secretary of State, former Defense Secretary, former NSC Chairman, former autobiographer, former business attorney, former investors, former contractors and on and on and on and on.
Finally, look deep inside and see if Trump is pushing your own WASP male cultural supremacy buttons. Do you sincerely think that you don’t have any such preconceptions that Trump panders to?
@tsalmon
I have not said anything about my being superior to you. In many respects I think you my superior, but not with respect to analyzing the news. You appear to have a blind spot. Why? I can guess, but I don’t really know. Not in my power to read minds.
For what it is worth, I suggest you consider what I have said about Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton’s sins. I disagreed with their ideology, and I pointed to things they did, and I listed sources. I did not bother with useless diatribes that convince no one, no one who wants proof.
You waste time comparing Trump to Stalin while you refuse to do something that should find easy. The sources are everywhere, you say. All I have to do is read. Anything in particular? A short article, of course.
By the way, since you brought up the subject of Stalin, I suggest you check out Walter Duranty.
Does anyone seriously have to “prove” Stalin was a Marxist?
There is, shall we say, more than a little proof that Stalin was a Marxist.
Getting back to what you said about hispanic values being naturally conservative, I agree. However, when you say he is losing hispanic supporters it looks to be the opposite case. Back in the election his support was around 33 percent. The same is true of the black vote he seems to have more supporters now than before.
Perhaps they are all just dumb simple folk who can’t see Trump’s “obvious” white supremacy as well as you do.
Did you happen to see the recent video of a mob descending on a police car in Detroit? All white, as far as I could tell. The Detroit police department is 63 percent black.
“There is, shall we say, more than a little proof that Stalin was a Marxist.“
Yes, exactly my point. 🙂
The public statement. Note: An official public statement, not an anonymous source, indicated Trump was never briefed on this subject.
Personally, I would not be surprised if the Russians were meddling in Afghanistan as payback for the Russian “mercenaries” killed by the U.S. military in Syria in 2018.
Hint: this would indicate Trump is not a friend of Russia. I know this conflicts with your world view.
Regardless information like this should not be leaked to the news media. Especially when it is not even confirmed and the intelligence is clearly being leaked for political purposes.
@Liz
Trump needs to start firing and prosecuting these people. Unfortunately, the leakers, even though they are lying and/or misleading, are heroes to some. Sad state of affairs.
Unfortunately, the leakers, even though they are lying and/or misleading, are heroes to some. Sad state of affairs.
Agreed. It is terrible.
Liz,
My “world view”? Have you forgotten Trump made a unilateral, unadvised withdrawalright after that, without consulting our allies and abandoning the Kurds. Putin and Iran are still counting their blessing on that debacle. Trump’s Secretary of Defense and the Anti-ISIS Allied Coordinator both resigned in protest.
So you think they disturbed Trump from his hard work of retweeting bigotries and watching Fox to make that decision, or do you think the area commander under the ROE simply responded with overwhelming force when our marines and allies were threatened? (More likely Trump was pissed when he heard about it). According to this official statement that you think is somehow a good thing, Trump isn’t even informed for months after our troops are threatened or attacked.
@tsalmon
I have no experience with intelligence.
However, I understand something about identifying, assessing, avoiding, mitigating or allowing risks in a different context.
It’s common sense that the severity of a risk in combination with the likelyhood of occurence determines the action or lack thereof but It’s also common sense that acting on inaccurate intelligence can represent a risk in itself. Acting on inaccurate intelligence also can have catastrophic consequences.
Therefore common sense dictates that before acting on intelligence it better be verified and corroborated as best as possible.
No, I’m not talking about 100% proof but in the case of the Russian bounties the intelligence people and the lower levels of goverment have decided that the intelligence is either not credible enough or that the case is not important enough to brief the President or the Vice President.
The New York Times which broke the story is the same newspaper which was peddling a conspiracy theory, the Russia collusion hoax, for more than three years.
Using leaks and anonymous sources the NYT peddled a story that has turned out to be complete garbage.
The NYT has lost all credibilty and it needs to do serious journalistic work on a consistent basis for a long time before they earn my trust.
So far, the NYT seems unwilling to do so.
The same goes for the Washington Post which cites “people familiar with the matter” and AP which cites “U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the intelligence”.
With such “sources” these three “news outlets” can pretty much invent whatever story they want and they have an atrocious record when it comes to the “Russia collusion” conspiracy.
Artaxes,
Notice that no one is denying the underlying facts that the NYT (and the WSJ, as well as most other news sources) have reported. Even the White House has admitted that the intel was in the PDB as far back as February. The reason why this intel is coming out demonstrates frustration by Trump Administration officials at every level with Trump’s willingness to either ignore anything Putin does and cozy up to Putin, or Trump’s utter incompetence to become knowledgeable on anything that does not happen on Fox News.
You can have all the “Deep State” conspiracy theories you want, but if the Right Wing military and intel community hawks have put aside petty politics and are turning on Trump and aligning themselves with the Left to protect the country, then you should quit simply blaming the messenger and spend some time actually figuring out why these strange bedfellows have turned on Trump. I say again, facts that everyone, our friends and our enemies included, already know about are not classified simply because they embarrassingly demonstrate the President’s dereliction of duty.
As for facts about collusion, none of those facts reported by the press are essentially in dispute either. Mueller’s report found over 100 such collusive contacts. But “collusion” itself, disgustingly unethical as it may be, is not a crime. Trump’s Impeachment also proved Trump’s willingness to promote Putin’s own disinformation campaign for the sake of his reelection. Trump colluded like crazy and continues to do so whether you want to see it or not.
In summary, the hatred of the Left is so great here that people will believe anything and ignore anything Trump does or doesn’t do right up to the point of treason. Winning and Party power has become more important than even the principles that Republicans used to hold dear when I used to vote Republican. If you refer to what I wrote by Niebuhr earlier, it appears that the “children of light” in their naïveté are once again being captured by the evil wisdom of the “children of darkness”. I have the hope that history will ultimately expose this for you, and you and Tom and others here will look back at the Trump years as a bad dream that you finally woke up from.
@tsalmon
You said: “Notice that no one is denying the underlying facts that the NYT (and the WSJ, as well as most other news sources) have reported. Even the White House has admitted that the intel was in the PDB as far back as February. ”
Response: Wrong! It is the NYT that claims that the President was briefed in writing in February, citing “officials”. As far as I know, the White House has not admitted that this happened. I don’t give a hoot about ininnuendo, rumors, speculation or the opinions of former intelligence people.
Unless you can provide a source for the claim that the White House DID admit the briefing happened in february, it’s nothing more than a baldfaced lie that you are spreading deliberately.
You said: “You can have all the “Deep State” conspiracy theories you want, but if the Right Wing military and intel community hawks have put aside petty politics and are turning on Trump and aligning themselves with the Left to protect the country, then you should quit simply blaming the messenger and spend some time actually figuring out why these strange bedfellows have turned on Trump. I say again, facts that everyone, our friends and our enemies included, already know about are not classified simply because they embarrassingly demonstrate the President’s dereliction of duty.”
Response: Notice, I said nothing about the “Deep State”. I do not engage in conspiracy theories. I’m interested in facts and I prefer using Occam’s razor. That’s why I, unlike you, do not uncritically accept internet rumor and sensational stories even if they would confirm my views and even if I would like them to be true.
Much of what was written about the “Russia Collusion” are conspiracy theories of the worst kind on a par with shape shifting lizards, the illuminati and the faked moonlanding.
Only total nutjobs and wackadoodles believe that Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset years before he even ran for President. One has to stretch extremely thin to nonexistent evidence to the utter limits and creatively and highly speculatively connect dots where there are none to come to such conclusions. I don’t care who makes all these sensational claims. The NYT is one of the worst offenders with absolutely zero credibility. The fact that many “news outlet” just repeat the NYT proves nothing.
To give you just one example. The NYT claimed that Carter Page’s visit to Moscow was the catalyst for the FBI’s “Russia Collusion” investigation only to claim 7 months later that it was George Papadopoulos who caused the FBI investigation.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/01/new-york-times-trump-russia-collusion-narrative-reset-george-papadopoulos-carter-page/
As for your claim that a bunch of bipartisan superpatriots work together to protect the country, please don’t make me laugh. Where were those superpatriots when Iran was responsible for the killing of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan? Where were they under G.W. Bush? Where were they under Obama? For many years Iran was responsible for the death of Americans and it never had to pay. That tells me that your narrative is not plausible. Those “superpatriots” are not in the least concerned with the loss of American lives. Their motives are purely political. Ironically it was President Trump who made Iran pay by sending Soleimani to hell.
I’m not blaming the messenger for telling me bad news. I’m blaming the messenger for telling me lies.
You should stop telling me what I should do. Perhaps you should take the words of the world’s most famous carpenter to heart “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”
You said: “As for facts about collusion, none of those facts reported by the press are essentially in dispute either. Mueller’s report found over 100 such collusive contacts. But “collusion” itself, disgustingly unethical as it may be, is not a crime. Trump’s Impeachment also proved Trump’s willingness to promote Putin’s own disinformation campaign for the sake of his reelection. Trump colluded like crazy and continues to do so whether you want to see it or not.”
Response: Wrong again. There are important “facts” that are in dispute. Just one example: Konstantin Klimnik, a central figure in Mueller’s investigation, was alleged to be a GRU operative. https://observer.com/2018/04/russia-gru-agent-in-mueller-probe-is-konstantin-kilimnik/
A claim that is disputed by John Solomon who claims that he has FBI memos noting that Klimnik was at least since 2013 a sensitive intelligence source for tha state department.
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/447394-key-figure-that-mueller-report-linked-to-russia-was-a-state-department
Collusive contacts? What the hell is a collusive contact? Is that something like “The lady wo cleans the office of Trump’s campaign has a Russian lover”?
Since you know of over 100 such contacts, could you provide us with one or two examples? That should suffice.
Trump’s impeachment proved only one thing. That the whole “Russia Collusion” hysteria was a bunch of baloney. As many who wanted to see Trump impeached told us over and over again: Impeachment does not require a crime. The fact that he was not impeached for “Russia Collusion” tells us that the case was extremely weak.
There is no evidence that Trump colluded like crazy. Perhaps it is YOU who sees only what he wants to see.
I’m willing to change my views if you provide me with specific evidence. It would be easy to tell me where I should look in the Mueller report.
You claim that using Putin’s disinformation for reelection is disgusting. Then you should find it even more disgusting that Ms. Clinton paid for oppo reasearch in the form of the “Steel dossier” which used as sources Gen. Vladimir I. Trubnikov, former Director of Russian Intelligence and Vladislav Surkov, an aide of Vladimir Putin.
https://bongino.com/new-document-exposes-two-russian-dossier-sources/
You should find it even more disgusting that the “Steel dossier” was the basis for thy spying on the Trump campaign and the basis for the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign.
You said: “In summary, the hatred of the Left is so great here that people will believe anything and ignore anything Trump does or doesn’t do right up to the point of treason. Winning and Party power has become more important than even the principles that Republicans used to hold dear when I used to vote Republican. If you refer to what I wrote by Niebuhr earlier, it appears that the “children of light” in their naïveté are once again being captured by the evil wisdom of the “children of darkness”. I have the hope that history will ultimately expose this for you, and you and Tom and others here will look back at the Trump years as a bad dream that you finally woke up from.”
Response: Your words apply more to you than to me.
To conclude: You provided many words but zero evidence.
@artaxes
Ineuendo is not evidence? Good thing too! We would all be in jail.
Tom, thank God, typos are not illegal yet, or we would both be in jail 😉
@artaxes
We have no end to the things we must thank God for.
As for facts about collusion, none of those facts reported by the press are essentially in dispute either.
I’ll just put this here. I’ve linked to this writeup before.
As far as “hatred for the left”, Glenn Greenwald is a leftie….not just left, but far left, politically:
https://theintercept.com/2019/04/18/robert-mueller-did-not-merely-reject-the-trumprussia-conspiracy-theories-he-obliterated-them/
As for facts about collusion, none of those facts reported by the press are essentially in dispute either.
About that. I’ve posted this before also. The “press” was not only wrong, but wrong to a level that beggars belief.
https://theintercept.com/2019/01/20/beyond-buzzfeed-the-10-worst-most-embarrassing-u-s-media-failures-on-the-trumprussia-story/
As I mentioned before, there is no comparison between the death tolls of the pre-Trump years and post Trump. If the lives of our soldiers matter, and if data matters, the data should speak for itself.
On the other hand….There were, during the course of Hillary’s tenure as Secretary of State, an unprecedented number of intelligence assets executed and/or imprisoned in China. The media hasn’t taken much of an interest in that story.
Liz,
Been up and down the block so many times on this. There is no crime on the federal books called “collusion”, nor would we want there to be. It was also not a crime for Trump to repeatedly lie to the American people during the election about his ongoing efforts to build a Trump hotel in Moscow. It was not a crime for Trump to publicly request Russia to hack Clinton’s supposedly classified emails. It may not even have been a crime for Trump to send Roger Stone to work with Wikileaks’ to release the DNC emails that were illegally hacked by Russia’s GRU unit. And that is just a few of the over hundred dubious contacts that Trump or his campaign had with Russia where Putin essentially picked Trump as the winner.
That does not mean a crime of conspiracy was not committed, just that Mueller could not prove it, and part of why Mueller could not prove it was because Trump and Trump associates obstructed justice and lied to Congress and to investigators in order to cover theirs and Trump’s corrupt acts.
Whether you consider your sources extreme Lefties or Right of Attila the Hun, those are just the undisputed facts and the law. If you feel Trump was exonerated simply because he has not been convicted of a crime YET, or because DOJ policy says that the President could not even be charged with a crime while he is in office, then you can turn a willfully blind eye to a whole lot of insanely shady self-interested behavior that harms our country. I’m not willing to do that.
@tsalmon
Doesn’t proof matter to you? Is it okay to just repeat an entirely unsubstantiated accusation again and again? Are you familiar with the BIG LIE?
Liz,
“As I mentioned before, there is no comparison between the death tolls of the pre-Trump years and post Trump. If the lives of our soldiers matter, and if data matters, the data should speak for itself.
On the other hand….There were, during the course of Hillary’s tenure as Secretary of State, an unprecedented number of intelligence assets executed and/or imprisoned in China. The media hasn’t taken much of an interest in that story.“
This is a classic use of the non sequitur to prove a nothing. Let’s assume both these facts are true and that Trump actually had a policy and the administrative competence to have affected these two pieces of data (something I highly doubt), then does it then make it ok that Trump knew, or should have known that the Russians were paying Taliban connected criminals for NATO coalition scalps, including for American lives, and Trump did nothing about it, but instead continued to incredulously suck up to Putin?
The facts in the press have thus far been undisputed by the Trump administration. Even if Russian ultimately turns out to be less than 100 percent provable, for Trump to know these facts as they are now to have existed for months and to have done nothing is treacherously Putin ingratiating or else it is massively incompetent. Just the political fallout alone would have made any other President at least cover his tracks. Can you imagine what you’d be saying about Obama if this exact same thing happened on his watch.
I think the military and the intel communities are fed up, and they are feeding the press. They have decided to just try to do damage control on Trump’s dereliction of duty while they wait out Trump’s ultimate defeat.
@tsalmon
Putin is supposedly paying bounties for nothing? And that does not matter?
Exactly why are the military and intel communities fed up? Could you explain that again?
then does it then make it ok that Trump knew, or should have known that the Russians were paying Taliban connected criminals for NATO coalition scalps, including for American lives, and Trump did nothing about it, but instead continued to incredulously suck up to Putin?
He should have known something he was never briefed on?
The Chief Pentagon spokesman said the Defense Department continued to evaluate the intelligence. And “the DOD has no corroborating evidence to validate the recent allegations found in open-source reports”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-says-us-intelligence-did-not-find-reports-of-russian-bounties-to-taliban-linked-militants-credible/2020/06/29/a69e1722-b9f4-11ea-80b9-40ece9a701dc_story.html
There is an abundance of evidence Trump is not “sucking up to Putin”. I’ve actually mentioned it many times so I don’t see the point now. For starters, we have sanctions on Russia. I wish we’d treat China with 1/5th of the standard we are applying to Russia.
-Trump increases sanctions on Russia, response:
“Oh, Ho! So he thinks that will dissuade us from believing he’s a puppet. Try again bastardo!”
-Bombs Assad, response:
“Oh, Ho! Yeah. That’s just a cover story!”
-Trains and sells weapons to the Ukraine, response:
“Oh, Ho! So he thinks that will dissuade us…we know he always wanted a hotel in Russia, these weapons sales to his enemies means nothing in the face of the fact that..he doesn’t have a hotel in Russia. Er…Yeah!”
-Arms enemies of Assad, response:
“Oh,Ho! That doesn’t count….remember the non-existent Trump hotel in Russian?!? It’s all about that.”
It’s….really getting kind of boring.
Odds there will be a Trump hotel in Russia after his presidency: I’d put that at about zero percent.
Yet this is the rationalization for all of the conspiracy theories. The left has actually rationalized that Trump sold out the country to Russia (in spite of all evidence to the contrary) for the sole purpose of placing his name on a hotel in Moscow.
Meanwhile, former administrations are making tens of millions of dollars on book deals, Netflix specials, speaking engagements…revenue generated in large portion by foreign countries. But nothing to see there!
Liz,
“It’s….really getting kind of boring.“. LOL, on that we finally agree.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha . . . .! I love you guys but you’re killing me. 🙂
@tsalmon
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha . . . . .! I love you twice as much, and since I have twice as many “ha” and far more smileys faces I win. 🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂
😆
This made my morning.
Going for a walk in the mountains now.
I’ll read more posts later. 🙂
Pst, Trump had around 44 percent approval from hispanics at the end of May.
I know this conflicts very strongly with your world view. Cackle on. 😆