The Trump presidency

[Pickman's model]

One dead US Soldier in a fucked up operation is a perfect marketing opportunity to create a hero. As the mathematical death toll of US Soldiers rises in an unsuccessful operation, the rapid move along the axis of fuckup is irresistible - this is where Chump may be caught out with his call of duty adventures.

killed by calculus?

 

[CRI]

The Spy Revolt Against Trump Begins
Intelligence Community pushes back against a White House it considers leaky, untruthful and penetrated by the Kremlin

( by John Schindler is a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer. A specialist in espionage and terrorism, he’s also been a Navy officer and a War College professor. He’s published four books and is on Twitter at @20committee.)

...out of worries about the White House’s ability to keep secrets, some of our spy agencies have begun withholding intelligence from the Oval Office. Why risk your most sensitive information if the president may ignore it anyway? A senior National Security Agency official explained that NSA was systematically holding back some of the “good stuff” from the White House, in an unprecedented move. For decades, NSA has prepared special reports for the president’s eyes only, containing enormously sensitive intelligence. In the last three weeks, however, NSA has ceased doing this, fearing Trump and his staff cannot keep their best SIGINT secrets.

I previously warned the Trump administration not to go to war with the nation’s spies, and here’s why. This is a risky situation, particularly since President Trump is prone to creating crises foreign and domestic with his incautious tweets. In the event of a serious international crisis of the sort which eventually befalls almost every administration, the White House will need the best intelligence possible to prevent war, possibly even nuclear war. It may not get the information it needs in that hour of crisis, and for that it has nobody to blame but itself.

Isn't this, well, rather worrying?

 

[CRI]

Example for the above - Seems Don discussed a strategic response to the North Korea missile launch in front of diners at his hotel.

The iceberg wedge salads, dripping with blue cheese dressing, had just been served on the terrace of Mar-a-Lago Saturday when the call to President Donald Trump came in: North Korea had launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile, its first challenge to international rules since Trump was sworn in three weeks ago.

Sitting alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, with whom he'd spent most of the day golfing, Trump took the call on a mobile phone at his table, which was set squarely in the middle of the private club's dining area.

As Mar-a-Lago's wealthy members looked on from their tables, and with a keyboard player crooning in the background, Trump and Abe's evening meal quickly morphed into a strategy session, the decision-making on full view to fellow diners, who described it in detail to CNN.

 

[CRI]

Using the presidency to screw every dime he can from the American people.

 

[killer b]

mostly this thread is just twitter with a 24 hour delay isn't it?

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

What gets me is that there were like five of them, not even physically stopping her team, and she still immediately ran off looking really rattled. She could easily have got in. They seem really unable to deal with even mild protest.

They're a bunch of ....

 

[CRI]

mostly this thread is just twitter with a 24 hour delay isn't it?

Smartarse. Some commentators post most of their content on Twitter and not other platforms, or what they put on Twitter is more up to date and detailed than what's in blogs or articles. Is there some rule against posting Tweets here that I don't know about?

 

[Raheem]

mostly this thread is just twitter with a 24 hour delay isn't it?

Yes. Stacey Solomon tweeted the same observation yesterday.

 

[J Ed]

mostly this thread is just twitter with a 24 hour delay isn't it?

The shit bits of it

 

[Pickman's model]

Smartarse. Some commentators post most of their content on Twitter and not other platforms, or what they put on Twitter is more up to date and detailed than what's in blogs or articles. Is there some rule against posting Tweets here that I don't know about?

Yes, post screenshots so if the tweet's deleted it doesn't disappear from here

 

[CRI]

Yes, post screenshots so if the tweet's deleted it doesn't disappear from here

Often do but okay, will do all of them in future. I don't think that was the other member's beef though.

 

[weltweit]

I don't really prefer screenshots of tweets, if you instead post the url to the tweet then it is a functional tweet which you can interact with. A screenshot is just an image, no interaction possible.

 

[Pickman's model]

I don't really prefer screenshots of tweets, if you instead post the url to the tweet then it is a functional tweet which you can interact with. A screenshot is just an image, no interaction possible.

Yeh. But we're concerned with the longevity of the message not with your momentary convenience.

 

[Ranbay]

has someone taken his twitter away? nothing for 16 hours

 

[Ranbay]

Yes, post screenshots so if the tweet's deleted it doesn't disappear from here

Also work block twitter so I cant see them, and I'm kinda important like.

 

[hot air baboon]

this is what the thread looks like to me most of the time owing I presume to the work firewall

 

[bimble]

has someone taken his twitter away? nothing for 16 hours

I think what may have happened is that someone told him that the crowds of adoring fans whom he bragged about (in his last tweet) were actually protestors.

 

[Ranbay]

this is what the thread looks like to me most of the time owing I presume to the work firewall

View attachment 100406

This, just pages and pages of this.

 

[bimble]

And? Do you believe it to be an accurate summation? Did socialism was never take root in the US?

Or is this just all U75 is these days, somewhere where people repost twitter shit.

Calm down. Maybe if you joined in you could raise the tone of the thread.
That quote, i put it there in response to what the crabbed one had written (their previous 2 posts) about how this was not a desperate cry for a fairer more egalitarian society from some okies in a Steinbeck novel (their words not mine). I thought it was kind of funny that the quote was mistakenly attributed to Steinbeck. It's actually from a recent(ish) book called A short History of Progress, about how civilisations die, which i've just started.
Point was supposed to be that whilst Trump talked about jobs, and the forgotten men and women, his agenda was not one designed to appeal to folk who want a fairer society. Trump's a poor man's millionaire but he did not win on a platform of reducing inequality.

 

[CRI]

I don't really prefer screenshots of tweets, if you instead post the url to the tweet then it is a functional tweet which you can interact with. A screenshot is just an image, no interaction possible.

This is why when I figured out how to post tweets, I started doing it. Otherwise, you have to post the links separately, and can miss some of the convo. Twitter layout is really crap, and I don't really use it myself. But, I take the point, too, about posts disappearing.

I've never used the work computer to view Urbanz, so had no idea what it would look like. Guess same goes for pictures from social media on the funnies page. Ach well.

 

[weltweit]

Also work block twitter so I cant see them, and I'm kinda important like.

When you are at work, shouldn't you be working?

 

[snadge]

This is why when I figured out how to post tweets, I started doing it. Otherwise, you have to post the links separately, and can miss some of the convo. Twitter layout is really crap, and I don't really use it myself. But, I take the point, too, about posts disappearing.

I've never used the work computer to view Urbanz, so had no idea what it would look like. Guess same goes for pictures from social media on the funnies page. Ach well.

Any type of investigative or documented thread, ARCHIVE FUCKING EVERYTHING, you will be amazed how quick shit gets whitewashed and deleted.

So yeah, screenshot, even better archive.

 

[DotCommunist]

When you are at work, shouldn't you be working?

are you quite mad?

 

[CrabbedOne]

...
Swanning through the club's living room and main dining area alongside Abe, Trump was -- as is now typical -- swarmed with paying members, who now view dinner at the club as an opportunity for a few seconds of face time with the new President.

But as he sat down for the planned working dinner with Abe, whose country is well within range of North Korea's missiles, it was clear his counterpart felt it necessary to respond to the test. The launch occurred just before 8 a.m. on Sunday morning in Japan.

Trump's National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and chief strategist Steve Bannon left their seats to huddle closer to Trump as documents were produced and phone calls were placed to officials in Washington and Tokyo.

The patio was lit only with candles and moonlight, so aides used the camera lights on their phones to help the stone-faced Trump and Abe read through the documents.

Even as a flurry of advisers and translators descended upon the table carrying papers and phones for their bosses to consult, dinner itself proceeded apace. Waiters cleared the wedge salads and brought along the main course as Trump and Abe continued consulting with aides.
First lady Melania Trump and Abe's wife, Akie, remained seated across from their husbands, speaking quietly through a translator amid the activity. Earlier in the day, the women had toured a nearby Japanese garden and visited the gothic Bethesda-by-the-Sea church, where Trump and his wife were married in 2005.

Eventually Trump and Abe, along with their collection of aides, stood and moved from the dining terrace and toward a marble-trimmed ballroom, whose gilded columns were concealed by more sober-looking black drapes.

Standing in front of an American and Japanese flag, a stern-faced Abe called the launch "absolutely intolerable," and insisted North Korea adhere to United Nations Security Council resolutions barring it from testing of ballistic missiles.

Trump, in his short remarks, didn't mention the launch. He used a short statement to vow support for Japan instead.
...

Well who would leave "iceberg wedge salads, dripping with blue cheese dressing" just for security purposes when NorK plonks a missile in the Sea of Japan. Bit of a show for the wealthy paying members that I'm sure will attract more.

 

[Ranbay]

When you are at work, shouldn't you be working?

MEGA LOLZ

 

[CRI]

Okay, here's a screen-capped, uploaded, absolutely permanent, undoctored post. Enjoy!



However you view it, surely I'm not the only one who find this a tad worrisome.

For those so inclined, Richard DeAgazio's Facebook stream is full of posts fawning over Trump (maybe he gets a discount) and bog standard white supremacist fare.

Here's another snap from a random guest at the same dinner party at his resort. He's got one half of the nuclear codes. Someone else in this picture has the other half. Lovely.

 

[belboid]

Calm down. Maybe if you joined in you could raise the tone of the thread.
That quote, i put it there in response to what the crabbed one had written (their previous 2 posts) about how this was not a desperate cry for a fairer more egalitarian society from some okies in a Steinbeck novel (their words not mine). I thought it was kind of funny that the quote was mistakenly attributed to Steinbeck. It's actually from a recent(ish) book called A short History of Progress, about how civilisations die, which i've just started.

That 2004 book claims it is a Steinbeck quote

 

[bimble]

That 2004 book claims it is a Steinbeck quote

Some hard googling hard led me to this. Seems it's a misquote / borrowing / rephrasing of something Steinbeck did say. He said that in America, "everyone was a temporarily embarasssed capitalist".


(i love john steinbeck)

 

[Spymaster]

Calm down. Maybe if you joined in you could raise the tone of the thread.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Background Briefing February 12 - Corroboration of the Intel Dossier on Trump; Rumors of War with Iran; A North Korean Missile Upstages the Abe-Trump Meeting

Part 2 is worth a listen:

...
Then Middle East expert and veteran former CIA officer Robert Baer joins us. He is now the National Security Analyst for CNN and we will look into rumors of war with Iran as the Trump Administration, working closely with Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, are recruiting Sunni Arab allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States in what appears to be a coming confrontation with Iran. We also investigate off-the-books intelligence and paramilitary private armies that General Flynn, Stephen Bannon and Erik Prince are reported to be setting up that would appear to be a fulfillment of Oliver North’s dream team from a previous disastrous era of White House covert action against Iran.
...

Reckons Flynn should lose his security clearance over talking to the Russians over sanctions before taking office. Trump will probably close down any US government investigation of Kremlin connections. If Trump pursues the Iranians it'll all rapidly go to shit with Russia. Bets a conflict with Iran is coming and that may be a big one. Hopes Trump eventually delegates Foreign Policy and the Economy to adults and just acts a figurehead. Notes Trump has already outsourced the economy to Goldman and that'll probably lead to another bubble.

Unfortunately I think the Iranians are eager to test Trump's evident weaknesses working up to a collision with what's left of the US presence in Iraq. It will be harder to pursue IS without at least deconfliction with Iran. Trump's oddly servile position on Putin leaves the US really vulnerable to be poked in the eye in the ME. Putin has drawn lines in the sand over regime change that are hard to retreat from that Teheran will see as useful. Putin really needs the Iranians in Syria but the reverse is not so true. The Iranians are learning fast from the Russians and buying kit and setting up joint operations capability. The sneaky Persians may be emboldened and set on drawing the Russians into a stand-off with the US that'll leave Trump looking like an impotent idiot. They do tend to overestimate the rationality of other actors. Trump could be very unpredictable if humiliated.

A pomp and circumstance King Trump isn't a bad idea. He's looking like a remarkably lousy technocrat even compared with a former Chicago Ward Community Organiser.