The Donald Trump Thread

Lawmaker's 'peculiar midnight run' endangers Trump-Russia inquiry

Nunes has been under scrutiny over the past week for other reasons. He is reported to have gone missing on Tuesday night, under mysterious circumstances. The Daily Beast reported that Nunes received a message on his phone while travelling in a Uber car with a senior committee staffer in Washington, and then left the car abruptly without telling the staffer where he was going.

The next day he called a press conference, without telling his senior staff what he was going to say, and announced that he had seen “dozens” of intelligence reports that showed US intelligence agencies had “incidentally collected” material on members of the Trump transition team.

Such incidental collection happens when court-approved surveillance of an intelligence target picks up communications involving US persons who are not the formal target of the surveillance.

Nunes did not share the intelligence material he claimed to have seen with Democratic members of his committee, and instead outraged them further by briefing Trump. He said later: “I had a duty and obligation to tell him because, as you know, he’s taking a lot of heat in the news media.”
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On the flip-side, even Vox has to admit it's not really clear Trump is doing Putin's bidding:

The Trump reset, by contrast, doesn’t seem to have really started. There have only been two public instances of high-level contact between the Trump team and its Russian counterparts: a Trump phone call with Putin and a meeting between Lavrov and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Neither appears to have kicked off new negotiations on core issues, though Tillerson will travel to Moscow in April to meet with Putin.

And when it comes to policy, there have been no meaningful shifts from the prior administration:

  • Sanctions on Russia resulting from its invasion of Ukraine remain in place, as do sanctions put in place by the Obama administration after Russia’s hack of the USelection.
  • US troops are still stationed in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states.
  • The US hasn’t reduced its military or financial commitment to NATO.
  • There have been no direct negotiations over US-Russia military cooperation in Syria, nor any evidence that the US has formally abandoned its position that Assad must renounce power as part of any permanent peace deal there.
“There has been very little interaction between the administration and Russia,” Ivo Daalder, former US ambassador to NATO and current president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, tells me. “There is no deviation from the line that existed prior to January 20.”

The little actual movement we’ve seen has been surprisingly confrontational. During his call with Putin, Trump suggested that he was skeptical about renewing the New START treaty (though he reportedly had to pause the call to ask an aide what New START was).

And while Trump is still not sending lethal weapons to Ukraine — a policy idea that Trump’s team had removed from the GOP’s 2016 platform — he is also deploying 900 troops to a NATO force in Poland, a show of force explicitly designed to challenge Russia.

“The purpose is to deter aggression in the Baltics and in Poland,” Lt. Col. Steven Gventer, the commander of the deployment, said at a press conference on March 20. “We are fully ready to be lethal.”

There is, in short, little concerted effort from the Trump administration to implement the pro-Russia policy it promised. The Kremlin-friendly rhetoric that’s been so painful for Trump politically has yielded little in the way of concrete gains, either for US-Russia relations or for Trump personally.
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Hurmanetar said:
I haven't investigated him enough yet to have an opinion. Once I acquire an opinion I'll try to get back here and report.
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Maybe you can share your report with Trump. Apparently Trump had not met Tillerson, prior to asking him to be secretary of state.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/22/rex-tillerson-i-didnt-want-this-job

To get you started on your investigations:
For a time, Tillerson headed up ExxonMobil’s Russian operations.
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A Brief Guide to Rex Tillerson's Controversial Foreign Ties
 
north said:
Maybe you can share your report with Trump. Apparently Trump had not met Tillerson, prior to asking him to be secretary of state.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/22/rex-tillerson-i-didnt-want-this-job

To get you started on your investigations:

A Brief Guide to Rex Tillerson's Controversial Foreign Ties
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I read the two articles just now and didn't see anything of substance on which to hang a criticism. I am naturally wary of people who have maintained positions of power, but not so prejudiced as to automatically assume the worst.

I think McCain sold his soul to the devil a long time ago and the whole Russia scare is a total non-issue and a red herring. I want people in our government who are experienced with Russia and who want to work with Russia, and I think it's absurd that the media and politicians are acting like schoolchildren and any contact with the Russians spreads cooties. I once designed and quoted a piece of oilfield equipment that was going to Russia... uh oh, I must have cooties too.

I think Russia has opposed the very same elements within the Western deep state that have tried to force regime change in Russia and dozens of other countries... the same elements to which I am opposed and that have been trying to bring down Trump. I see Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine, and Syria as instances where Putin whipped the American deep state on the geopolitical chessboard and I'm glad he has been there as a check on that out of control insane hegemony. The deep state has been the aggressor and not Russia.

I'm sure there is a certain level of corruption in Russia too, but I've never heard anything more than speculation/propaganda about what skeletons Putin has in his closet, and on the whole it seems like Putin has improved things for the Russian people since the collapse of the Soviet Union. I can sympathize with the Russian people just like I can with the British or Japanese or Iranians or fellow Americans.

If the deep state has its way, then we'll be at war with Russia and if we survive it, my statements here will probably be used as justification to send me off to a gulag somewhere. Thankfully the deep state seems to be collapsing under incompetence and the bright lights of endless leaks.

Anyway, if anything these articles pushed me out of neutral to slightly pro-Tillerson.
 
More in on the "Putin plans to weaken the West" conspiracy theory:

The 9 Russian Words That Explain KremlinGate

As the Trump administration’s Russia problem shows no sign of going away, protesting presidential tweets notwithstanding, it’s time to think about it properly. Understanding what the Kremlin’s up to helps to see the big picture. This means learning a bit of spy lingo. Espionage, like everything else, has its own culture—including special verbiage—which varies from country to country.

Russia’s espionage culture is unique and in key ways markedly different from how Western countries approach the spy-game. It’s a product of the Soviet secret police, that brutal and cunning force, and it’s no accident that Vladimir Putin’s spies proudly call themselves Chekists today to commemorate them—just as they did in the days of the KGB. “There are no ‘former’ Chekists,” as the KGB veteran Putin has stated, and this attitude permeates his Kremlin.

The threat to our democracy posed by Moscow’s spy-games won’t recede on its own. As Rick Ledgett, NSA’s straight-talking deputy director, stated last week, “This is a challenge to the foundations of our democracy.” He went on: “How do we counter that?” adding, “What do we do as a nation to make it stop?”

This first thing we must do is gain a reality-based understanding of the SpyWarwe’re in with Moscow. So, let’s walk through a few of the most important Russian espionage terms to shed some light on what’s really going on between Washington and the Kremlin.
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Hurmanetar said:
No you have actual emails directly linking podesta to pedophilia. Then there's podesta's taste in "art" featuring young naked boys.
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"Directly linking"?

But he hasn't been charged with anything - unless I missed it?
 
Hurmanetar said:
I didn't know he was so involved in scouting. Makes me more in favor of him. :) (I'm an Eagle Scout.)

There's absolutely nothing in this article linking him to a child pedophile ring in the BSA or even suggesting wrongdoing on his part. Sounds like another desperate attempt to assassinate his character without any evidence.
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No smoke without fire. Looks shifty too.
 
Hurmanetar said:
Yes. Directly. Describing the children to be brought in for their entertainment in the hot tub and their ages.
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So he's being charged with something right now?

malf said:
No smoke without fire. Looks shifty too.
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I always worry about this phrase, it seems to me there can be plenty of times there's smoke without fire - things that are suspect but not illegal, things that are simply insinuated, false witness, fake reports.

There was a case in S.Korea where a girl pop musician was accused of being a secret lesbian blackmailing other girls into sordid videos...turns out the whole was blown up by the internet and there was no evidence. Ultimately it was found out there was some old guy who got turned on making this fan fiction and spreading it around as truth.
 
Sciborg_S_Patel said:
I always worry about this phrase, it seems to me there can be plenty of times there's smoke without fire - things that are suspect but not illegal, things that are simply insinuated, false witness, fake reports.

There was a case in S.Korea where a girl pop musician was accused of being a secret lesbian blackmailing other girls into sordid videos...turns out the whole was blown up by the internet and there was no evidence. Ultimately it was found out there was some old guy who got turned on making this fan fiction and spreading it around as truth.
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I agree. I was pastiching that position.
 
malf said:
I agree. I was pastiching that position.
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Ah sorry, that New Zealand accent made it harder to detect the tone. ;)

=-=-=

White House calls for domestic cuts to finance border wall

President Donald Trump is proposing immediate budget cuts of $18 billion from programs like medical research, infrastructure and community grants so U.S. taxpayers, not Mexico, can cover the down payment on the border wall.

The White House documents were submitted to Congress amid negotiations over a catchall spending bill that would avert a partial government shutdown at the end of next month. The package would wrap up $1.1 trillion in unfinished spending bills and address the Trump administration's request for an immediate $30 billion in additional Pentagon spending.

The latest Trump proposal, disclosed Tuesday, would eliminate $1.2 billion in National Institutes of Health research grants, a favorite of both parties. The community development block grant program, also popular, would be halved, amounting to a cut of $1.5 billion, and Trump would strip $500 million from a popular grant program for transportation projects. Some of that money would help pay for parts of the wall.
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I am sorry for you guys in the US... this doesn't look good. Not at all.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/for-sale-your-private-browsing-history/

I have no idea how they can justify s*it like this...

”[Consumer privacy] will be enhanced by removing the uncertainty and confusion these rules will create,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who chairs the House subcommittee that oversees the FCC.​

[source]

Or ... "Consumer privacy will be enahnced by removing consumer privacy entirely" :eek: ;;/?

I can only recommend finding a good VPN provider and installing TOR browser.
Personally I use Buffered VPN, you may want to look it up and compare it to other competitors.

ciao

p.s. = I wonder how long it will take before the EU follows along ...:mad:
 
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Bucky said:
I have no idea how they can justify s*it like this...
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I think they justify it because google and facebook are under a different regulatory scheme and it gives them an unfair business advantage because they can sell customer data.
http://www.businessinsider.com/republicans-kill-fcc-broadband-privacy-rules-2017-3

The critics of the rule want ISPs to be regulated by the same agency that regulates google and facebook (The FTC not the FCC). It also relates to the issue of net-neutrality.

I don't like my personal data being sold by anyone.

But, the rule that might be revoked was issued last year in October. Did it ever go into effect? How did we survive all those years without it? Why is the internet acting like this is something new, like it is a catastrophe? Are they trying to manipulate us?

Those are not rhetorical questions, if anyone knows please post here.

I think google keeps you anonymous, they only sell enough info to match ads to interests. Is that right? What about facebook and ISP's?

When I first started seeing ads on web sites for things I had looked at in on-line stores, I thought it was creepy and annoying. I looked up how to turn that off and I haven't been bothered since. That was google (I think). Otherwise, I haven't had any problems, in particular none that I traced to my ISPs and I've had quite a few since the days of dial up internet access. What exactly have ISP been doing that needs to be stopped?
 
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Jim_Smith said:
How did we survive all those years without it? Why is the internet acting like this is something new, like it is a catastrophe?
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Think about the fast growth of social media, the proliferation of mobile and "always connected" devices, the skyrocketing of bigdata business and, last but not least, the NSA scandal and the race for governments to vaccum every bit of data circulating in the global network...

That's "how we survived without it" ... The world has changed dramatically in less than 5-6 years and it is a catastrophe. 1984 is a funny joke compared to this.
Why would you want someone to follow you every minute of the day, from when you wake up in the morning to when you hit the sack, keeping notes of every place you visit, every private conversation you have, every private thought you entertain?

It's not about "how we survived without it", it's about how we'll survive without it. :D
 
Bucky said:
Think about the fast growth of social media, the proliferation of mobile and "always connected" devices, the skyrocketing of bigdata business and, last but not least, the NSA scandal and the race for governments to vaccum every bit of data circulating in the global network...
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I agree the NSA is a problem. In fact I am a lot more worried about the NSA than my ISP. I don't know why the unveiling of Trump data that was supposed to be secret by intelligence agencies isn't getting as much attention. Here you have actual misdeeds not just hypothetical ones. I think the difference might have to do with the political preferences of journalists.

When keeping secrets makes republicans look bad they want to keep secrets. When revealing information makes republicans look bad they are in favor of revealing information. I don't like my personal data sold, but I am not convinced the critics have real principles they are defending - it looks to me like they are trying to make political points, so I am dubious about their fears of catastrophe.
 
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