The Trump Presidency

[Kittamaru]

Flynn doesn't have his clearance any more... yes?
But Jared does... so I repeat my question:

He did have it, I believe, for quite some time after it was revealed he was compromised, though.

The reason I am being a little pedantic is the fact is , Jared still has his clearance, even after all the media hype
One must assume that it must be only media hype. for certainly if they had hard evidence as they did with Flynn, Jared would not still have his security clearance...
(or at least it would be suspended awaiting review)

Unfortunately, Trump doesn't seem particularly interested in "should" someone have a job or "are they capable of doing the job", and only in "who is in my inner circle".

It is interesting to note - Flynn's clearance (granted under Obama) was not sufficient for the National Security Adviser role - Flynn never actually got the level of clearance that post would have required. In essence, we had someone who had never been fully vetted undertaking a position that requires an extreme level of confidentiality, all while being compromised by a foreign government.

*shrug* Just seems like bad mojo all around to me...

 

[Schmelzer]

If you don't know that you are posting standard AGW denial bs as fed to the media by the American Heritage Foundation and similar sources, for example (the Republican Party line in the US), ...

I don't understand why it is so difficult for you to understand that I don't care about the origin. I care, first of all, about the truth. So, if you think that a particular piece of information given by the American Heritage Foundation, or whatever Foundation is wrong, post arguments why it is wrong. That the information comes from the American Heritage Foundation is not what counts as such.

I don't understand also why you insist using moral accusations ("denial") if the issue is only disagreement about facts, and in the case of AGW there is not even disagreement about facts, but I simply do not support some of your claims, given that I have not checked them. If you would stop such moral accusations, this would stop me from accusing you being a Party soldier, because it is based on your moral line of argumentation.

You obviously can - your informed and informative takes on the Syrian conflict are quite different from your posting on Trump and US racism and similar arenas of ignorance, despite your naive presentation of Putin. So are your summaries of US malfeasance and ill-motivated, unwelcome, damaging power plays in second and third world countries you know something about. But there you have information, see - it makes a difference.

Thanks, but the problem is that if you have better information, you use the wrong methods to give me this information.

So I don't understand why you simply don't follow my simple recommendation: If you disagree with some particular claim, quote the claim itself (without giving your own verbal interpretation about what this means) and write a rejection. This would immediately remove all my claims about lies, because they are all based on how you "interpret" what I have written. Don't forget, there are several independent causes for misunderstanding: language, scientific background (my is mathematical, thus, I care a lot about accuracy, what is a lie for me is simply the same in other words for you), different culture (American vs. German with strong Russian influence), different sources in the background. So, any attempt to interpret, in your own words, what I have written is very likely to fail, even if you would try honestly, without attempts to defame (I doubt, and this increases the tensions). A lot of predictable conflict without any necessity.

I also don't understand why you insist on your very confrontative style. There is no necessity for this at all. Say, I post something which is IYO BS because it comes from Breitbart. Does it mean that you have to attack me personally? No need at all. Simply answer "I do not believe that this is true, because the origin of this seems to be Breitbart (link), which is an unreliable right-wing propaganda source." The issue would be settled after this. I would accept this, and no longer use this claim in the communication with you. If I would nonetheless believe it or not is another question, but this would be my personal problem.

I have no problem to accept that you have own sources of information, and own criteria to evaluate their reliability, and, as the result, an own opinion about the reliability of all your sources. If you would accept that I have, similarly, my own sources (some of them inaccessible to you because in Russian) and have an own, independent opinion about the reliability of various sources, and that you can, in a weak way, influence them by giving your information, but not change them by personal attacks, this would be helpful.

 

[joepistole]

Flynn doesn't have his clearance any more... yes?
But Jared does... so I repeat my question:


The reason I am being a little pedantic is the fact is , Jared still has his clearance, even after all the media hype
One must assume that it must be only media hype. for certainly if they had hard evidence as they did with Flynn, Jared would not still have his security clearance...
(or at least it would be suspended awaiting review)

Trump is the ultimate authority here. He can give security clearance to whomever and for whatever reason. It's highly unlikely Trump will revoke Jared's security clearance. Trump needs him and would be lost without him. Jared is known as Trump's secretary of everything and he is Trump's son in-law.

Trump only reluctantly fired Flynn, because Flynn had become a political liability.

 

[Kittamaru]

Trump is the ultimate authority here. He can give security clearance to whomever and for whatever reason. It's highly unlikely Trump will revoke Jared's security clearance. Trump needs him and would be lost without him. Jared is known as Trump's secretary of everything and he is Trump's son in-law.

Trump only reluctantly fired Flynn, because Flynn had become a political liability.

Exactly, which is sort of my point - Trump is giving whatever he wants to whomever he wants, much like a dictator would. We are not a dictatorship, we are supposed to be a representative democracy / democratic republic. The POTUS is supposed to take and assess input from multiple sources to make an informed decision - Trump thinks he is "bigly smart" and thus doesn't need silly things like intelligence briefings, or to follow due process, or the like.

It is... honestly, fucking terrifying. The world was laughing at us... now, the world is terrified of us, because we are the single largest security vulnerability in NATO and other worldwide operations to contain ISIS, Russia, and other similar regimes.

 

[Bells]

Do you seriously think that Jared would maintain such a high security clearance if there was ANY real evidence that would cast doubts about his integrity?

Quite simply, yes.

The Trump administration is operating in a manner that pretty much declares that they can do whatever they want, as they want. Considering just how much Trump was willing to overlook with several within his administration and his campaign, from his hand picked staff being foreign agents in that they were accepting money to push the interests of foreign governments, to others having dodgy dealings with the Russians during the campaign and after said campaign, why do you think that Trump would remove Jared's security clearance? Especially given how reluctant he was to remove Flynn's security clearance to begin with?

The reason I am being a little pedantic is the fact is , Jared still has his clearance, even after all the media hype

Well, Jared is family.

Secondly, Trump has taken to declaring everything as "fake news", regardless of the truth of what has been reported.

Thirdly, Trump does not really care.

One must assume that it must be only media hype.

He claimed the same thing about Flynn. Trump has claimed media hype for everything, even the blatantly obvious. But I don't really think it is media hype. There should be a lot of questions as to why his son-in-law has been given that kind of security clearance to begin with, what with nepotism laws and whatnot, but also the fact that Kushner's family have been selling visas to overseas buyers, by touting that Kushner has such close contact with the President.

His failure to disclose contact with Russia, his attempts, as advised by the Russians themselves, to create a back channel communication directly with the Kremlin from the Russian embassy, is particularly concerning. Why not use the back channels of communications already used by agencies like the CIA? Or even the White House? Why did he want to create something completely separate in the Russian embassy itself?

for certainly if they had hard evidence as they did with Flynn, Jared would not still have his security clearance...

Flynn kept his security clearance up until the point where Trump had no choice but to remove it. It could no longer be denied. And even after that, he was still campaigning for Flynn, as though to bring him back to the fold. And Flynn is not his son-in-law. Do you really think they are going to remove his security clearance if Trump does not agree?

(or at least it would be suspended awaiting review)

With a normal president, it would have been. Heck, with a normal president who did not reason like a 5 year old on red cordial, the son-in-law would never have been appointed as an adviser, let alone given security clearance.

But we are not dealing with a normal administration, are we?

 

[iceaura]

I don't understand why it is so difficult for you to understand that I don't care about the origin. I care, first of all, about the truth

If you care about the truth, why are you reposting here the deceptions and misdirections of propaganda from famous sources of such untruth?

I don't understand also why you insist using moral accusations ("denial") if the issue is only disagreement about facts, and in the case of AGW there is not even disagreement about facts, but I simply do not support some of your claims, given that I have not checked them.

When you willfully refuse to observe and discover the nature of commonly shared and easily recognized established fact, your contradiction of established fact no longer enjoys the status of good faith - you are willfully and in bad faith denying established fact, and btw exerting considerable effort to do so.

In your case the pattern of your absurd denials and less nonsensical but still inexcusable rejections of fact is blatantly obvious to any informed American: your stances on AGW and Trump's corporate authoritarian class allegiances and the establishment of racism in US society and Hillary Clinton's personal character and so forth and so on are all aligned - right down to specific vocabulary and specific falsehoods, every single one of them - with the media feed from the propaganda operations of the corporate American authoritarian rightwing political faction.

American fascism. We are awash in it, inundated by its propaganda. Much of its propaganda has become "the Party line" here - the official stance of those with real political and economic power, ubiquitous in "legitimate" and "respectable" media, a major presence in childrens' education, and so forth (30% of American science teachers in the younger grades emphasize - emphasize - that global warming is mostly "natural". The majority of the rest "teach the controversy" to some extent or another. This same pattern is found with Darwinian evolutionary theory).

Which makes your grounds for aligning with it - misrepresented and poorly observed patterns you claim you see in the media - laughable.

Thanks, but the problem is that if you have better information, you use the wrong methods to give me this information.

Oh bullshit. Look at your ludicrous response to the information that the New York Times coverage of the Trump/Clinton campaign was at least 60% favorable to Trump, for example. You selected one issue of that paper ("at random"! like you're being scientific - joke?), begged the entire question by "evaluating" for yourself what you found there as favorable to Clinton, and claimed to have "checked" that information and rejected it. Dude, you might as well have waved a "Lock Her Up" or "Fake News" placard at a Trump rally - that's the level of that response.

Or take a minute to consider - as yet another example of how you deal with information - what I am observing as the reaction to my directing you to a thoughtful, informed, and partly supportive (congenial, at least) essay on Trump's relations with the Intelligence services that seem to be the actual constituents of your "deep state" - an essay that dealt directly with matters you have introduced as "deep state vs Trump" issues, and fully acknowledges the dangers of co-option and "puppet" status in (for example) Obama's case. Here's a reminder link: https://harpers.org/archive/2017/06/security-breach/ The author's bio on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_J._Glennon Other material on the author: http://wallstreetwindow.com/node/13437

There's no sign you read it, either in rejection or acknowledgment.

Do you honestly not know this stuff? How naive and ignorant and just plain dumb are we supposed to assume you really are?

And there we have a relevant matter for the thread: we have a similar issue with Republican voters (Trump voters) generally, in the US.

In the rise of fascism in the US and within the Republican Party specifically, culminating in takeover of that Party with the election of W&Cheney and reaffirmation of that with the election of Trump, the question of the role of genuine ignorance, what one might call "innocence" of a kind,

(contrasted with the workings of bad motivation, bad faith, the willful adoption of a pretension of innocence and defense of this status,

by which ignorance is transformed into willful blindness, which then presents itself as a form of stupidity

thereby justifying the shorthand: are they stupid, or are they lying? - the question that now arises pretty much whenever a Republican official in the current US government, or any of their media minions, speaks in public)

has become not merely pertinent, but urgent.

 

[iceaura]

Do you seriously think that Jared would maintain such a high security clearance if there was ANY real evidence that would cast doubts about his integrity?

Of course. Why not?

 

[Schmelzer]

If you care about the truth, why are you reposting here the deceptions and misdirections of propaganda from famous sources of such untruth?

Because I do not share your criteria of reliability. So, what IYO is deception, misdirection and propaganda is for me not necessarily deception, misdirection and propaganda. And reverse.

Look at your ludicrous response to the information that the New York Times coverage of the Trump/Clinton campaign was at least 60% favorable to Trump, for example. You selected one issue of that paper ("at random"! like you're being scientific - joke?), begged the entire question by "evaluating" for yourself what you found there as favorable to Clinton, and claimed to have "checked" that information and rejected it. Dude, you might as well have waved a "Lock Her Up" or "Fake News" placard at a Trump rally - that's the level of that response.

Again, you cannot argue without lies. And even repeated lies. Because I have not at all found any of the articles as "favorable to Clinton". This was not what I have tested. And this is not the first time I have corrected this lie. I have corrected this lie already in #1752 Thus, it is a repeated lie.

what I am observing as the reaction to my directing you to a thoughtful, informed, and partly supportive (congenial, at least) essay on Trump's relations with the Intelligence services that seem to be the actual constituents of your "deep state" - an essay that dealt directly with matters you have introduced as "deep state vs Trump" issues, and fully acknowledges the dangers of co-option and "puppet" status in (for example) Obama's case. Here's a reminder link: https://harpers.org/archive/2017/06/security-breach/ The author's bio on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_J._Glennon Other material on the author: http://wallstreetwindow.com/node/13437
There's no sign you read it, either in rejection or acknowledgment.

Hm, putting this link into the search function gives only one hit, this one. Thus, you have not posted it before, or the search has some problems. Lies, lies, lies ...
BTW, the article itself contains some interesting points. For example this:

Many never-Trumpers in both parties now regard the security bureaucracy as their last, best hope. ... But consider the price of victory if the security directorate were somehow to establish itself as a check on those presidential policies — or officials — that it happened to dislike. To formally charge the bureaucracy with providing a check on the president, Congress, or the courts would represent an entirely new form of government, a system in which institutionalized bureaucratic autocracy displaces democratic accountability. What standing would Trump’s critics have to object to bureaucratic supremacy should an enlightened president come along, in some brighter time, and seek to free them from the “polar night of icy darkness” that Max Weber warned is bureaucracy’s inevitable end point?

I have expressed a quite similar idea here too - of course, from a quite different position. Namely, that if the Clintonoids succeed against Trump, the whole democratic ideological cover will be destroyed by the way this is done, and the deep state shows that the sheeple have nothing to say.

Do you honestly not know this stuff? How naive and ignorant and just plain dumb are we supposed to assume you really are?

Sorry, it is you, and only you, who claims all the time that I know nothing, without any real base (if your own repetition does not count). I'm innocent here. I wrote only "if you have better information, you use the wrong methods to give me this information." You know the mathematical meaning of "if"? It is not at all a concession that you really have better information.

are they stupid, or are they lying? - the question that now arises pretty much whenever a Republican official in the current US government, or any of their media minions, speaks in public)
has become not merely pertinent, but urgent.

In case of iceaura, it does no longer appear. A repetition of the same lie twice is sufficient evidence she is lying.

 

[iceaura]

Because I do not share your criteria of reliability. So, what IYO is deception, misdirection and propaganda is for me not necessarily deception, misdirection and propaganda.

So when I point to your sources and the origins of your posts, I am accurate - I have identified them. You are reposting the media feed of the American Heritage Institute and related organizations. You not merely don't, but actively refuse, to see what's wrong with it.

That is part of what I refer to as your blind spot for fascism.

Again, you cannot argue without lies. And even repeated lies. Because I have not at all found any of the articles as "favorable to Clinton". This was not what I have tested. And this is not the first time I have corrected this lie. I have corrected this lie already in #1752 Thus, it is a repeated lie.

In the Clinton/Trump campaign coverage, unfavorable to one was favorable to the other. And you know that, that was the matter at hand in the thread - whether the media was supporting Trump or Clinton during the campaign.

Meanwhile, the ridiculousness of your "test" - the ludicrous nature of any claim from it, the clownish absurdity of that silly, silly post - remains. You can attempt deflection by namecalling, but you can't walk that one back - any more than the Hillaryhate videos you posted, and all the rest.

Hm, putting this link into the search function gives only one hit, this one. Thus, you have not posted it before, or the search has some problems. Lies, lies, lies ...

I referred to it by name, publication, and author.
In post 1475, this thread, immediately after your post 1474. I described it at some length, to draw your reading and acquisition of information. No luck.
That was the second mention - the first was in post 1460, direct reply to you, but brief. I figured maybe you missed it.

I have expressed a quite similar idea here too - of course, from a quite different position.

Correcting your "position" was the point. As you can discover by reading that essay or any number of other source provided to you, Trump is not in a "battle with the Clintinoids" - that's ignorant, and I provided you with information as so many times before: that's what you wanted, remember?

Here it is again: like all fascists, Trump favors employing organizations like the NSA and CIA to do things like set up torture prisons and drone strike enemies and listen in on everybody's phone calls and undermine enemy regimes (and Parties, and corporations) and so forth. When he restored the CIA drone strike authority, that was his (fascist, also Republican) agenda in action - not a capitulation to some kind of "deep state", but the ordinary process of establishing his administration according to how he wanted to run things. Glennon provided a short list of similar.

If he succeeds in getting the Intelligence agencies on board with his program - and even W&Cheney met resistance on that score, without Trump's personal baggage and uncertain future - the classic next step in the consolidation of fascist governance in the US (and projected power abroad) would be the creation or adaptation of some kind of paramilitary auxiliary muscle arm of the Trump Family administration - something like Putin's Night Wolves, Mussolini's Blackshirts, or Duvalier's Tonton Macoutes.

Interestingly enough, a modern version of that might be a cybersquad - computer based thuggery - and both Putin and Trump have a good start and focus there. Not only do we know they have such a start, but we see in the evidence of the internal conflicts in the US agencies under co-option pressure a focus on computer skullduggerry (the leak of the CIA cybertools for hacking, etc).

 

[Quantum Quack]

Of course. Why not?

well... when we actually witness serious consequences for allowing Jared security clearance then I might consider the issue a serious one as well.
It's been over 100 days and there has been no "consequential" security breaches. All we have is hype and more hype ( hysterics and speculations)
Do you have any idea what Putin would do if he had a clandestine back door into the white house? This begs the question if so, then what is stopping him! ?

Security passwords, id's of all field assets, etc etc etc .. a monumental disaster...

so what is stopping him... nothing ... because he has no back door and Jared has not breached his security clearance.

remember over 100 days has passed since a backdoor could have been established...

 

[joepistole]

How many more of Trump's top campaign staffers will be forced to retroactively register as foreign agents?

Flynn, Manafort, who's next?

Hotels bearing Trump's name are shedding his name. That's a big source of income for Trump.

Roger Stone, Nixon's dirty trickster, and now Trump's dirty trickster is to testify. It's not looking good for "The Donald".

 

[iceaura]

well... when we actually witness serious consequences for allowing Jared security clearance then I might consider the issue a serious one as well.
It's been over 100 days and there has been no "consequential" security breaches.

Say what?!

1) How would you know?
2) Do you think that's a long time - Ok for three months, so no problem?
3) Is that how you think sensible people hand out security clearances - they're fine as long as nothing we know about goes wrong?
4) And what counts as "serious"? Would Putin having blackmail info on half of the US White House staff, the President's daughter, and the entire cabinet count as serious, or would we not count it unless we can trace specific harms to it?

 

[Quantum Quack]

Say what?!

1) How would you know?
2) Do you think that's a long time - Ok for three months, so no problem?
3) Is that how you think sensible people hand out security clearances - they're fine as long as nothing we know about goes wrong?
4) And what counts as "serious"? Would Putin having blackmail info on half of the US White House staff, the President's daughter, and the entire cabinet count as serious, or would we not count it unless we can trace specific harms to it?

Well if as you suggest then the blackmail has not only failed to deliver it risks ww3 as well.

If Putin had a back door into the White House the whole world would be a very different place probably with in 7 days or so not 100+
Remember nuking China with a single push of a button takes how long?
No.. it all stinks of media hype and hysterics. Journo's trying to keep their jobs in a rapidly changing media world.

If there was a major security breach we would all know about it ... fact is... there has been no evidence of a major security breach in over 100 days by Jared... but there is plenty of media hysterics.

 

[Quantum Quack]

The other often overlooked thing is that the world has many intelligence services organizations. All with a vested interest in White House integrity. There appears to be no major concern about immediate and ongoing security threats. ( quite prepared to wait for the investigations to run their "futile" courses.)

**Futile because there is, IMO, very little possibility that any of the key concerns will be founded.

IMO If you want to discover the truth about USA security issues there is no point looking to the USA for answers... look abroad...

The USA is not the only one to be listening to KGB chatter....

 

[joepistole]

And the international view of the US falls and rightly so:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/27/politics/trump-world-confidence-report/index.html

It pains me, but it is the truth. Our allies are right to be concerned.

 

[iceaura]

Well if as you suggest then the blackmail has not only failed to deliver it risks ww3 as well.

I really don't see where you would be getting that - is that how you would handle an asset like Jared Kushner, if you were Putin and had acquired him?

If Putin had a back door into the White House the whole world would be a very different place probably with in 7 days or so not 100+

Because Putin's an idiot who spent years in the Russian secret service without learning how to take proper advantage of assets like Kushner.

Remember nuking China with a single push of a button takes how long?

Nobody wants to nuke anybody.

If there was a major security breach we would all know about it

How? Putin's twitter feed?

The other often overlooked thing is that the world has many intelligence services organizations. All with a vested interest in White House integrity.

Every one of them would love to have an asset like Kushner or Flynn in place - or even the President, which is quite possible here.

 

[Quantum Quack]

Oh come now, "Putin has an asset in the White House with his finger on the "Nuke China" button.... With out using it?

What happened to the South China sea trigger point? Vanished yes?
Plenty of ways and reasons to get rid of China and get the USA to do it....why not?
Because he has no White House security clearance... hee hee Putin with a white house security clearance by proxy... what a joke...

Because Putin's an idiot who spent years in the Russian secret service without learning how to take proper advantage of assets like Kushner.

Certainly less of an idiot than most of the USA Administration.

 

[Quantum Quack]

How? Putin's twitter feed?

see the next post...#1814

 

[iceaura]

Oh come now, "Putin has an asset in the White House with his finger on the "Nuke China" button.... With out using it?

What the hell are you talking about? Why would anyone nuke China? How would Jared Kushner nuke China, or even Trump? C'mon, this is not a cartoon here, the villains aren't crazed suicides with magic powers for evil.

 

[Quantum Quack]

What the hell are you talking about? Why would anyone nuke China? How would Jared Kushner nuke China, or even Trump? C'mon, this is not a cartoon here, the villains aren't crazed suicides.

That is part of my point...
If Russia literally had access to the White house the worlds power dynamics changes dramatically in ways we could only imagine...
All intelligence services around the world would be seriously compromised ( 5 eyes, Echelon etc) Russia would indeed have effective control and so on....

and you are right this IS a cartoon crazy if one wishes to limit the fallout and collateral from such an incredible massive security breach...
Time would be of the essence as the fear of a back channel being discovered would be intense so if one existed Russian action would happen well with in the 100 or so days since inauguration.
There has been no "Russian action" so there is no back channel...