What would it take?

Bye Felicia

Andrew Puzder withdraws as a labor secretary nominee - CNNPolitics.com (http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/15/politics/top-senate-republicans-urge-white-house-to-withdraw-puzder-nomination/)

This guy , Flynn, Spicer will be gone soon as will Kellyanne,who is next to be gone?

Cred you started the thread, you asked the question?What I am trying to understand is that how can you wait for 9 months with it going in the shitter after 4 weeks?What would it take for me(us), after four weeks his resignation or impeachment.Yes that is how bad it has become.
We are clearly on opposite sides. My point is if he hasn't gone far enough. Imo he's just getting going and needs to be more vocal towards the Republican congress to get off its butt and step up.

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I have gone from pissed off to lovin it. I know it is bad on so many levels but it has honestly become a guilty pleasure to watch this travesty unfold. Love the right pretending like that just didn't happen...every 30 minutes too.
It is only a matter of time. He is so completely clueless and unaware of what he is doing. It is hysterical and disgusting all wrapped up into one surreal piece of American history.

I honestly don't know what to think right now. Sure, there has been some epic BS (Devos, Flynn, the Executive Order roll-out), but something tells me that there is more to this than meets the eye ... and not necessarily as in "Holy Crap! This is just the tip of the BS iceberg."

On both Russian interference in the election and on cooperating with them in Syria, Mattes's comments directly contradicted Trump. Same with Nicki Haley's comments about Russia and sanctions. Trump when confronted with this sidesteps, avoids, maintains his "lets be friends / no interference" stand. It may be that he is just a lying dumbass. But, I watch the CNN commentators being completely flummoxed by his seemingly imperviousness to facts. "He either wasn't properly briefed or what he saying is illogical"; "He can't believe that statement," etc.

When he first came in he was mocked for not "draining the swamp" with his picks, now - the press, the Democratic establishment, the Republican establishment, and foreign allies and enemies are all sitting back and going "WTF??" Well, either he is crazy and we should all be building are bomb shelters and stocking up on food, water, and tradable goods we will need to survive the zombie apocalypse OR he is crazy like a fox and traditional norms of politics and diplomacy are being reset in order to halt creeping group think globalism and the extension of federal regulatory tendrils into all walks of life.

I honestly don't know which it is but, I am convinced that, just b/c it is not "business as usual" as we all sing kumbayah, it is not necessarily a bad thing.

[As a comparison, for long time Baltimore and Maryland residents, Trump is beginning to remind me of Willy Don Schaefer. In all his public appearances, WDS was buffoonish. Epically so. Newspaper reporters (the local media generally loved Willie Don - until the tired of him after about 20 years), when reporting on his speeches would edit great chunks of gibberish out of them. Rumors were constantly swirling about crap going down at the Statehouse, BUT, at the end of the day, a lot of sh** got done and done right. WDS appointed folks in key positions, let them establish their fiefdoms and then played umpire between them - it worked great for about 15 years.]

As possibilities for the open minded, here are a couple of articles from established, well respected journals and journalists with a different take on the seeming chaos and/or buffoonery:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-14/the-political-assassination-of-michael-flynn

Eli Lake is a columnist for the Bloomberg View. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI. In 2012, Lake disclosed how the UN documented U.S. violations of an arms embargo in Somalia. And his reporting has “earned praise from both conservatives and liberals.” In 2013, Lake disclosed how court documents in the U.S. government challenge to Blackwater showed that the mercenary organization was an extension of the CIA after 9-11. [From his Wikipedia bio]
Couple of excerpts from his article on Flynn:

"The New York Times and Washington Post reported that the transcript of the phone call reviewed over the weekend by the White House could be read different ways. One White House official with knowledge of the conversations told me that the Russian ambassador raised the sanctions to Flynn and that Flynn responded that the Trump team would be taking office in a few weeks and would review Russia policy and sanctions. That's neither illegal nor improper."

… "Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets. This is for good reason. Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of anonymity. This is what police states do.

In the past it was considered scandalous for senior U.S. officials to even request the identities of U.S. officials incidentally monitored by the government (normally they are redacted from intelligence reports). ... The fact that the intercepts of Flynn's conversations with Kislyak appear to have been widely distributed inside the government is a red flag."


Then there’s this from Ivan Krastev and Steven Holmes: The Kremlin Is Starting to Worry About Trump | Foreign Policy (http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/13/the-kremlin-is-starting-to-worry-about-trump/)

Krastev is the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Advisory Council of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). Holmes is a Professor of Law at NYU (w/ a long history in Political Science). From the article:

“The search for a key to Trump’s mind-boggling and miscellaneous gusher of policy directives has tended to focus on his disturbingly erratic, vindictive, simplistic, narcissistic, insecure, and occasionally delusional personality, due exception being made for those conspiracy theorists who treat him as a kind of Manchurian candidate or sock puppet of the Kremlin. What most observers have been late to recognize is the extent to which, behind his mask as a showman, Trump views himself as a revolutionary insurgent with a mission to dismantle America’s “old regime.”

… “What we are witnessing now,” [Steve] Bannon told the Washington Post, “is the birth of a new political order, and the more frantic a handful of media elites become, the more powerful that new political order becomes itself.”

… What the Kremlin fears most today is that Trump may be ousted or even killed. His ouster, Kremlin insiders argue, is bound to unleash a virulent and bipartisan anti-Russian campaign in Washington. Oddly, therefore, Putin has become a hostage to Trump’s survival and success. This has seriously restricted Russia’s geopolitical options. The Kremlin is perfectly aware that Democrats want to use Russia to discredit and possibly impeach Trump while Republican elites want to use Russia to deflate and discipline Trump. The Russian government fears not only Trump’s downfall, of course, but also the possibility that he could opportunistically switch to a tough anti-Moscow line in order to make peace with hawkish Republican leaders in Congress.

Anyone who spends any time in Moscow will quickly discover that ordinary Russians, in contrast with a majority of Europeans, feel surprisingly positive about Trump. One reason is that they are exhausted at Russia’s confrontation with the West. Another is that they share Trump’s cynical, borderline apocalyptic view of international politics. Like Trump, they never believed in win-win politics in the first place.

I honestly don't know what to think right now. Sure, there has been some epic BS (Devos, Flynn, the Executive Order roll-out), but something tells me that there is more to this than meets the eye ... and not necessarily as in "Holy Crap! This is just the tip of the BS iceberg.

Mattes, on both Russian interference in the election and on cooperating with them in Syria, comments directly contradicted Trump. Same with Nicki Haley's comments about Russia and sanctions. Trump when confronted with this sidesteps, avoids, maintains his "lets be friends / no interference" stand. It may be that he is just a lying dumbass. But, I watch the CNN commentators being completely flummoxed by his seemingly imperviousness to facts. "He either wasn't properly briefed or what he saying is illogical"; "He can't believe that statement," etc.

When he first came in he was mocked for not "draining the swamp" with his picks, now - the press, the Democratic establishment, the Republican establishment, and foreign allies and enemies are all sitting back and going "WTF??" Well, either he is crazy and we should all be building are bomb shelters and stocking up on food, water, and tradable goods we will need to survive the zombie apocalypse OR he is crazy like a fox and traditional norms of politics and diplomacy are being reset in order to halt creeping group think globalism and the extension of federal regulatory tendrils into all walks of life.

I honestly don't know which it is but, I am convinced that, just b/c it is not "business as usual" as we all sing kumbayah, it is not necessarily a bad thing.
[As a comparison, for long time Baltimore and Maryland residents, Trump is beginning to remind me of Willy Don Schaefer. In all his public appearances, WDS was buffoonish. Epically so. Newspaper reporters (the local media generally loved Willie Don - until the tired of him after about 20 years), when reporting on his speeches would edit great chunks of gibberish out of them. Rumors were constantly swirling about crap going down at the Statehouse, BUT, at the end of the day, a lot of sh** got done and done right. WDS appointed folks in key positions, let them establish their fiefdoms and then played umpire between them - it worked great for about 15 years.]

And I think this is where the problem lies...

And when it comes to CNN, Im done. Im gonna try to call Comcast this weekend and ask them to just take the channel off or black them out. They are so full of shit and devoid of fact, I seriously place them along the lines of the gameshow network.

I know what to expect from Fox and MSNBC..Im good with that, perfectly fine. But CNN was always better than that...not anymore, they are like if Huffington Post and a Communist had a devil child.

Yep, CNN is tabloid hype.
They foam at the mouth about anything Trump does.
I did a comparison the other day vs them and CBS. (not that CBS is special for any reason)
Of the top seven headlines, CBS had one about Trump.
All seven of CNNs were about Trump.
And some of them had OPINION next to the title.
Why the feck would I care about some CNN hacks opinion?
Who reads this tripe?

Yep, CNN is tabloid hype.
They foam at the mouth about anything Trump does.
I did a comparison the other day vs them and CBS. (not that CBS is special for any reason)
Of the top seven headlines, CBS had one about Trump.
All seven of CNNs were about Trump.
And some of them had OPINION next to the title.
Why the feck would I care about some CNN hacks opinion?
Who reads this tripe?

A ton of people. As Chico said, CNN used to be better than that. I used to view them as a left of center but generally fact based news outlet. That changed election night where at least one CNN anchor was crying as it became clear that Trump was going to win and another was plaintively moaning "What will we tell our children?" Ever since then, they have been so blatantly at war with Trump that they undermined their once solid credibility.

People are really falling for this CNN is fake news BS eh? I'm already beyond tired of hearing him blaming the media for everything. Hilarious that's he's all up in arms over leaks now but when they played to his advantage during the election he was all for it. Sad!

His presser today was as bizarre as they come. A fine tuned machine? You wanna talk about fake news? This guy can't open his mouth without straight up lying. Even Fox news was ripping him today (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/shep-smith-trump-media_us_58a616b3e4b07602ad52e951?).

Now this breaking news:

Trump's pick to replace Flynn turns down offer: reports | TheHill (http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/320015-trumps-pick-to-replace-flynn-turns-down-offer-report)