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USFREEDOM911 (04-20-2018)
I was fully aware of what a spectacularly hideous blunder post Cold War NATO expansion would be.
My predictions have been validated.
That may well have played a role. But I suspect it was as much or more simply a matter of Putin's contempt for the West, with his own political ambitions."Crimea was a reaction to US meddling" n #26
Some may think I'm over-thinking it here, but I trace much of this mess back to the Bush (elder) administration.
At the end of WWII the U.S. & Germany were bitter enemies.
BUT !!
If Truman had showed vanquished Germany a cold shoulder, the Soviets (Stalin) could have swooped in, and turned Germany to the dark side.
We may have had to pinch our nostrils shut to do it, but it's a good thing we did. A Germany allied with Russia today would be a very grim prospect.
Bush?
When the Cold War w/ USSR ended, Bush did little if anything to seduce Russia to the light side.
Russia was left to fend for itself, and clearly, decades and a new millennium later, Russia still feels stiff-armed by the West.
The bitter irony is, a few $Billion in ostensible charity to Russia would have been a spectacular investment, and would have paid for itself many times over.
Read Timothy Snider's book on Russia. Much of what the professor mentioned may fall into the category of "head-game"."Head games are silly, but if you want to buy into them.."
"It should be obvious to anyone why conservatives and libertarians should be against Trump. He has no grounding in belief. No core philosophy. No morals. No loyalty. No curiosity. No empathy and no understanding. He demands personal loyalty and not loyalty to the nation. His only core belief is in his own superiority to everyone else. His only want is exercise more and more personal power." smb / purveyor of fact 18/03/18
What's the point, he's just going to resign like everyone else!
How did I misunderstand? Is the Senate's role to "advise and consent" when they vote on Supreme Court Justices?
Tradition was that the Senate gives the elected President the team that he requested but if you remember the "we're going to do our best to make him a one term President" Congress threw out those precedents during Obama's tenure
You already have Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota saying she will vote for him and other Democrats will also, your intial article was creating a conspiracy that never existed
Don's draining the swamp?
https://www.propublica.org/article/t...ncy-he-lobbied
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/u...team.html?_r=0
http://time.com/donald-trump-drain-swamp/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.c6f6ade76246
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-n...eam-1480453288
https://theintercept.com/2017/01/27/coal-doj-trump/
http://fortune.com/2016/11/16/trump-...establishment/
Another of Don’s Swamp Rats Bails …
... just before publication of this New Yorker article. Must be "fake" n shit.
Icahn’s role was novel. He would be an adviser with a formal title, but he would not receive a salary, and he would not be required to divest himself of any of his holdings, or to make any disclosures about potential conflicts of interest. “Carl Icahn will be advising the President in his individual capacity,” Trump’s transition team asserted.
In the months after the election, the stock price of CVR, Icahn’s refiner, nearly doubled—a surge that is difficult to explain without acknowledging the appointment of the company’s lead shareholder to a White House position. The rally meant a personal benefit for Icahn, at least on paper, of half a billion dollars. There was an expectation in the market—an expectation created, in part, by Icahn’s own remarks—that, with Trump in the White House and Icahn playing consigliere, the rules were about to change, and not just at the E.P.A. Icahn’s empire ranges across many economic sectors, from energy to pharmaceuticals to auto supplies to mining, and all of them are governed by the types of regulations about which he would now potentially be advising Trump.
Janet McCabe, who left the E.P.A. in January, and now works at the Environmental Law and Policy Center, told me, “I’m not naïve. People in business try to influence the government. But the job of the government is to serve the American people, not the specific business interests of the President’s friends. To think that you have somebody with that kind of agenda bending the President’s ear is troubling.”
Conflicts of interest have been a defining trait of the Trump Administration. The President has not only refused to release his tax returns; he has declined to divest from his companies, instead putting them in a trust managed by his children. Questions have emerged about the ongoing business ties of his daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who, since Trump took office, have reaped nearly two hundred million dollars from the Trump hotel in Washington, D.C., and from other investments. Although Trump promised to “drain the swamp,” he has assembled a Cabinet of ultra-rich Americans, including two billionaires: Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education, and Wilbur Ross, the Secretary of Commerce.
But Icahn is worth more than the Trump family and all the members of the Cabinet combined—and, with no constraint on his license to counsel the President on regulations that might help his businesses, he was poised to become much richer. Robert Weissman, who runs the watchdog group Public Citizen, told me, “This kind of self-enrichment and influence over decision-making by an individual mogul who is simultaneously inside and outside the Administration is unprecedented. In terms of corruption, there’s nothing like it. Maybe ever.” In conversations with me, financiers who have worked with Icahn described his appointment as a kind of corporate raid on Washington. One said, “It’s the cheapest takeover Carl’s ever done.”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...-on-washington
Oracle Of JPP 714 (04-19-2018)
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