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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Intel chiefs at odds with boss

Intel chiefs at odds with boss

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Trump appointees Christopher Wray (FBI), Gina Haspel (CIA) and Daniel Coats (National Intelligence) briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee on worldwide threats today. Their boss claims warm personal relationships with the leaders of Russia, China and North Korea and has identified Iran as a primary threat. Trump’s appointees see things…differently (The Post):

Russia and China are competing more intensely with the United States in “a race for technological and military superiority,” the nation’s top intelligence official told a Senate panel Tuesday during a hearing that highlighted the distance between the U.S. intelligence community and President Trump on several critical fronts…

Coats, speaking on behalf of the assembled officials, said that North Korea was “unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities,” which the country’s leaders consider “critical to the regime’s survival…”

Conversely, the intelligence officials assessed that the government of Iran was not trying to build a nuclear weapon, despite the Trump administration’s persistent claims that the country has been violating the terms of an international agreement forged during the Obama administration…

Officials also warned, as they did last year, about Russia’s intention to interfere with the U.S. political system via “information warfare” waged largely on social media, which stokes social and political tensions to divide Americans. Other countries are likely to employ those tactics, as well, Coats said…

Trump continues to equivocate on whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election on his behalf, contradicting the unanimous assessment of all the top intelligence officials currently serving.

So, Trump appointed these people, but he doesn’t take their assessments seriously, at least not in a policy formation sense. He relies instead on Fox News programming and perhaps the counsel of kooks like Ginni Thomas. That’s alarming.

Reader Interactions

182Comments

  2. 2.

    Cermet

    Being an orange fart cloud, the Rump is above all such mere mortal issues like accepting facts or learning from mistakes – he, like his voting base, are in a rarefied air of pure, unadulterated, stench.

  4. 4.

    The Midnight Lurker

    Honest to God – who the hell is shocked by this?

    Trump doesn’t listen to anyone!

    He has the best brain, dontcha know?

  9. 9.

    Amir Khalid

    Thst’s just how Trump is. Even having the bestest experts to inform and advise him doesn’t help: he thinks his cunning beats their expertise, and he hates being told what to do.

  12. 12.

    Immanentize

    I think that Iran, playing the long game, sees the opportunity for a big pendulum swing after the next election. Who really is worse? Iranian leaders or Saudi leaders? Those ruling Qatar? Or those ruling Egypt? Etc.

  14. 14.

    Brachiator

    Russia and China are competing more intensely with the United States in “a race for technological and military superiority,” the nation’s top intelligence official told a Senate panel Tuesday during a hearing that highlighted the distance between the U.S. intelligence community and President Trump on several critical fronts…

    Coats, speaking on behalf of the assembled officials, said that North Korea was “unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities,” which the country’s leaders consider “critical to the regime’s survival…”

    Conversely, the intelligence officials assessed that the government of Iran was not trying to build a nuclear weapon, despite the Trump administration’s persistent claims that the country has been violating the terms of an international agreement forged during the Obama administration…

    So, Trump appointed these people, but he doesn’t take their assessments seriously, at least not in a policy formation sense. He relies instead on Fox News programming and perhaps the counsel of kooks like Ginni Thomas. That’s alarming.

    This is insane. The intelligence community alerts us to threats posed by Russia and China and yet the GOP leadership keeps selling Trump as the bestest Republican president ever. And Trump’s core supporters love him more than hot cocoa on a cold night.

  15. 15.

    trollhattan

    The interesting guest on Maher last week was Michael McFaul, one of Obama’s ambassadors to Russia and a man truly having an extended hair-on-fire moment trying to warn us of Putin’s intentions and motivations. He somehow makes everything I thought about Putin and Trump sound about five times worse. Mercy.

  17. 17.

    Adam L Silverman

    She seems nice:

  18. 18.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mike in NC: The FBI, CIA, and NSA are subject to oversight conducted by Congressmen Nadler, Schiff, and Cummings. The Kremlin is not.

  20. 20.

    SFAW

    Did the Traitor-in-Chief have his Control (i.e., Vladi Vladimirovich) participating via Skype or speakerphone? Or did he think Vladi would be OK with him doing it all by himself, just like a big boy?

    ETA: “You’re not the boss of me, Vlad! Well, you are, but can’t I just do this? C’mon! I was winning!”
    “No, Trelane!”

    With humblest apologies to the late William Campbell for the comparison.

  22. 22.

    jonas

    To paraphrase JC’s pinned tweet, can you begin to imagine the Category-5 shitstorm that would be raging throughout the media and the country right now if a Dem president were ever pitted against the IC establishment like this? Instead we’re all having a good larf about how ironic it is that the president’s kooky ideas are diametrically opposed to the considered opinions of our intelligence and diplomatic professionals.

  25. 25.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    So in this remake of “Red Dawn”, do the heroes go out to meet the Russians wearing “Better Russian than Democrat” T-shirts and then invite them in for borscht and tea?

  27. 27.

    The Midnight Lurker

    @BruceFromOhio:

    If only we could entice the rest of the 27% to carry signs like this, they’d be easier to spot.

    I don’t know… the spelling is pretty good on this one.

  28. 28.

    jonas

    @trollhattan: If you recall, at one point last year Trump expressed willingness to let Russian investigators have access to McFaul in connection with the Magitsky case. Really. He was going to let Russian goons interrogate a former ambassador to make Putin happy. I don’t blame McFaul for being in a pissy mood on the subject.

  29. 29.

    ruemara

    I wonder what it will take for Intel chiefs to admit the current admin is a corrupt bunch of idiots working for Russia and a few other countries in general. Maybe a few people in the FBI NYC office should explain to their colleagues why helping him get into office was the right thing to do.

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Probably.

  30. 30.

    The Midnight Lurker

    @jonas: Yeah, McFaul is ‘pissy’. He probably has GRU goons trying to deliver ‘perfume samples’ to his house as well.

  32. 32.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    What’s truly surreal about this historic moment is how widely understood it is that Trump is committing treason on an ongoing basis, is under the thumb of Putin and acting in Russian interests against the US, and is completely open about that, and yet nothing of consequence seems to be happening.

    Yes, yes, I know Der Müller Gottes mahlt langsam (per Amir) and all that, but it’s appalling and maddening all the same.

    Actually I’m comforting myself with an analogy to something I’ve mentioned on physics forums from time to time, while explaining that disturbances propagate at the speed of sound. If you vaporized the first floor of a 20-story building, the 20th floor would still feel perfectly solid as the lower floors started to fall, until the disturbance caused on the first floor made its way up at the speed of sound.

    So in this analogy I guess the Trump crime syndicate is standing on the 20th floor, but the first floor has already been blown up.

  34. 34.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Kelly: And according to some of the preliminary reports, the two men who attached the actor in Chicago overnight were wearing MAGA hats.

  35. 35.

    Mai Naem mobile

    It isn’t that Trumpov disagrees with the Intel Chiefs, it’s that he doesn’t care. He is looking out for himself and that means aligning with Russian and Chinese interests.

  37. 37.

    Leto

    That’s alarming.

    But is it? I’ll quote David Roth’s piece that Anne Laurie highlighted:

    Even before he banged his own personal left turn and began his full-tilt drive into the desert of cognitive decline, Trump was not an especially nuanced or strategic person. His mind is not what it was, and at its peak it was more of a Magic 8 Ball than a supercomputer. He can’t learn anything because he can’t listen to other people if they aren’t speaking from inside a television; he can’t remember what he hears there because he can’t really care unless it’s about him. These deficits are clear when Trump is extemporizing on furloughed workers cutting deals with the milkman or imagining cartoon coyotes piloting sedans full of duct-taped women across the Rio Grande, but they are even clearer when he tells knowing lies. The former tend to be about other people, and so tend to be both lurid and half-assed; he only really ever applies himself when the lies involve himself.

    It doesn’t matter what his Intel chiefs say. He’s not going to listen. He might if they got into the magic talking box and flung their own shit at him, but even then that’s not a guarantee of success. In fact, I doubt it would do any good as he’s been shitting on them since at least 2015. The fact that he can even get his orange makeup on and blonde combover combed, that’s probably the best we can expect out of him on any given day. Again, Mr. Roth sums it up best:

    that’s honestly the best he can do because his brain is an old donut bobbing around in a toilet.

    That fucking birds nest on his head? Best he can do. Orange pancake face application? Best he can do. Incoherent monologue that goes on and on? Best he can do. The fact that Rethugs won’t help pull a 25th Amendment on someone clearly in decline (not to mention a traitor)… well, we gotta put in the hard work to make that shit happen come Nov 2020. Only way to make it stick. Permanently.

  40. 40.

    JPL

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I hope that McConnell, etal are with him on the 20th floor. I don’t know if Graham and McConnell are being black mailed or not, but their reaction has continues to surprise me. Maybe it is just that power corrupts, and the destruction of the country be damn.

  42. 42.

    Jeffro

    Thanks for posting this, Betty. It’s a danger to the country when the president* is actively promoting propaganda to the country…when it’s about national security issues and is publicly contradicted by his own intelligence chiefs, that ought to be screaming headline news for the rest of the week. Sadly, it’s just enabled by his fellow traitors in the GOP and ho-hummed by the national media.

  43. 43.

    Jeffro

    @cliosfanboy:

    in Virginia we have tea party license plates. It helps

    A visiting relative noted those (VA’s tea party plates) once and asked what the progressive option was. I was like, “regular plates” – progressives believe in good, regular, normal government and we don’t have any need for reactionary virtue signaling (other than the folks still sporting “Obama 08” stickers ;)

  44. 44.

    The Midnight Lurker

    @Jeffro:

    we don’t have any need for reactionary virtue signaling (other than the folks still sporting “Obama 08” stickers ;)

    Hey, it’s holding the back bumper on!

  47. 47.

    rikyrah

    House Dems holding first hearing today on sweeping democracy reform bill & Republicans invited 2 of party’s biggest vote suppressors to testify against it. GOP terrified of fair elections https://t.co/IPMgI1woLG

    — Ari Berman (@AriBerman) January 29, 2019

  48. 48.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    So, Trump appointed these people, but he doesn’t take their assessments seriously, at least not in a policy formation sense. He relies instead on Fox News programming and perhaps the counsel of kooks like Ginni Thomas. That’s alarming.

    Yeah it is. But sadly, I’m not surprised. I also don’t feel as upset as I used to be. Make no mistake, I hate the asshole and think he should go, but I’m starting to get used to his idiocy which in itself is not good.

  49. 49.

    rikyrah

    ?NEWS?

    A reliable source tells me that Chuck Schumer called STACEY ABRAMS three weeks ago to ask her to deliver the Democratic response to the State of the Union.

    — Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) January 29, 2019

  52. 52.

    Martin

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I’m not upset with Trump. I’m upset with Congress for failing to perform their duty as a co-equal branch. I put this on Ryan and McConnell and the rest of them. The system was set up the way that it is because we expected the occasional lunatic. The system is supposed to respond and correct for that. It’s not. That’s the real problem.

  55. 55.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @germy:
    I remember that!

    “You got jack shit. You got your dick in your hand.”

    That was the best part and got a few chuckles from bystanders

  56. 56.

    catclub

    @Immanentize:

    I think that Iran, playing the long game, sees the opportunity for a big pendulum swing after the next election.

    This seems unlikely. I think Iran should be VERY disappointed in the rest of the developed world which has not figured out a way to do financial deals without the US dominated payments system. It is now necessary for future self-protection, and Germany, France, Japan, etc have NOT stepped up to build one.

  61. 61.

    germy

    @rikyrah: Turns out parts of Schultz’s autobiography turn out to be untrue.

    In his book, he claims he grew up in poverty and won a football scholarship for college. But his stories don’t add up.

  62. 62.

    Fair Economist

    @rikyrah:

    SCOOP: I found tax records showing Howard Schultz gave less than 1% of his wealth to his family charity in 2016-2017.

    On top of that a family “charity” is often a tax dodge. There are gobs of reputable charities about and unless you have a huge amount to donate and a strong desire to direct where it goes there’s no need for a family “charity”.

  63. 63.

    Adam L Silverman

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:

  66. 66.

    Emma

    @catclub: Gates has given away about a third of his money. Compared to him most people in his income band are cheapskates. (this is not meant as any kind of endorsement of Gates as a human being).

  69. 69.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @germy:
    Absolutely disgusting. Will Trump call these two men, “very fine people”? Jesus Christ, that poor man. They were trying to lynch him!

  71. 71.

    Martin

    @Adam L Silverman: Something about this story seems too stereotyped. I’m not saying the incident didn’t happen, but the way its being reported sounds like a scene out of a really bad movie.

  72. 72.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Adam L Silverman:
    It wouldn’t surprise me if there was possible overlap between Trump supporters and the type of people who would do this, regardless.

  73. 73.

    Peale

    @germy:

    They put a rope around his neck, poured bleach on him and as they left they yelled, ‘This is MAGA country,’” TMZ reported

    Clearly not-premeditated. I mean who doesn’t have bleach and a rope wandering around Chicago when temperatures are dropping to -20. I hope the liberals don’t smear these men and make it hard for them to get into good colleges.

  74. 74.

    tobie

    @Adam L Silverman: The news that Abrams is giving the SOTU response makes me so happy! I will skip the SOTU but will keep an eye on BJ to know when to turn the TV on to hear Abrams.

    Thank you, Germy and Rikyrah, for posting about this, too!

  75. 75.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @germy:
    Why do people have to fucking lie? I guess Schultz never thought he’d get that level of scrutiny before in the private sector, but he had to have known he would if he was going to run for POTUS.

  76. 76.

    The Midnight Lurker

    @Mary G: Joshua Tree national park ‘may take 300 years to recover’ from shutdown https://t.co/h1QLvjF8Sy— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) January 29, 2019
    I am feeling stabby about this

    Me too. I wanted to cry when I read that. Big Josh is one of my favs.

    Holds out knife – Here. I just sharpened it.

  77. 77.

    germy

    .@HowardSchultz moment ago on @CBS says of @KamalaHarris’ comments last night backing Medicare for all and doing away with private health insurance: “That’s not correct, that’s not American.”— Elizabeth Landers (@ElizLanders) January 29, 2019

    That's the second time in less than 24 hours he's called another politician's views un-American/not American (AOC's billionaire comment being the other). I sense a campaign theme. https://t.co/J0Dfmy3Bn1— Clare Malone (@ClareMalone) January 29, 2019

  78. 78.

    Kay

    Josh Dorner
    ‏@JoshDorner
    53m53 minutes ago
    More
    1/ Another day, another completely brutal poll for Trump, both overall and on immigration. This one is from @QuinnipiacPoll, which has his overall approval rating at a disastrous 38 – 57. That’s a 5-point negative swing just in the last two weeks.

    I’m just out and out gloating at this point.

  80. 80.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Martin:

    I’m upset with Congress for failing to perform their duty as a co-equal branch. I put this on Ryan and McConnell and the rest of them.

    Yeah, the GOP Congress could have stopped Trump in his tracks, but they were either too afraid of his wrath vis tweet and his fans or they were just as nuts as he is and liked it. Some also decided that he could be useful for dismantling the last of the New Deal/Great Society programs and usher in permanent Republican rule.

  81. 81.

    catclub

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:

    Why do people have to fucking lie?

    and then decide that attaching themselves to US Presidency is the best way to hide all of their crimes.
    Trump, Manafort and Wilbur Ross leap to mind here. Now Schultz.

    I, know, … nussing!

  83. 83.

    Kay

    @germy:

    For someone who is so concerned about Donald Trump he seems to spend all his time attacking Democrats.

    Maybe that’s the trick- he isn’t a Democrat running as an independent, he’s a Republican running as an independent. They’re too scared to primary Trump so they tapped this fool.

  84. 84.

    The Midnight Lurker

    @Martin:

    Something about this story seems too stereotyped. I’m not saying the incident didn’t happen, but the way its being reported sounds like a scene out of a really bad movie.

    Better get out the popcorn, pal. Because as long as Trump and his sycophants are in power, you’re going to be seeing this ‘bad movie’ over and over and over again.

    Red caps are the new brownshirts.

  88. 88.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @ruemara:
    @catclub:

    Everybody stretches the truth at least a little bit. To make your resume look more impressive. Like using plenty of adjectives to describe yourself as a super-worker. But outright lying about major events in your life? I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t keep the lies straight and I’d feel like I was a fraud.

  89. 89.

    germy

    @Kay:

    For someone who is so concerned about Donald Trump he seems to spend all his time attacking Democrats.

    Yes. And then when asked specific questions about his platform, he refuses to answer questions about “hypotheticals”

    He needs to go away to a private island and sip his own burnt product.

  90. 90.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Kay:

    They’re too scared to primary Trump so they tapped this fool.

    It doesn’t help that the RNC passed a resolution declaring Trump would receive the nomination unopposed, ie no primaries.

  91. 91.

    Adam L Silverman

    @clay: To be honest, he’s never been as bad as he’s presented by Democrats, especially left of center to far left Democrats. Would he have been my pick to be Democratic leader in the minority against McConnell? No. But he’s played the hand he’s been dealt decently. Especially, considering that he’s trying to maneuver around and against McConnell who recognizes no limitations. Until or unless the Democrats are willing to either become a Democratic version of McConnell or can actually figure out an unconventional way to defeat what he does, whoever was named the Democratic leader was going to have a constant, uphill battle.

  92. 92.

    pluky

    @Mary G: Small consolation, but this is not even a blink of Nature’s eye. The millenia of millenia that it will take from the Holocene/Anthropocene 6th mass extinction event on the other hand is downright heartbreaking.

  93. 93.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Woot WOOT WOOT!!!

    Stacey Abrams is going to give the Dem response to SOTU!!

    Happy news!

  95. 95.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Martin: TMZ, whose owner Harvey Levin is all in on the President and runs his own kill and capture program to protect the President, did the initial reporting about the MAGA elements. That hasn’t been confirmed by other sources. It may, it may not. It may also be Levin’s way of setting this up to allow the President and his other surrogates to try to leverage the reporting of this attack, as an attack on them. That the President and his supporters are the real victims here.

  96. 96.

    Martin

    @Miss Bianca: No, not at all. I’m suggesting that TMZ is a shitty vehicle to communicate something like this and they should be viewed skeptically. I have no doubt that there was an incident, and I’m not doubting it was a hate crime. But the way TMZ reported it sounded like a bad script – not like what you could extract out of a police report after a few hours.

    Other outlets are reporting on their own, but they aren’t painting the kind of scene that TMZ did. No mention of MAGA. Less clear on a few other details.

  98. 98.

    Martin

    @pluky: That’s only a consolation if we never touch the place ever again. It’s going to take more resources to protect the park from future damage, resources that are unlikely to ever arrive.

  100. 100.

    B.B.A.

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Why didn’t they just do that last time around, and anoint Jeb!? Would’ve saved us a lot of trouble.

    Hell, why doesn’t the DNC do the same thing?

    Yeah, yeah, smoke-filled rooms, but we’ve banned indoor smoking and we’ve got much better ventilation now.

  101. 101.

    Adam L Silverman

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Apparently the information in the bio that has been on his website for a while, which is that he went to Northern Michigan, tried to, and failed to get a walk on scholarship contradicts how he recounts how he got to Northern Michigan University in the book he just released and is now touring in support of. The latter account claims he was scouted by the university, offered a scholarship, and that’s how he could afford to get to Northern Michigan. My guess, based on the reporting is that most of the book was actually written by his two senior strategists/advisors: Steve Schmidt and Washington Post reporter and editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/books/review/for-love-of-country-by-howard-schultz-and-rajiv-chandrasekaran.html

    That is completely aside from the fact that if he was so poor, then he could have just stayed at home in NY, gone to the City University of New York, which offered free tuition to all NY City residents who could pass the test, lived at home theyreby saving room and board, and only pay some admin fees and for his books. And he could’ve worked in the factory his uncle owned in NY, which is where his father worked as the foreman, which payed decent because NY has union rules. Instead he paid full out of state tuition at Northern Michigan, plus fees, room, board, and books. Yet the story he tells is that he was supposedly so poor he and his family lived in the projects in Brooklyn. Something doesn’t add up.

  103. 103.

    Leto

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: It’s the same reason people lie about being Navy SEALs, spec ops, in combat, or specific military awards: they’re fucking liars and they lie. Their own deeds weren’t enough, in their eyes, so they have to “add a bit more”. That’s how you get Army Rangers who are also SEALs who were also A-10 pilots who single handedly defeated a battalion of ISIL’s best troops, thereby securing their THIRD Medal of Honor. When in actuality they were assigned to the motor pool and spent 14 hours a day turning wrenches. (It’s also why the SEAL community set up their own database verifying who is and isn’t a SEAL. It’s gotten that bad.)

    Most people will fib just a bit about certain things. Most people won’t background check someone else because it’s small enough to where most people don’t care. But you have certain people who go out of their way to lie about absolutely stupid shit, then they do something dumb like put it in a book, or blab about it on tv. That’s when they get their asses get handed to them. Sometimes it results in positive outcomes. But I think a lot of times it goes down the memory hole.

  104. 104.

    Martin

    @Adam L Silverman: Yeah, that makes more sense to me. The way the story was set up doesn’t make sense to me. They ran into him late at night coming out of a Subway, yet the whole thing seems premeditated – masks, bleach, rope. Maybe he was targeted, but the story set it up that it was a chance encounter between the usual masked, bleach-carrying, night owl urban Trump voters and Smollett, and had way too much detail.

    So yeah, it’s obvious there was an incident, and maybe it was premeditated, but the TMZ account doesn’t read like something that could actually happen. All of the other reporting sounds right. Unknown substance. Slurs but not specifics, etc.

  106. 106.

    germy

    @Adam L Silverman: Politicians (or wanna-be politicians) always exaggerate their humble beginnings. Like rockstars and other showbiz people.

    No one wants to admit “My family was quite comfortable and I got tons of support to get me where I am today.”

    Mick Jagger’s “cockney” accent comes to mind.

  108. 108.

    Fair Economist

    @Martin:

    I’m not saying the incident didn’t happen, but the way its being reported sounds like a scene out of a really bad movie.

    We’ve been in a bad movie for years now. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve said “call in the script doctors; this plot is ridiculous”.

  109. 109.

    Adam L Silverman

    @rikyrah: I usually argue its an act of domestic terrorism, but we are both agreed it is a hate crime. I’m not denying that. You know me better than that.

  110. 110.

    Adam L Silverman

    @rikyrah: And while I know you’re tracking, important to remember that Senators Harris and Booker were the forces behind the Federal anti-lynching statute.

  111. 111.

    Leto

    @germy: Vanilla Ice comes to mind. Upper middle class white boy rappin’ about street life and what a thug he was. Not even taking into account the sampling issue, he’s a jack wagon!

  113. 113.

    trollhattan

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    It would be hilarious to run a side-by-side comparison of Abrams’ speech with Bobby Jindal’s manly response to Obama’s. Talk about reverse-launching a national political career.

  116. 116.

    Gravenstone

    @trollhattan: One hopes that whoever is setting up the televised aspect of her speech bears the Jindal disaster in mind as far as image and how not to present one.

  117. 117.

    Immanentize

    @Adam L Silverman:
    There are a lot of “projects” in the NYC area that are actually just middle class housing. Like Co-op City. Not swank, but definitely 50s-70s middle class

  120. 120.

    CliosFanBoy

    @catclub: there is a “Trust Women, Respect Choice” PL*T, and a “STOP GUN VIOLENCE” but that’s it. here are a lot more that RWers would like than the left.

  122. 122.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Trump continues to equivocate on whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election on his behalf,

    I wonder if it will ever dawn on Dumb Ass Donny that he was just the flavor of the week 2016 for the Russians in their game and in 2020 it be someone else to stir things up.

  124. 124.

    CliosFanBoy

    @Leto: That’s how you get Army Rangers who are also SEALs who were also A-10 pilots who single handedly defeated a battalion of ISIL’s best troops, thereby securing their THIRD Medal of Honor.

    you’ve seen my CV then, OK. ;)

  126. 126.

    The Moar You Know

    TMZ, whose owner Harvey Levin is all in on the President and runs his own kill and capture program to protect the President, did the initial reporting about the MAGA elements.

    @Adam L Silverman: I noticed that. I will bet money that the “red MAGA hats” are not in the police report and not anything that this poor young man actually saw or reported. I think Levin wants an explosion of outrage on the left, which they can then leverage into “the media lies about Trump all the time and the loony left will go along with anything”. Trump needs help and Levin knows it better than most. His numbers are tanking badly, and they’ve never cracked 50% to start with.

    Glad to see most outlets are not corroborating the likely bullshit.

    And if it’s not bullshit, we’ll find out soon enough anyway.

    ETA: should add in view of some other comments that there’s no doubt that this young man was attacked. But the details that are ONLY in the TMZ report cannot be corroborated.

  128. 128.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @germy:

    Me too. I volunteered hard for her in the 2018 GA Gube race, and will do so again for any elected office she cares to seek. Stacey is the real deal.

  129. 129.

    rikyrah

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Oh, I KNOW that you know it’s a hate crime, Silverman.
    It’s just those ‘ out there’, trying to find every reason in the western world to Whitesplain to my Black self, how I shouldn’t see a ROPE AROUND A BLACK PERSON’S NECK..as a hate crime.

  130. 130.

    joel hanes

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:

    Everybody stretches the truth at least a little bit. To make your resume look more impressive.

    No, goddamn it, everybody does not stretch the truth on resumes.

    And when I’m interviewing, if I find you’ve done it, you lose two points out of a possible ten just for that, which (since seven is the minimum for getting hired, and I have seen only one ten in thirty years if interviewing candidates) pretty much means you’re disqualified.

    There is no place in an engineering team for fudging results.

  131. 131.

    Dan B

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: My partner lived a couple blocks from “Howard and Sherrie”. He was on a first name basis. She, at least, was a piece of work. But Howard has huge baggage having sold the beloved Seattle Sonics to an Oklahoma creep who rapidly had them in Oklahoma. Seattle hasn’t had a pro basketball team since (12 years?).

    How would he negotiate with Putin, or China?

  134. 134.

    Yarrow

    @Adam L Silverman: I LOVE that Stacey Abrams is going to give the SOTU response. She’s a great pick! If Schumer is highlighting voting rights in his comments now, then she must be highlighting it in her response, which is excellent. It’s such an essential issue and she’s the perfect person to do that.

  135. 135.

    The Moar You Know

    you’ve seen my CV then, OK. ;)

    @Leto:
    @CliosFanBoy: He’s seen my father-in-law’s as well. Christ, that man lies. Never served a day, was a civilan contractor for a few decades but that’s as close as he came. Nowadays claims shit like he was working at Los Alamos on nuclear weapons at age 15. Sad thing is I’m not even sure he’s aware any of it is lies anymore.

  136. 136.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @trollhattan:

    Starting in 2011, every SOTU has had one response in English and one in Spanish. The Dems haven’t yet announced the en español responder yet, but I’d ❤️ love ❤️ it to be Beto!

  138. 138.

    CliosFanBoy

    @The Moar You Know: wow, that is sad.

    When I was a teen I was dragged along on a family trip with a larger group. One of the guys there was bragging about his WWII experiences as a pilot. I was really into WWII airplanes and so caught him out on some lies. He was not happy but I got some quiet hi-5s later from some of the other adults, who knew he was a liar and enjoyed seeing him embarrassed by a nerdy 14 year old. .

  140. 140.

    JaySinWA

    @trollhattan: Well he isn’t getting my vote, but somehow I don’t see all of western WA being that knowledgeable about Shultz. Aside from a few news stories about neighbor disputes, I don’t recall a lot of negative press. Nothing that would stick to the average voters mind.

  141. 141.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Kind of amazing to me that it was apparently a Republican initiative. I think it’s a great idea and I’m glad the Dems have continued the tradition.

  142. 142.

    The Moar You Know

    Starting in 2011, every SOTU has had one response in English and one in Spanish. The Dems haven’t yet announced the en español responder yet, but I’d ❤️ love ❤️ it to be Beto!

    @SiubhanDuinne: It should be someone who’s Spanish is good. Beto’s is about as good as mine, which is to say, atrocious and barely comprehensible to a Spanish speaker.

  143. 143.

    Manyakitty

    @Immanentize: I hoped they would find a way to do more than this, certainly. I mean, the IC knows a LOT. What, other than customary deference, is tying their hands?

  145. 145.

    rikyrah

    Kay says:
    January 29, 2019 at 3:10 pm

    For someone who is so concerned about Donald Trump he seems to spend all his time attacking Democrats.

    Maybe that’s the trick- he isn’t a Democrat running as an independent, he’s a Republican running as an independent. They’re too scared to primary Trump so they tapped this fool.

    You nailed it, Kay.

  147. 147.

    Yarrow

    @Martin: @Martin:

    I’m not upset with Trump. I’m upset with Congress for failing to perform their duty as a co-equal branch. I put this on Ryan and McConnell and the rest of them.

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:

    Yeah, the GOP Congress could have stopped Trump in his tracks, but they were either too afraid of his wrath vis tweet and his fans or they were just as nuts as he is and liked it.

    They didn’t perform their duty because they were compromised. Russia learned the weaknesses in our system of government and exploited them. They compromised leadership in Congress and that meant that when a traitor got to the White House the leaders wouldn’t stand up to him. There were side benefits, of course, like going along with Trump meant they got some policy things they wanted. But overall they can’t stand up to him without whatever they want to stay hidden being made public.

  148. 148.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @The Moar You Know:

    My mistake. I thought I had seen comments during his Senate campaign that he was fluent in Spanish (although not Hispanic himself) whereas Rafael Cruz’ Spanish was essentially nonexistent. In fact, I thought he kind of trolled Ted about it a couple of times. A Spanish-language debate challenge or something?

    Okay, scratch Beto. We should still have a nice lot of Latinx members to find an effective Spanish-speaker who can deliver our key messages.

  149. 149.

    The Midnight Lurker

    @JaySinWA: Give it a week.

    Ten bucks (or two half-half, venti lattes) says Shultz!! drops out in a couple of months. Quietly.

  150. 150.

    The Moar You Know

    wow, that is sad.

    @CliosFanBoy: Yes and no. He’s a Trump-loving psycho asshole who abandoned his wife and daughter when said daughter, my wife, was two days old. My wife never saw or heard from him again until her 20s. In the meantime, he married a woman six months older than my wife.

    His very existence is pathetic and horrifying, and lying about his non-existent military service, well…I’d almost be disappointed if he didn’t, you know? It’s just such a part of the package!

  154. 154.

    Aleta

    @rikyrah: Story from 1994
    http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19940103&slug=1887846
    Don’t know the full story. But …. someone who takes advantage of an old right-of-way and primitive lane through a public park, and has temporary permission to use some land as a staging area, and builds a driveway that looks like he owns the park itself …. really shouldn’t be telling Kamala Harris about what’s “not American.” His press releases say he’s a lifelong Democrat but he sounds like a (hiss, gnash) my-right-not-yours Libertarian.

  155. 155.

    The Moar You Know

    I thought I had seen comments during his Senate campaign that he was fluent in Spanish (although not Hispanic himself) whereas Rafael Cruz’ Spanish was essentially nonexistent. In fact, I thought he kind of trolled Ted about it a couple of times. A Spanish-language debate challenge or something?

    @SiubhanDuinne: Rafael can’t get rid of the Cuban accent, which would absolutely have killed him with Mexican/Central American-descended Hispanic voters. And his Spanish is certainly worse than Beto’s. So that would have worked for Beto. But we do and should have a native speaker of the language.

  156. 156.

    JaySinWA

    @The Midnight Lurker: True, he probably doesn’t have staying power. The negative stories are already starting to drop, bringing up past lies and bad behavior. I doubt he is ready for the spotlight. With any luck it will be a lesson to other vanity candidates.

  157. 157.

    The Midnight Lurker

    FYI – Beto O’Rourke DOES in fact, speak Spanish. I’ve seen him do it many times at public and private functions.

    Even Ted Cruz speaks a little Spanish. I seen him order huevos rancheros once.

    Siento.

  158. 158.

    Aleta

    @Aleta: I know there was at least one lawsuit about the park against the city and Schulz, and an appeal, brought by neighbors and Courtney then-Kobain. (A memorial of some kind to Kurt was in the park.) Don’t know what happened.

  160. 160.

    Adam L Silverman

    @The Moar You Know: Cruz’s mother is not Cuban. She’s from Delaware. He’s not fluent in Spanish and he spent significant time during his prime language learning years living apart from his father.

  162. 162.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @joel hanes:

    No, goddamn it, everybody does not stretch the truth on resumes.

    I didn’t mean it as in tell a giant whopper. I just meant that you paint yourself in the best possible light, while still telling the truth.

    For example, this job description:

    Efficiently and successfully managed budgets for a mid-tier manufacturing company.

    This hypothetical interviewee might have made some mistakes on the job. Nothing serious, but they wouldn’t highlight those if they could help it.

  163. 163.

    The Moar You Know

    Beto O’Rourke DOES in fact, speak Spanish. I’ve seen him do it many times at public and private functions.

    @The Midnight Lurker: Never said he didn’t. Just said it’s not the best. And it isn’t. He sounds like me on a good day.

    Even Ted Cruz speaks a little Spanish. I seen him order huevos rancheros once.

    I can hear it now…”hoooevohs rancherohs”

  166. 166.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @The Midnight Lurker:

    Even Ted Cruz speaks a little Spanish. I seen him order huevos rancheros once.

    He had to order some huevos since he doesn’t have any himself.

  168. 168.

    Aleta

    @joel hanes: Engineering students who don’t seem to* know what ‘not cheating’ is (on homeworks and late exams) give me the willies. So many stories (not just engineering) these days.

    * don’t admit it

  169. 169.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @joel hanes:
    Just to be clear I didn’t mean lying or fudging really important stuff. I just meant, essentially, selling yourself to potential employers well. I shouldn’t have said stretching the truth. It was a poor choice of words.

  170. 170.

    The Midnight Lurker

    @JPL: Every damn day I get up and click on BJ first. Why? Because our front pagers ROCK! The intelligence is ALWAYS better here! Even some of the jackals (not me, of course) have intelligent things to offer, and often add little, but important pieces of the puzzle.

    CNN sucks. And Chuck Todd… (fill in the BLANK).

  171. 171.

    FlipYrWhig

    @The Moar You Know:

    I will bet money that the “red MAGA hats” are not in the police report and not anything that this poor young man actually saw or reported.

    Ooh, I wonder if the idea is to try to link back to that obnoxious teenager who conservative media thought Pwned Tha Libs last week.

  172. 172.

    joel hanes

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:

    Efficiently and successfully managed budgets for a mid-tier manufacturing company.

    It would be a better resume without the first three words.

    Even better if you gave a dollar number for the size of the budget, or said what the product company manufactured.
    Even better if “managed” could truthfully be replaced with “responsible for”.
    Even better if “solely responsible for”

    I regret losing my aspirational detachment, but IMHO “everybody does it” is one of the most damning things a person can say.

  175. 175.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @The Moar You Know: My accent is pretty decent but I learned years ago not to sneer at people whose accent grates on me like nails on a blackboard but who are in fact communicating a hell of a lot better than I am.

  176. 176.

    Martin

    @Aleta: Oh, the only students that seem to genuinely not understand are foreign students from certain countries. Everyone else is just not admitting it.

    The bigger problem is that instructors need to take the issue of student work and assessment just as seriously as they ask the students to, and too many of them don’t. It’s not that most instructors don’t care – they do – but what they are often assigning and assessing either doesn’t make sense to the student as to why they are doing it that way, or is handled in a capricious manner. Students have changed. They don’t trust people in authority because holy fuck have the people in authority fucked everything up and are held unaccountable. So why should this be a one-sided relationship?

    Other than being an arbitrary gatekeeper from the thing the student is working toward, you need to demonstrate to them why that work matters if you want them to take it seriously. This is not spoiled millenials or gen Z, this is the people in charge continually failing and then rewarding themselves for their failure. We’re in the same bin as the VW execs that falsified emissions tests, every decision maker that has contributed to the climate change problem in order to save a few dollars, and Trump and the 40% of the public that still thinks he’s awesome. You can forgive them for completely losing faith in us.

  177. 177.

    eemom

    @joel hanes:

    my aspirational detachment

    I love this.

    And you’re absolutely right, of course.

    Young ‘un, you’ve probably heard the rule of fiction writing, “show, don’t tell”. It’s the same on a resume. You highlight your past “success” not by conclusory assertion, but by spelling out the facts that prove it, just as joel h says.

  178. 178.

    gene108

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    What’s truly surreal about this historic moment is how widely understood it is that Trump is committing treason on an ongoing basis, is under the thumb of Putin and acting in Russian interests against the US, and is completely open about that, and yet nothing of consequence seems to be happening.

    Because Republicans (1) don’t give a damn how much corruption a Republican President does in the White House, and (2) none of the corrupt bastards ever really pay a price. They keep their heads down for a bit and then end up with radio shows (G. Gordon Liddy), T.V. shows (Ollie North), and are invited back into subsequent Republican administrations as wizened elders (Abrams).

    As long as the media looks the other way on rampant Republican corruption, going to back 50+ years, to Nixon’s sabotaging of the 1968 Paris Peace Talks, there’s really not that’s going to change.

    The Reagan Administration holds the record for most people indicted and prosecuted for any administration, but the MSM only reports, these days, on the hagiography approved by the right-wingers.

  179. 179.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @joel hanes:
    That was how I was taught to write a job description in a resume in high school, which is fine for small part-time jobs. What I said was admittedly pretty stupid in my original comment. Sorry.

    Letting the facts speak for themselves is right.

  180. 180.

    WaterGirl

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    So in this analogy I guess the Trump crime syndicate is standing on the 20th floor, but the first floor has already been blown up.

    I think that’s a great analogy, and I find it somehow comforting.

    I had the thought the other day that Trump and his crime syndicate are the frogs in the water that is being heated to boiling point, and they are not recognizing how hot the water already is.

    As an aside, autocorrect tried to turn frogs into “gross” — do you supposed that even autocorrect knows how disgusting Trump and his cohorts are?

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