[RedSpawn]

Winstonm, on 2017-June-07, 20:49, said:

Here is a little from the Wikipedia page for Admiral Lyons:

Duly noted, but with an impressive 36 year military career in the Navy, I am willing to give him some latitude and discretion. He is definitely within conservative circles but if has intelligence to share, I welcome it.

Here are all of his op-ed pieces (he is very prolific):

See http://lionllc.com/op-ed-s.html

[Winstonm]

RedSpawn, on 2017-June-08, 07:22, said:

Duly noted, but with an impressive 36 year military career in the Navy, I am willing to give him some latitude and discretion. He is definitely within conservative circles but if has intelligence to share, I welcome it.

Here are all of his op-ed pieces (he is very prolific):

See http://lionllc.com/op-ed-s.html

Lyons to me is similar to Mike Flynn - Flynn's reputation was that he was good in his military job but that doesn't mean I would listen to him now about whether or not all of Islam is a threat.

[barmar]

Winstonm, on 2017-June-07, 10:11, said:

I would go one better - I don't care if the president knows more about Qatar than I as long as he is willing to acknowledge his ignorance and seek advice and counsel from people who do know about Qatar and then follows that advice.

What is truly dangerous is someone who believes he knows instinctively all that he needs to know, for example that Fender makes a great electric Qatar - they say so on InfoWars.

I can accept some ignorance of obscure issues, so maybe Qatar is excusable. But Trump didn't even know who Frederick Douglas was. I don't want a President who has to check Wikipedia or ask for advice from others every 5 minutes to understand what's going on -- he should at least be familiar with world history and politics.

"Who knew health care could be so complicated?" -- EVERYONE

[Winstonm]

RedSpawn, on 2017-June-08, 05:44, said:

Honestly, I am not the one defending a Former President who went on camera and lied to the nation unapologetically about a trifling tryst. He then told us in a grand jury hearing that the term "sexual relations" includes sexual intercourse but does not include the act of f311atio! Oh really?

And to add insult to injury, he gets a yellow backhoe and digs an even deeper hole for himself and suggests that the truth depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is. Seriously?

We got our own Humpty Dumpty creating his own reality and lexicon under oath, mind you, and that doesn't disturb you? I guess we should just dismiss his compelling need to hide this affair and assume that it can't be exploited by others for political gain?

I don't care about his sexual exploits in the White House. However, his alarming display of character afterwards and the unnecessary cover-up makes him a liability and breaches the public's faith in the integrity of the Office he assumes. He is compromised, biases be damned.

No one here supports what Bill Clinton did or his attempt to obfuscate his behavior. To continue to harp about Clinton or Obama or whomever is an attempt at playing the whatabout card: it is distraction from the focus of the thread. Donald Trump, who happens to be the current president.

[Vampyr]

Winstonm, on 2017-June-08, 08:13, said:

No one here supports what Bill Clinton did or his attempt to obfuscate his behavior. To continue to harp about Clinton or Obama or whomever is an attempt at playing the whatabout card: it is distraction from the focus of the thread. Donald Trump, who happens to be the current president.

Very true; Bill Clinton left office 16 years ago. How is anything that he did relevant now?

[ldrews]

Vampyr, on 2017-June-08, 08:24, said:

Very true; Bill Clinton left office 16 years ago. How is anything that he did relevant now?

Some people are still influenced by the "War of Northern Aggression" 150 years ago. Makes 16 years pale in comparison.

[RedSpawn]

Winstonm, on 2017-June-08, 08:13, said:

No one here supports what Bill Clinton did or his attempt to obfuscate his behavior. To continue to harp about Clinton or Obama or whomever is an attempt at playing the whatabout card: it is distraction from the focus of the thread. Donald Trump, who happens to be the current president.

I draw the parallels so people can see that they let their biases mitigate (color) their overall evaluation of people. It appears unfathomable almost conspiratorial that a compromised Former President may surrender to blackmail offers to maintain a closely guarded secret about his sexual peccadilloes. But fear, shame, and a strong desire to keep appearances can make us do a crazy number of unimaginable things.

So yes Trump is a liar as well. He just doesn't have that charisma, wit, disarming smile, handsome sense or humor, or an uncanny ability to play a saxophone that makes him appear more authentic, relatable, and forgivable.

[y66]

From We Could Have Been Canada by Adam Gopnik:

Quote

And what if it was a mistake from the start? The Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution, the creation of the United States of America—what if all this was a terrible idea, and what if the injustices and madness of American life since then have occurred not in spite of the virtues of the Founding Fathers but because of them?

Quote

The authoritarian reformers—the empire, in other words—have something to be said for them; and what is to be said for them is, well, Canada. Our northern neighbor’s relative lack of violence, its peaceful continuity, its ability to allow double and triple identities and to build a country successfully out of two languages and radically different national pasts: all these Canadian virtues are, counterintuitively, far more the legacy of those eighteenth-century authoritarian reformers than of the radical Whigs. This is literally the case; the United Empire Loyalists, as they were called, the “Tories” who fled from the States, did much to make Canada. More than that, Canada is the model liberal country because it did not have an American-style revolution, accepting instead the reformers’ values of a strong centralized, if symbolic, monarchy (the Queen is still there, aging, on the Canadian twenty-dollar bill); a largely faceless political class; a cautiously parliamentary tradition; a professionalized and noncharismatic military; a governing élite—an establishment.

The Canadian experience was not free of sin—as the indefensible treatment of the First Nations demonstrates—and was, as well, not free of the “colonial cringe” that bedevils so many countries overattached to the motherland. (London and Paris, in this view, meant too much for too long to too many ambitious Canadians.) Still, there is something to be said, however small, for government by an efficient elected élite devoted to compromise. The logic of Whig radicalism, in whatever form it takes, always allows charismatic figures undue play; there’s a reason that the big Whigs remain known today while the authoritarian reformers mostly sink into specialists’ memories of committees and cabinets.

[RedSpawn]

Vampyr, on 2017-June-08, 08:24, said:

Very true; Bill Clinton left office 16 years ago. How is anything that he did relevant now?

Someone suggested that Trump needs to go because he is a piece of slime and a liar. I just presented Exhibit A--a Former President who committed a series of slimy acts in the White House and lied under oath and to the American people about it, yet he remained in office.

But to be fair, that's a different kind of lying and a different kind of slimy, right? Darn that seductive charisma.

[Winstonm]

RedSpawn, on 2017-June-08, 11:06, said:

Someone suggested that Trump needs to go because he is a piece of slime and a liar. I just presented Exhibit A--a Former President who committed a series of slimy acts in the White House and lied under oath and to the American people about it, yet he remained in office.

But to be fair, that's a different kind of lying and a different kind of slimy, right? Darn that seductive charisma.

To be fair, I said I didn't like Trump because he is a slimeball. I did not say he should be impeached because of that, as slimeballism is not a high crime or misdemeanor.

He deserves impeachment for numerous other acts, including violation of the emolument clause and borderline if not actual obstruction of justice. Keep in mind, impeachment is a political act and as such clear crimes are not required - Congress determines what acts are high crimes and misdemeanors.

Furthermore, I had the opportunities in my life but the only time I cast a vote for a Clinton was last year, for Hillary. That was not so much that I thought her wonderful but that Trump was hideously flawed and a ridiculous choice. I have never been much of a fan of Bill Clinton or his presidency - I think if he was going to push a neoliberal agenda he had to fight more than equally hard for retraining and re-schooling the displaced workers that policy would affect - and he did not do that.

Trump is a slimeball of a different order - more like an organized crime family leader than a leader of the U.S.A. Totally unfit to lead anything but a chain gang.

[Winstonm]

One of the sidebars of this investigation is that Congress needs to try to find a way to insulate further the FBI and Justice Department from political influences. Whether Loretta Lynch telling Comey to call the Hillary investigation a "matter" and meeting on an airplane with Bill Clinton during Hillary's investigation or whether it's the president saying in private conversation "I hope you can let Flynn go," this kind of political pressure is antithesis to independent investigations.

[RedSpawn]

The American Experiment is Failing

https://medium.com/@...ng-eab7bdd327d7

It's a 10 minute read, but a very good read.

[RedSpawn]

Winstonm, on 2017-June-08, 12:24, said:

One of the sidebars of this investigation is that Congress needs to try to find a way to insulate further the FBI and Justice Department from political influences. Whether Loretta Lynch telling Comey to call the Hillary investigation a "matter" and meeting on an airplane with Bill Clinton during Hillary's investigation or whether it's the president saying in private conversation "I hope you can let Flynn go," this kind of political pressure is antithesis to independent investigations.

Agreed.

However, the problem is the rule of law appears to apply less and less the higher the defendant is on the federal tax bracket.

[rmnka447]

Winstonm, on 2017-June-08, 12:24, said:

One of the sidebars of this investigation is that Congress needs to try to find a way to insulate further the FBI and Justice Department from political influences. Whether Loretta Lynch telling Comey to call the Hillary investigation a "matter" and meeting on an airplane with Bill Clinton during Hillary's investigation or whether it's the president saying in private conversation "I hope you can let Flynn go," this kind of political pressure is antithesis to independent investigations.

Agreed, with the proviso that where "I hope you can let this go" falls needs to be determined by the Special Counsel because of possible different interpretations of that meeting. It may be that subsequent information turned up by the investigation turn it into something extremely serious or something just incidental rather than culpable. We'll just have to wait and see.

Former AG Loretta Lynch's attempt to have the FBI characterize the Hillary e-mail investigation as a "matter" is disturbing. Such a description would have been in lock step with what the Clinton campaign was calling the probe -- a clearly politically motivated purpose.

It was my fervent hope when President Trump was elected that he'd appoint an AG who was largely apolitical and would conduct the affairs of the Justice Department in a fair and impartial manner. I hoped the Justice Department wouldn't be tied to a political agenda as was apparent during the Obama years. I also hoped that he'd reaffirm that the FBI was independent, apolitical and would remain so. I'm not sure AG Jeff Sessions meets that criteria.

RedSpawn, on 2017-June-08, 13:11, said:

Agreed.

However, the problem is the rule of law appears to apply less and less the higher the defendant is on the federal tax bracket.

Or how politically connected one is. It's almost the same thing because if you've got beaucoup money and donate, you're virtually assured of being well connected.

[RedSpawn]

diana_eva, on 2017-June-07, 12:49, said:

Hacking is a lot simpler to do, in practice, than organizing global conspiracies and arranging with reptilian forces to take over the earth fwiw. But of course, hacking feels like fake news, much better to believe that a few select wide-open-minded people are capable of recognizing the "true" truth despite the crooked mainstream media, scientific communities, doctors, national security intelligence. Takes a special kind of vision to see through all that net of lies and conspiracies.

Must be....we have ANOTHER hack at a Qatari news agency ... Al-Jazeera...so let's add that to that long list of hacks I made yesterday.

https://www.theguard...-crisis-deepens

And with respect to whom is hacking Al-Jazeera....there is too much plausible deniability between Russia and UAE and Saudi Arabia. Something doesn't seem right. This is way too coordinated for a "diplomatic" attack. The Middle East Gulf parties block air, land, and sea ports for Qatar. Then just by coincidence an alleged 3rd party coincidentally tries to hack the news broadcaster who can keep the world posted on the latest developments of this crisis? Come on!

[diana_eva]

RedSpawn, on 2017-June-08, 17:15, said:

Must be....we have ANOTHER hack at a Qatari news agency ... Al-Jazeera...so let's add that to that long list of hacks I made yesterday.

https://www.theguard...-crisis-deepens

And with respect to whom is hacking Al-Jazeera....there is too much plausible deniability between Russia and UAE and Saudi Arabia. Something doesn't seem right. This is way too coordinated for a "diplomatic" attack. The Middle East Gulf parties block air, land, and sea ports for Qatar. Then just by coincidence an alleged 3rd party coincidentally tries to hack the news broadcaster who can keep the world posted on the latest developments of this crisis? Come on!

I have no idea what you are trying to say. Of course the hacking isn't accidental. What makes you think it's some 3rd party though?

[RedSpawn]

diana_eva, on 2017-June-08, 19:32, said:

I have no idea what you are trying to say. Of course the hacking isn't accidental. What makes you think it's some 3rd party though?

I don't think the hacking of Al Jazeera was 3rd party but I was being sarcastic and saying allegedly to cover my bases. This is not getting much traction in the US as the Comedy hearings, oops I mean the Comey hearings are taking center stage. Freudian slip there...

[y66]

From by The Daily 202: Trump White House might learn more from studying Whitewater than Watergate as Comey testifies by James Hohmann and Joanie Greve:

Quote

“The Trump administration has yet to understand how the campaign investigation is likely to be the gateway to the inner workings of the Trump empire,” writes Democratic wise man Doug Sosnik, who was a senior adviser to Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2000. “My lesson from those days: Trump and his advisers are in way over their heads and unprepared for what awaits them. … During the campaign and transition, the world of Trump remained a spider web of dealmakers whose mission was to expand the family’s fortune, and perhaps their own. Anyone who played in this environment is now legally vulnerable. … The Comey hearing presents the next big test for Trump. His response will either accelerate the downward spiral or signal the administration’s effort to reboot and increase its odds of survival.”

[y66]

re: the Qatar story, Max Fisher and Amanda Taub offered this secret decoder ring today.

[barmar]

RedSpawn, on 2017-June-08, 10:48, said:

I draw the parallels so people can see that they let their biases mitigate (color) their overall evaluation of people. It appears unfathomable almost conspiratorial that a compromised Former President may surrender to blackmail offers to maintain a closely guarded secret about his sexual peccadilloes. But fear, shame, and a strong desire to keep appearances can make us do a crazy number of unimaginable things.

So yes Trump is a liar as well. He just doesn't have that charisma, wit, disarming smile, handsome sense or humor, or an uncanny ability to play a saxophone that makes him appear more authentic, relatable, and forgivable.

But it's a false comparison. It's not enough to say that both Trump and Clinton lied, you have to look at how much they lied, what they lied about, why they lied, and what the consequences were.

Trump has only been in office less than 5 months, and it feels like he's lied more than Clinton did in his entire two terms, and about things that are far more important to the country than extramarital sex.