So the conclusion is others learn from their mistakes, Donald throws a strop and blames everyone else.

Next Batter Please….

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42910377

A Republican-drafted memo alleging FBI bias against US President Donald Trump will be released on Friday, a senior White House official says.

Mr Trump is expected to declassify the document and send it to Congress for release, according to US media.

The FBI has voiced “grave concerns” about the release of the memo, which is expected to have redactions.

It reportedly says the FBI misled an intelligence court to obtain a warrant to spy on the Trump election campaign.

Democrats say the memo is a ruse to discredit a federal inquiry into links between President Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.

A crude attempt to influence public opinion and undermine the investigation by the FBI. It’s very obvious but his ever decreasing lunatic fringe base will lap it up along with the cuts to their healthcare and not getting anything from the tax cuts for the rich. Now does this revolution prefer the Guillotine or the Firing Squad?

ninfan wrote:

And you still don’t get it do you?
Trumps said something that’s quite literally true (would you really dispute that including global interest, internet viewing etc. the numbers surpass previous figures)  but put it out there with a disputed figure behind it.

Let me remind you what he wrote:

“45.6 million people watched, the highest number in history.” The number is centre stage of his claim. Is that quite literally true? Do you quite literally understand what literally means?

Though of course this is just one example of the many times Donnie has blatantly lied and you’ve rushed in to defend him by obfuscating. Because you like obfuscating. I have to admit I’m surprised you’re still here, I’d have expected you to go for the job when Spicer left – you’d do a much better job than Sanders.

This is well worth a read
http://www.stonekettle.com/2018/01/dirty-tricks.html

Before I comment – my personal opinion is that I hate Trump and everything he stands for.

However – ninfan has a point. It doesn’t matter whether he was wrong or not about the biggest audience ever. As ninfan quite rightly points out, the democrats/left will be enraged, the middle will shrug and the right will lap it up. Either way he’s got the coverage he wanted.

Having spent quite a bit of time in the US last year, the sentiment seems to be ‘he’s better than the alternative’. To most (me included) he’s a racist, sexist, corrupt man who is making a mockery of everything the whitehouse and US government stands for. Not to mention a danger to the rest of the world. But for the majority of people in the US he’s an improvement over what they had. He’s spun this so well that he could probably shoot a baby in the face and get away with it. Fake news. Corrupt media. To his supporters if he passes one bill out of 100 he’s a success.

We can’t get our head round it, similar to us not being able to understand their desire for guns. But to a lot of Americans, making America great again takes priority over building foreign relations or reducing environmental impact and on that front he’s golden.

He’ll make a second term unless the Russia stuff means he’s impeached or shot. If that happens it’ll be bedlam and he’ll go down as a martyr. Sadly I think we’re stuck with him for the foreseeable

He’ll make a second term unless the Russia stuff means he’s impeached or shot.

Give it a few days for the memo to hit. The Russian stuff is about to take a whole new meaning.

for the majority of people in the US he’s an improvement over what they had.

How come he did not win the popular vote ?Have you seen his record breaking popularity scores?

He’ll make a second term

I will be surprised if he last that long ,surprised if he stands, and amazed if he then wins

However – ninfan has a point. It doesn’t matter whether he was wrong or not about the biggest audience ever. As ninfan quite rightly points out, the democrats/left will be enraged, the middle will shrug and the right will lap it up. Either way he’s got the coverage he wanted.

I was there last year, in a very very red bit of Utah, the support is flagging in many areas. If he doesn’t deliver they will not support him.

He’ll make a second term unless the Russia stuff means he’s impeached or shot. If that happens it’ll be bedlam and he’ll go down as a martyr. Sadly I think we’re stuck with him for the foreseeable

Current predictions is he will end up costing them control of at least one house. The Republican Party will be the ones who decide if he is going to take them there, if he loses both then there will be impeachment as the Dems could easily have the numbers.

I truly hope it does mean he’s gone, but I fear for them if that does happen – it’ll play right into the spin he’s created and in turn there will be some very angry people, stirred up by the media.

flange wrote:

However – ninfan has a point. It doesn’t matter whether he was wrong or not about the biggest audience ever. As ninfan quite rightly points out, the democrats/left will be enraged, the middle will shrug and the right will lap it up. Either way he’s got the coverage he wanted.

It’s distraction pure and simple. I suspect he also believes his own BS and it’s nowhere near that calculated. Though actually looking at the figures and what ordinary people are saying, ninfan is wrong about the middle – they’re moving away from Donnie, and I expect the realisation of the difficult relationship he has with the truth has contributed to that.

In any case, ninfan is spinning it here – his main point is apparently that Donnie wasn’t lying, despite the key sentence being “45.6 million people watched, the highest number in history”. His argument that Donnie was including people watching on the internet (despite quoting TV viewing figures) is pretty much par for the course for ninfan’s defences of the indefensible.

And how many watched it for the comedy value? The Morecambe and Wise show is one of the most watched shows in UK history, but I wouldn’t want them running the country (although they’d probably do a better job than May or Trump).

You have to put it all in the context of Trump having a personality disorder with narcissistic tone.  Whatever he says is true no matter the evidence.  what he wants to happen will and must happen.  When seen thru this prism then Trump becomes obvious and easy to understand

<span style=”color: #444444; font-size: 12px; background-color: #eeeeee;”>It’s distraction pure and simple.</span>

I don’t think it is, when Donald took office he said something like “i will never lie to you” or something like that. What he meant I think, is that he will always tell his base what he thinks in a straightforward way without any of the “politician stuff” those other people put in their speeches. His base are a group of people who feel they’ve been belittled, patronised, and taken for granted, and they like that very much.

The difference however is that that doesn’t mean he should be allowed to get away with whoppers, it’s just that there’s a group of folk that don’t care, they don’t need to be distracted.

Its not deliberate lying and certainly not done for a specific effect.  ~to Trump every word he says is true – thats a part of the personality disorder.  He simply cannot say anything that is untrue ( in his mind) so that those calling him out for being wrong must themselves be wrong hence ” fake news”

Personality disorder or not, the other thing that springs to mind is the collection of young loaded socialites around here who have managed about 12 months of marriage, take 2 people who nobody has ever said no to and put them together and you get fireworks, Trump’s business model is he is right and then he will just get out of it with bankruptcy, it’s his only play in the game. Now people dare to say no to them, his response fire them! But he can’t he is now having to work to rules he doesn’t get in a game he doesn’t understand. You can see the strain.

I know ninfan etc will take great joy in picking out individual events that other presidents have made mistakes in, Trump does on nearly every day.

to Trump every word he says is true

Just like ninfan he is not as dumb as believe the shit he comes out with.
the best explanation i read was he says what is needed to “win” the debate at that point in time and then does this at the next debate. The fact there is no consistency is irrelevant as he won.

IMHO he know his fake news claim is BS but it wins bigly with his base – ie morons who dot understand the fact based world

Junkyard

its how a personality disorder like Trumps works – he does believe everything he says ‘cos in his mind he is infallible therefore everyone that claims he is wrong is lying to him.

He simply is incapable of believing he can be wrong

Or he it just falls out of his brain once he said it.

As an aside I am grateful for Ninfan for his insight. It’s easy to disagree with someone ideologically, but if we abandon basic civilized discourse then it all becomes a mess. I do wish that Enfht would step up and respond to my previous post replying to them.

The comparison between the US’s nuclear policy change under Trump and Reagan is fascinating – Reagan started out as hawkish on defence, apparently it took several years for his attitude to change but I’ve read a lot of anecdotal reports that he became a passionate supporter of disarmament. Now the policy of basing intermediate range tactical nuclear weapons in Germany and the UK while expanding research into SDI was to force the USSR into an expensive doctrinal change that would put huge pressure on it’s own economy. In the background, US diplomats – remember that the US diplomatic corps wasn’t hollowed out as it is today – manoeuvred behind the scenes to entice the Soviets to the negotiating table. Unfortunately, the post Soviet doctrine has also been revised toward an escalatory and automatic strategic posture hand in glove with the use of battlefield tactical nukes as a matter of course.

http://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/russias-nuclear-doctrine/

Ironically, Russia’s stance has been in part dictated by the expense of modernising conventional forces and is regarded as a stop gap measure until such modernisation has been completed.

Which leads me to Trump (and I mean the GOP) and their strategy. Clearly, western powers have little answer for the asymmetric warfare being waged by states like Russia, China, North Korea, etc. In order to plug that gap, they’re investing heavily in conventional forces and an aggressive nuclear doctrine. Nations that are ostensibly NATO partners such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Turkey are rapidly lurching towards Russia-friendly authoritarianism and America seems to have no answer to this. More worryingly still, they also seem to be lurching towards authoritarianism at the behest of a relatively small, but extremely wealthy ultra-conservative donors to the GOP.

This from 2013 is quite interesting: http://www.politicususa.com/2013/09/26/republican-debt-ceiling-demands-straight-koch-brothers.html

The lifting of a cap on individual donations to political parties (back in 2009, I believe) has meant that a small group of spendy individuals can turn off the funding to a political party at will and control policy agenda. This is why we’re seeing GOP politicians telling us that there’s no such thing as climate change for example and why environmental protection is being rolled back.

Which leads me to Trump (and I mean the GOP) and their strategy. Clearly, western powers have little answer for the asymmetric warfare being waged by states like Russia, China, North Korea, etc. In order to plug that gap, they’re investing heavily in conventional forces and an aggressive nuclear doctrine.

Enough reading around tells us that Trump and the GOP are struggling to coexist, there has been a well documented trail from before Trump appeared that Sessions and Bannon saw the death of the republican party, they are literally dying out, immigration for on is eroding the majorities they have. The 2 were looking for a candidate to push through something to give them a last hurrah to stave off the inevitable end.

On the <span style=”color: #444444; font-size: 12px;”>authoritarianism</span><span style=”color: #444444;”><span style=”font-size: 12px;”> as said above it’s also Trump’s way, it only works while he controls the narrative, the bluster to sue everyone (before dropping it and paying out when it’s all gone quiet) to the way that the brand is everything. The only way to get rid of the uncomfortable voices is to silence them or try an discredit them, the analogue man meets the internet world, as good as it’s been to him it allows people to get the truth out if you care to read it.</span></span>

I don’t think Trump cares either way about Climate Science, but there’s no doubt that it’s a politicised and partisan subject in the States.

<span style=”font-size: 12.8px;”>If Ninfan wants to observe the niceties of conversation, then he can do that, it’s entirely up to him. If he wants to act like a troll, he can do that also, it’s entirely up to him. He’s been banned for derailing almost every political thread he joins on any number of occasions. What he can’t do is act like a troll, and then whine about the fact that no-one takes him seriously when he attempts to make some petty point of obfuscation or autistically narrow point of historical accuracy, when he’s clearly just on a wind up  (like his ill advised attempt at defending the Nazi Party for not actually inventing Zyklon B). Personally I’ll respond to him in the way I find him 99% of the time.</span>

TJ I am not doing a cod psychology discussion about a diagnosis of a man neither of us have ever met and if we did either of is qualified to diagnose.

He simply is incapable of believing he can be wrong

Glass houses dude glass houses

Ninfan never acts seriously – he as an act, like the trump, and when he has to he will try to sound rational to hook anyone into his little scribbles. Trump craves adulation ninfan craves attention.
He has no serious points to make ever he just has a number of methods to try and catch lefty [ everyone not a nazi] fish into debating so he can prod some more.
Both are pretty effective with their MO as even those who can see it engage with it

Junkyard – its the opinion of a number of prominent US psychologists and its actually really obvious.  Trump simply is not wired up the same way as most of us and is actually incapable of accepting he can ever be wrong

Its is not a mental illness – its a wiring fault

According to DSM-5, individuals with NPD have most (at least five) or all of the symptoms listed below (generally without commensurate qualities or accomplishments).
<p class=”rteindent1″>1 Grandiosity with expectations of superior treatment by others.</p>
<p class=”rteindent1″>2 Fixated on fantasies of power, success, intelligence, attractiveness, etc.</p>
<p class=”rteindent1″>3 Self-perception of being unique, superior, and associated with high-status people and institutions.</p>
<p class=”rteindent1″>4 Needing constant admiration from others.</p>
<p class=”rteindent1″>5 Sense of entitlement to special treatment and to obedience from others.</p>
<p class=”rteindent1″>6 Exploitative of others to achieve personal gain.</p>
<p class=”rteindent1″>7 Unwilling to empathize with others’ feelings, wishes, or needs.</p>
<p class=”rteindent1″>8 Intensely jealous of others and the belief that others are equally jealous of them.</p>
<p class=”rteindent1″>9 Pompous and arrogant demeanor.</p>

I agree that relations between Trump and the GOP are strained, it’s worth remembering that Bannon has been a driving force behind selecting a new cadre of candidates who fit his ideology and not the traditional GOP way of doing things – Roy Moore being a prime example.

While we react with incredulity at Trump, we must remember that the GOP is quietly pushing a new agenda even more radical than the PNAC (Project for a New American Century) programme we saw during the early 2000s under Bush. There’s long term planning that’ll take at least a decade to come to fruition.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Trump jettisoned by his own party before he becomes a liability. I doubt very much that he’ll be in a position to stand for another term. The litmus test will be how badly the Republican will be mauled in the mid-terms – a large number of Republican representatives are opting for retirement, more so than usual so expect ultra-conservative, ultra-corporate candidates with a radical agenda.

Junkyard wrote:

He has no serious points to make ever he just has a number of methods to try and catch lefty [ everyone not a nazi] fish into debating so he can prod some more.
Both are pretty effective with their MO as even those who can see it engage with it

Guilty. But then I enjoy taking the piss out of him – and I suspect having the piss taken isn’t exactly the engagement he’s after.

true but its pointless as like trump he knows what he is doing and he knows how to prod ad its not that hard to do…..almost irresistibly

PS the signature bit of the app does not work as i added this to than you

aracer made this all possible
thanks for doing it.

I agree that relations between Trump and the GOP are strained, it’s worth remembering that Bannon has been a driving force behind selecting a new cadre of candidates who fit his ideology and not the traditional GOP way of doing things – Roy Moore being a prime example.

As I said before don’t forget Sessions, there is a reason he got AG and will not resign.

https://www.npr.org/2017/03/09/519415023/what-is-steve-bannon-and-jeff-sessions-shared-vision-for-remaking-america

BAZELON: Well, Bannon and Sessions share an ideology that – they often talk about it as being anti-immigrant. And it is. But I think that it’s broader than that. I think they really see the chief internal threat of the country as being the way the country’s demographics are changing. We’re going to go from being a country with about 30 percent of minority voters to about 40 percent in a few presidential cycles. And that – unless the Republican Party changes its platform, that will be a challenge to Republicans and to Trump’s base of support, which is 90 percent white.

But I also think there’s a kind of deeper cultural discomfort with the growing population of people who are not white in this country, coming from a kind of traditional white sense of propriety of what America is about. That is what’s motivating Sessions and Bannon, and that it’s part of what’s driving the more extreme elements of this presidency.

GROSS: So the goal is to keep America more white and Christian?

BAZELON: Well, yes. I think, bluntly speaking, that’s the case. So Sessions, for example, on Bannon’s radio show a couple of years ago was talking about an earlier period in American history of high immigration in the beginning of the 20th century. And he talked about that as a radical time. And he used that in a kind of pejorative sense. And then he said that the solution was the 1924 immigration quotas Congress passed and that those quotas were, quote, “good for America.”

So the 1924 immigration quotas barred immigration from most of Asia. And they tightly capped the number of people who could come from Italy, the number of Jews, people from the Middle East and Africa. So we’re not talking about a kind of neutral form of immigration restrictions. We’re talking about a particular way of trying to hold on to a vision of America, the kind of traditional Christian European demographic.

GROSS: So you say that Sessions and Bannon see immigration and the country’s changing demographics as America’s chief internal threat. What is the threat?

BAZELON: Well, I think from their point of view, there’s a kind of cultural threat going on. So one of the things Bannon said before the election was that he was worried that so many of the CEOs in Silicon Valley were from South Asia or from Asia.

And then he said a country is more than an economy, we’re a civic society. That seems to imply that if we have too many minorities and foreign-born people here, we’re not going to have the same kind of civic society that we’ve had in the past, that there is a kind of damage or fraying that will be happening. And that’s a, you know, very distinct idea of why you want to prevent immigration.

Trump is a tool in their game, unfortunately the instruction got lost in the post and what they thought was some simple play dough turns out to be a hand grenade.

Thank you @mikewsmith, that’s interesting reading. Certainly there’s a great deal of anti-immigrant sentiment being whipped up, having perused Breitbart and the Drudge Report myself it’s notable that anti-migrant and anti-welfare agendas which more often than not lurch into blatant falsehood are being pushed heavily.

I refer back to Newt Gingrich’s famous TV interview when he stated that crime was on the increase in America. The interviewer corrected him, but Gingrich responded that Americans don’t feel safer regardless of the statistics. Very telling.

Junkyard wrote:

PS the signature bit of the app does not work as i added this to than you

I haven’t bothered fixing it – I didn’t know anybody used it (I had my knuckles rapped when I tried doing stuff with it 😉 ) Maybe next release as it should be a 5/10 minute fix.

There’s a new update though in the main forum whinge thread – I’ve made the links “work” from the list of your replies.

“Well, yes. I think, bluntly speaking, that’s the case. So Sessions, for example, on Bannon’s radio show a couple of years ago was talking about an earlier period in American history of high immigration”

The 1600s?

@Junky

Ninfan never acts seriously – he as an act, like the trump, and when he has to he will try to sound rational to hook anyone into his little scribbles. Trump craves adulation ninfan craves attention.
He has no serious points to make ever he just has a number of methods to try and catch lefty [ everyone not a nazi] fish into debating so he can prod some more.
Both are pretty effective with their MO as even those who can see it engage with it

U OK Hun?

back to God Emperor Trump (PBUH) is it really news to anyone that the establishment of the Republican Party don’t like him and didn’t want him? Did none of you follow the primaries?

Nope not news at all, it’s obvious to us all there is a massive split in there. It will be one of the things that brings him down.

as far as I know ninfan withering contempt is not fatal…you are living proof of that

Even your “insults” are tired cliches these days…what has happened to you fella?

“it’s obvious to us all there is a massive split in there. It will be one of the things that stops him winning the primaries/stops him winning the election/stops him being inaugurated/means he won’t last a year/won’t last the term/stops him getting re-elected/won’t last two terms*”

*Delete as appropriate

FTFY

Which leads me to Trump (and I mean the GOP) and their strategy. Clearly, western powers have little answer for the asymmetric warfare being waged by states like Russia, China, North Korea, etc. In order to plug that gap, they’re investing heavily in conventional forces and an aggressive nuclear doctrine. Nations that are ostensibly NATO partners such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Turkey are rapidly lurching towards Russia-friendly authoritarianism and America seems to have no answer to this.

Im torn there, you need to see Russian actions in the light of Georgia and Ukraine – Eastern expansion ideas of the EU (and to a lesser extent European NATO members) in many ways amounted to pissing in Russia’s back yard. Not a particuarly popular interpretation around these parts:  http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-shifrinson-russia-us-nato-deal–20160530-snap-story.html

Yep the EU and Nato are expanding into the east, yep it’s pissing off Russia by offering the countries membership without invasion, Russia is now in a real 3rd/4th place on the world stage which is why they are so keen to destabilise the US and the EU. A strong EU can stand up to the bullying tactics over oil and gas and can help the former USSR states more than Russia can.

Russia is a broken state with serious internal problems, and we all know the best way to deal with those…

Anyway back to today’s news and the Rep/Trump team are going for the inadmissible evidence defense WRT Carter Page, problem is they are not playing the right game, the intel was gathered, the stuff was found. The more Trump goes after the FBI the thinner the ice gets.

Might get a case of these sent to Trump Tower

Why bother when so few of the lefties on here have the intelligence to hold a halfway decent conversation?

Do you actually believe, Ninny, that everyone, including me, who doesn’t have your obsessive love-affair with Trump is then a left-wing Commie Pinko?
Because I can, most definitely assure you, that you are profoundly wrong.

Those Peterson memes are going to outlive us all.