Liberal Forum

Misty » 21 Feb 2020 2:41 pm » wrote:Inexcusable Pardons

There is no such thing in the Christian era - the quality of mercy is not strained.

It falleth like gentle rain on both those who give and those who receive its gentle bkessings

solon » 22 Feb 2020 1:04 am » wrote:It falleth like gentle rain on both those who give and those who receive its gentle bkessings

Donald Trump is merely an actor, playing his part. The world is but his stage.

William McRaven: If good men like Joe Maguire can’t speak the truth, we should be deeply afraid.

William H. McRaven, a retired Navy admiral, was commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command from 2011 to 2014. He oversaw the 2011 Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden.

Edmund Burke, the Irish statesman and philosopher, once said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Over the course of the past three years, I have watched good men and women, friends of mine, come and go in the Trump administration — all trying to do something — all trying to do their best.

Jim Mattis, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, Sue Gordon, Dan Coats and, now, Joe Maguire, who until this week was the acting director of national intelligence.

I have known Joe for more than 40 years.

There is no better officer, no better man and no greater patriot.

He served for 36 years as a Navy SEAL.

In 2004, he was promoted to the rank of rear admiral and was chosen to command all of Naval Special Warfare, including the SEALs.

Those were dark days for the SEALs.

Our combat losses from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were the highest in our history, and Joe and his wife, Kathy, attended every SEAL funeral, providing comfort and solace to the families of the fallen.

But it didn’t stop there.

Not a day went by that the Maguires didn’t reach out to some Gold Star family, some wounded SEAL, some struggling warrior.

Every loss was personal, every family precious.

When Joe retired in 2010, he tried the corporate world.

But his passion for the Special Operations soldiers was so deep that he left a lucrative job and took the position as the president of the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, a charity that pays for educating the children of fallen warriors.

In 2018, Joe was asked to be the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, a job he knew well from his last assignment as a vice admiral.

He accepted, but within months of his arrival came the announcement of Coats’s departure as director of national intelligence.

Maguire didn’t seek to fill the job; he was asked to do it by the president.

At first he declined, suggesting that Sue Gordon, Coats’s deputy, would be better suited for the job.

But the president chose Maguire.

And, like most of these good men and women, he came in with the intent to do his very best, to follow the rules, to follow the law and to follow what was morally right.

Within a few weeks of taking the assignment, he found himself embroiled in the Ukraine whistleblower case.

Joe told the White House that, if asked, he would testify, and he would tell the truth.

He did. In short order, he earned the respect of the entire intelligence community.

They knew a good man was at the helm.

A man they could count on, a man who would back them, a man whose integrity was more important than his future employment.

But, of course, in this administration, good men and women don’t last long.

Joe was dismissed for doing his job: overseeing the dissemination of intelligence to elected officials who needed that information to do their jobs.

As Americans, we should be frightened — deeply afraid for the future of the nation.

When good men and women can’t speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security — then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

Termin8tor » 21 Feb 2020 3:23 pm » wrote:

Misty » 21 Feb 2020 3:10 pm » wrote:QUESTIONS CLEM REFUSES TO ANSWER

1. Why is the president trying to suppress intelligence concerning a security threat that the ODNI is required by law to be briefed to Congress from being briefed to Congress?

2. Why was Lt. Col. Vindman's brother frog marched out of the WH by security?

3. Why was a woman who orchestrated a scheme to steal 200 million dollars from Medicare granted clemency by Sniffles, after serving only 8 years of a 35 year sentence and without paying a penny of the court ordered 87 million dollar restitution?

I've answered two of them, liar.

No you haven't liar.

Termin8tor » 21 Feb 2020 3:23 pm » wrote:And you've refused to answer the following.
Why didn't the Impeachment Clowns cite one single crime you've accused Trump of in their Bill?
They were desperate for anything they could use against Trump.
Run, Forrest, run!

I have answered it.
You just don't like my answer.

A president does not have to actually violate a specific statute to be impeached.
There were no statutes on the books when the Constitution was written.

With the next election looming, the House decided to limit their articles of impeachment to matters concerning Trump's abuse of power and obstruction of Congress involving the Ukraine matter.

There was no need to charge him with what you call a 'crime' since both of those are impeachable offenses.

If they had more time they could have included articles of Impeachment having to do with his violation of campaign finance laws in the case of the Stormy Daniel's hush money payments and his obstruction of justice in the Mueller investigation, both of which you won't even acknowledge are crimes.

Why Obstruction of Congressional Investigations Could Be Grounds for Impeachment.

That is the last time I will respond to that idiotic question.
I don't care how many more times you ask it.

Termin8tor » 22 Feb 2020 4:00 pm » wrote:

William McRaven: If good men like Joe Maguire can’t speak the truth, we should be deeply afraid.

Trump wasn't angry with Maguire for speaking the truth. He was angry because Maguire briefed liars like Schiff before he briefed the elected president of the country.

Where did you get that ****?
Sniffles did not want Congress to be briefed at all, either before or after him.

Whether you like it or not, Schiff is the Chairman of the House Intel Committee, and the ODNI is required by law to brief the intel committees on possible security threats.

Liars like Schiff......ROFL.
That's a riot coming from someone who worships the biggest liar to ever hold an elected office in this country, and maybe any other country ever.

Termin8tor » 22 Feb 2020 4:44 pm » wrote: (The usual pack of disinformation, lies, smears and just plain ****.)

This is how the GOP operates.
They cheat.



The Republican National Committee is sending documents labeled “2020 Congressional District Census” to people in California and across the country just weeks before the start of the official nationwide count of the country’s population.

Critics say the misleading mailers — in envelopes labeled “Do Not Destroy. Official Document” and including a lengthy questionnaire on blue-tinted paper similar to the type used by the real census — are designed to confuse people and possibly lower the response rate when the count begins in mid-March.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/ ... ssion=true

I knew this was coming.
What a **** coward.

Trump campaign warns debate commission the president may not participate if process is not ‘fair’

Senior Trump campaign officials lobbied the nonpartisan presidential debate commission last month over the makeup of its board of directors and its moderator choices, pushing for a process they deemed as “fair” and warning that the president may not participate if he is not satisfied, according to people familiar with the meeting.
[.......]
Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale complained to Frank Fahrenkopf the co-chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, that so many members of the board of directors were, in his estimation, against the president and that he wanted the commission to choose moderators that were viewed as fair by the president’s team.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... dkshLEn6mg

He doesn't want to face real journalists.
He wants sycophants like Hannity or Laura Ingraham to moderate the debates.

Misty » 23 Feb 2020 12:30 pm » wrote:I knew this was coming.
What a **** coward.


He doesn't want to face real journalists.
He wants sycophants like Hannity or Laura Ingraham to moderate the debates.

EXACTLY that he didnt like the way Hillary wiped he floor with him and exposed his blatant stupidity and reliance on TOTAL LIES. He was made a fool out of last time and THIS TIME he will demand only Trump Psycophants do the moderating. Someone who will ask Trump how fast Dems will nationalize the means of production then ask the Dem WHEN he stopped beating his wife

Trump wants to block Bolton’s book, claiming most conversations are classified.

President Trump has directly weighed in on the White House review of a forthcoming book by his former national security adviser, telling his staff that he views John Bolton as “a traitor,” that everything he uttered to the departed aide about national security is classified and that he will seek to block the book’s publication, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

The president’s private arguments stand in contrast to the point-by-point process used to classify and protect sensitive secrets and appears to differ from the White House’s public posture toward Bolton’s much-anticipated memoir.

The National Security Council warned Bolton last month that his draft “appears to contain significant amounts of classified information,” some of it top secret, but pledged to help him revise the manuscript and “move forward as expeditiously as possible.”

“We will do our best to work with you to ensure your client’s ability to tell his story in a manner that protects U.S. national security,” Ellen Knight, senior director of the council’s records office, wrote in a Jan. 23 letter to Bolton’s attorney.

But the president has insisted to aides that Bolton’s account of his work in Trump’s White House, “The Room Where It Happened,” should not see the light of day before the November election, according to the two people familiar with the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House deliberations.

Trump has told his lawyers that Bolton should not be allowed to publish any of his interactions with him about national security because they are privileged and classified, these people said.

He has also repeatedly brought up the book with his team, asking whether Bolton is going to be able to publish it, they said.

Trump told national television anchors on Feb. 4 during an off-the-record lunch that material in the book was “highly classified,” according to notes from one participant in the luncheon.

He then called him a “traitor.”

“We’re going to try and block the publication of the book,” Trump said, according to the notes. “After I leave office, he can do this. But not in the White House.”

“I give the guy a break. I give him a job. And then he turns on me,” Trump added during the West Wing lunch. “He’s just making things up.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... dTiePa1X04

If as Sniffles said, the stuff in Bolton's book is all made up, how can it be classified?

Termin8tor » 23 Feb 2020 12:39 pm » wrote:

Your "answer" is self evident ****.

You are a LIAR. That IDIOTIC talking point has been answered OVER and OVER. TRAITOR

Democrats absolutely would have cited any crime they thought Trump had committed.

LIAR. It has been explained to you. Our law comes from British common law and the TERM High Crimes and misdemeanours comes from British common law of the time. SEPERATE from criminal law. They DID show the crime of bribery just spelled it out and they went with what the IMPEACHMENT law of the TIME made clear that ABUSE OF POWER was the quintessential impeachment crime. This was shown you WITH CITATIONS to educational sources. You ran away like the GUTLESS COWARD you are then just kept repeating this sad and STUPID talking point OVER AND OVER like the GUTLESS COWARD you are


I deleted the rest since it is you REPEATING a talking point already DEBUNKED at least a DOZEN TIMES TRAITOR

solon » 23 Feb 2020 12:51 pm » wrote:

Termin8tor » 23 Feb 2020 12:39 pm » wrote:Your "answer" is self evident ****.

You are a LIAR. That IDIOTIC talking point has been answered OVER and OVER. TRAITOR

I had to lock this thread again.
The minute I unlocked it he started posting that same stupid question again.
I have answered it several times but he refuses to accept my answer.
He's as crazy as a **** loon.

Termin8tor » 23 Feb 2020 12:37 pm » wrote:

Misty » 22 Feb 2020 4:49 pm » wrote:Questions RichClem refuses to answer.

I answered two of them.
And you censored both, psycho.

LIAR!

Termin8tor » 23 Feb 2020 12:39 pm » wrote:

Misty » 22 Feb 2020 4:18 pm » wrote:

THE GAPING ASSHOLE SAID: Why didn't Impeachment Clowns charge Trump with one single crime you've accused him of?

I have answered it.
You just don't like my answer.

Your "answer" is self evident ****.
Democrats absolutely would have cited any crime they thought Trump had committed.
Unless you think they were holding back, and no sane person would make that claim, so you're lying.
As usual.

I have answered your question more times than you deserve.
You won't be satisfied until I say that Sniffles has not committed any crimes.
Hell will freeze over before that happens, so you can ask the question a thousand more times if you choose to waste your time on that.

Like I told you, I'm over it.

Republican National Committee Obscured How Much It Pays Its Chief of Staff

Amid the record-breaking flows of cash, the RNC is giving lucrative consulting work to a select group of political operatives with Trump campaign ties.

Richard Walters began his career at the lowest rungs of the Republican National Committee when he was 23.

Now, at 30, he’s the RNC chief of staff, earning far more than any other official there, including his boss, the chairwoman, and the top officials at the Democratic National Committee.

The rich compensation might have raised eyebrows — but for the fact that the RNC obscured it.

Last year, Walters earned a salary of $207,558, but the party paid him an additional $135,000 through a shell company he established in December 2018 called Red Wave Strategies.

Federal Election Commission reports described the RNC’s payments to Red Wave as “political strategy services,” as if the money had flowed to an independent contractor and not Walters himself.

Red Wave does not have other employees and has no clients other than the RNC.

President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are raising unprecedented sums of cash for the 2020 election.

The party brought in more than $241 million alone in 2019, far exceeding the $107 million the RNC raised in 2003, the last time there was a Republican president seeking reelection, and eclipsing the $92 million raised last year by the Democratic National Committee.

The RNC spent record-breaking sums, too: In 2019, the party doled out $192 million.

Amid the flows of cash, a select group of political operatives has leveraged Trump campaign ties for lucrative consulting work.

In October, The Washington Post highlighted the political consulting prowess of Katie Walsh, for whom Walters once worked at the RNC, and her husband, Mike Shields.

Both Walsh and Shields previously served as RNC chiefs of staff.

Three businesses controlled by Walsh and Shields have been paid more than $12 million from the RNC, multiple Republican groups and political committees since 2017, according to the Post’s analysis of campaign filings and other records.

Michael Steele, a former RNC chairman, said Walters’ payment structure “just smells” and was in keeping with a culture of “sweetheart deals” among party insiders that he described as corrosive.

https://www.propublica.org/article/repu ... ssion=true

With All the Winning, Why So Angry?

First things first: I grew up as, and remained, a proud moderate Republican up until 2016.

I proudly wore the badge of “RINO” as I thought it a silly insult by a bunch of folks who didn’t win many elections.

The candidates they did elect tended to wear tinfoil hats on the floor of the US House.

The word “conservative” in American politics doesn’t mean what it once did.

The term “Republican” doesn’t either, for that matter.

For a time, they were separate and distinct states of being.

One could be a conservative who tended to vote for Republican candidates because the system provided no other viable options.

Republicans might share some similar views to conservatives, but probably practiced more intellectual flexibility.

Today, they’re one in the same.

Ironically enough, neither one of them means anything anymore.

Or maybe they mean everything, depending on your perspective.

For decades the pillars of American conservatism: Fiscal conservatism, individual liberty and muscular foreign policy allowed the GOP to capture the White House, eventually retake the US House and Senate and broadly keep the United States a center-right country.

Republican leaders and conservative ‘intellectuals’ play only one role in American political life today: The constant and shifting defense and/or promotion of President Donald Trump’s words and actions.

Funny that they often have to carry out those duties on a daily, even hourly, basis and often regarding the same issue.

It’s been both fascinating and disheartening to observe a group of people morph from the legitimate ideological foundation of a major political party, to a bunch of reprobates for whom writing hymns to the Dear Leader is their prime occupation.

Next weekend as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathers near Washington to indoctrinate the next generation of clones and Don Jr. gets another chance to try out the English language, another group, The Summit on Principled Conservatism, will be meeting in the Nation’s Capital to discuss what comes next for the conservative movement in America and what, if any, future the Republican party has after Donald Trump is gone.

I know, like and have worked with many of the people attending this gathering.

I won’t be in attendance, for a variety of reasons: first and foremost, what happens to the GOP is no longer my concern.

But I’m glad there are people for whom it is worth discussion and debate.

That there is such a gathering is no surprise.

Since Trump’s nomination, dozens if not hundreds of apostate conservative thinkers have been pushing back against the president and his minions.

What is surprising, however, is how much anger and vitriol is aimed at these happy few as they go about the business of trying to rebuild an ideological framework that was electorally successful for nearly a century.

Most of this invective is hurled on Twitter, which is no surprise given its rightful place as the hellscape of humans’ worst instincts and attitudes.

Mollie Hemingway of the mysterious Federalist called them “sad” and “Never Trumpaloos.”

A Harvard professor, Adrian Vermuele, mused that the gathering would be the first people destined for “the camps.”

He’s since blocked me and just about everyone else on Twitter for taking him to task.

Why, though, are Mollie, et al, so angry?

Are they “tired of all the winning?”

Do they have legitimate ideological beefs with those attending the confab?

Were they rivals in political efforts prior to Trump?

First, few of the “Trump intellectual” class (and I use that term loosely) ever actually deigned to work on a campaign, big or small, so we can cross off professional rivalry.

Next, with all the winning flying around, one would think there simply wouldn’t be time or desire to swat at the gnats that are conservative opponents of the president.

No, it’s something more deeply rooted.

The folks who now hold Donald Trump up as the paragon of American conservatism once believed, actually believed in the tenets outlined above.

There was a healthy disdain for government at all levels, based more on market-driven beliefs and incompetence than any nefarious concerns.

After all, conservatives have long been institutionalists as well.

As they go to sleep at night, they know what we know, and have known it far longer: When it came time to choose between standing on principle, and therefore taking the rockier road, or abandoning their core beliefs and thereby enjoying the fruits of their empty labor, it was a quick, painless decision.

Without so much as a second thought, the CPACs, the Federalists, the Fox News of the world plugged themselves into the Trump matrix and transformed themselves into political copper tops for the benefit of one person’s delusions of grandeur.

It’s this knowledge that drives the cult of personality to lash out, ridicule and demean those who would oppose Donald Trump and attempt to revive American conservatism.

Why are they so angry?

Because when the cultists look at the principled conservatives trying to find a better path forward for all Americans, they’re forced to confront the shallowness of their character and low price for which Donald Trump was able to purchase it.

https://medium.com/@reedgalen/with-all- ... 7c1794befd

Reed Galen is an independent political consultant and founder of The Lincoln Project. He previously worked for President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Trump fired America’s pandemic response team and 6 other ways he ‘sabotaged’ our coronavirus response.

“Trump has sabotaged America’s coronavirus response,” as one leading expert has explained.

That’s why experts are speaking out and saying the U.S. is NOT prepared—even as the global death toll races past over 1,000 people.

Here’s how Trump has misled the public about the Coronavirus threat and undercut our ability to respond.

1. Trump fired the pandemic response team

In 2018, the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command was let go.

Trump shut down the global health security unit within the NSC, and the DHS epidemic team was also pushed out. No one was ever replaced.

This fact caused a ripple effect of panic in many federal and state programs while the news spread of the Coronavirus in China.

If the virus was to spread in the U.S., there is no playbook on how to respond.

Why did Trump decide the pandemic response team was dispensable?

Simple. It was another part of Obama’s legacy that he felt the need to destroy.

2. The CDC is getting its budget slashed.

Trump’s budget request for 2021 cuts the budges for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or CDC by nearly 16%. The CDC is responsible for disease prevention and control in the United States.

But Trump isn’t worried about cutting funds to the entity that stops disease prevention because “it will all work out well.”

In addition to the cuts being made to the CDC, Trump is also proposing a cut to the global health fund, lowering it from $571 million to $532 million.

Short-sighted decisions such as these have many people worried the current administration is crippling the country’s ability to respond to coronavirus.

Former Vice President Joe Biden pointed out in a USA Today piece that “diseases do not stop at borders. They cannot be thwarted by building a wall.”

Yet, a wall is exactly where Trump is throwing the money. His 2021 budget also calls for $2 billion to be allocated for construction on his border wall.

For now, the majority of the confirmed cases are in China, but the director-general of the World Health Organization warns that there is still a “very grave threat” to the entire world.

3. Emergency funds are drying up.

Along with the missing response team, there is also the lack of a budget to contend with.

The Department of Health and Human Services has already notified Congress that it may need to transfer up to $136 million in funds to help combat the fast-moving epidemic.

This is partially because the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has already gone through the $105 million that was set aside for emergency public-health responses for infectious disease outbreaks.

Hawaii Lt. Gov Josh Green voiced concerns about the White House’s gameplan to tackle the Coronavirus issue.

“The way this was rolled out is concerning. This is not the kind of thing you want to do on the fly because it creates chaos.”

4. Trump spreads misinformation.

President Trump isn’t worried about the coronavirus because “the heat” will deal it, apparently.

Trump keeps repeating a false claim that Americans don’t have to worry because the Coronavirus will be defeated by warm weather.

There’s one big problem with this: scientists say the opposite.

Infectious disease experts told CNN last week that they don’t know enough about this strain of Coronavirus to make that judgment.

Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, calls the assumption that spring weather will kill coronavirus “reckless.”

“We don’t really understand the basis of seasonality, and of course we know we absolutely nothing about this particular virus.”

While it is true that respiratory viruses can be seasonal, not all of them are. Americans get the flu even during summer, for example.

5. The administration doesn’t heed warnings.

Experts have been warning the administration, but those concerns have gone completely unheeded.

Ron Klain, for one, has been telling the Trump administration for two years that the United States was not capable of handling a pandemic.

Klain served as Chief of Staff for two U.S. Vice Presidents and was also the Ebola response coordinator in 2014.

Even Bill Gates, the philanthropic billionaire, repeatedly met with John Bolton about the issue.

Bill Gates warned that ongoing cuts to the global health disease infrastructure would make the United States vulnerable to “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.”

The Trump Administration didn’t listen to the words of Klain or Gates.

The CDC’s global health section has been cut so drastically that staff members have been laid off in droves.

The section used to work in 49 different countries, but now they have a presence in just 10.

6. The President creates a Coronavirus Task Force.

A potential epidemic is here.

In addition to waiting for spring weather to weaken the virus, the only other move Trump has made to prepare the country is the creation of a task force.

The “President’s Coronavirus Task Force.” contains a dozen men, five of whom are directly from the White House staff.

According to the Press Secretary, the task force will be responsible for “efforts to monitor, contain, and mitigate the spread of the virus.”

While a task force might seem like a good idea, the details on how its goals will be accomplished have been left quite hazy.

7. More misinformation from his administration.

The Trump administration sent Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to a Fox Business appearance.

Ross’s main talking point was the hypothetical business opportunities from Coronavirus saying it “will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America.”

Ross claims that the losses in China will lead to a surge in American business prospects.

The Commerce Secretary words were proven to be nothing but more misinformation by Paul Krugman of the New York Times.

Krugman says: In such a world, anything that disrupts imports — whether it’s tariffs or a virus — raises production costs, and as a result if anything hurts manufacturing…if the virus seriously disrupts Chinese production, its impact on the U.S. economy will be like an extreme version of Trump’s trade war, except without any compensation in the form of tariff revenue.”

https://www.frontpagelive.com/2020/02/0 ... c-impacts/

With All the Winning, Why So Angry?

First things first: I grew up as, and remained, a proud moderate Republican up until 2016.

I proudly wore the badge of “RINO” as I thought it a silly insult by a bunch of folks who didn’t win many elections.

The candidates they did elect tended to wear tinfoil hats on the floor of the US House.

The word “conservative” in American politics doesn’t mean what it once did.

The term “Republican” doesn’t either, for that matter.

Reed Galen is an independent political consultant and founder of The Lincoln Project. He previously worked for President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Someone who worked for those three is going to lecture us on what "conservative" and "Republican" mean?

Schwarzenegger was a political girly many who let Democrat walk over him as governor. He didn't stand up for ANYTHING conservative. Good riddance.

McCain threw most conservative principles out when he ran for President against Bush, which wrecked his next attempt to run.

And more Bush domestic polices were liberal than conservative.

Trump is the most conservative and far and away the best president since the great Ronald Reagan.

And if they aren't angry at the biggest abuse of power in US history still ongoing, they've been asleep or part of the problem.

I have answered your question more times than you deserve.

You won't be satisfied until I say that Sniffles has not committed any crimes.

Hell will freeze over before that happens, so you can ask the question a thousand more times if you choose to waste your time on that.

Like I told you, I'm over it.

You have no answer, which is why you evade, dissemble and lie.

Democrats absolutely would have cited any crime they thought Trump had committed.

That they didn't proves Trump didn't commit any, and that you've been lying for three years, but we knew that.

Psychopath.