TRUMP - Just because.....................Naw, I just can't say it!
POSTED BY: SHINYGOODGUY
UPDATED: Monday, March 9, 2026 20:06
VIEWED: 244478
PAGE 152 of 170
www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Ethical-buck-10843
565.php
Disclosure law directed at Trump and Tillerson should be on Congress’ to-do list.
The buck stops here!
Harry Truman’s famous sign, at all of 20 characters, may have been ahead of its time when it comes to tweeting politicians.
But the sentiment is as old as government — leaders should take ultimate responsibility.
As Donald Trump prepares to enter Truman’s former office, voters have reason to worry that they’ll see the sentiment flipped upside-down — excuses start here!
A new report from the Wall Street Journal revealed that 150 different financial institutions across the globe hold debt in businesses that Trump owns or is a major stakeholder. That international web of debt almost guarantees to trip up the future president in a conflict of interest. The scariest thing is that the American people simply don’t know how wide that web reaches. Breaking from decades of common practice, Trump has failed to make public his tax returns.
But Trump is not the only one with something to hide. Rex Tillerson, who has been nominated as the next secretary of state, has also failed to provide his full tax returns for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Tillerson has taken some motions toward transparency by submitting a lengthy financial disclosure, according to the Washington Post. The former Exxon CEO has also announced plans to place his $180 million corporate payout into a blind trust — a routine ethical step that Trump has refused to take with his own business interests.
Whether Trump or Tillerson, these conflicts leave our government vulnerable to bribery and self-enrichment at the expense of the American people, and also raise questions about the administration’s ability to put America first.
The intelligence report released Friday by the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found that Vladimir Putin had positive experiences working with Western political leaders whose business interests made them more disposed to deal with Russia.
Voters have reason to worry whether Tillerson’s Exxon deals and Trump’s real estate ties will guide their thinking, consciously or unconsciously, on foreign policy.
Truman famously refused to sit on any corporate board after leaving office because he believed that it would diminish the presidency. It nearly landed him in poverty.
Now we face that problem flipped upside-down. Faced with politicians who insist on maintaining or hiding their corporate ties, Congress has a duty to create new ethical disclosure requirements. The buck stops with them.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
www.gocomics.com/theargylesweater/2017/01/09
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
As far as I can tell, this whole "report" had one goal: to make life difficult for Donald Trump. Period. The end.- SIGNY
Because why?- G
Because (IMHO) Trump is about to knock the CIA and the State Department down a peg or two, because these agency staffers will get in the way of Trump's agenda. Because these two agencies are infested with Brzezinski's "full-spectrum-dominance" neocons.
As evidence, I pointed to a number of specific instances where the State Department and the CIA were caught promoting the destruction of Ukrainian and Libyan governments, quite probably inserting snipers and chemical weapons into events as false flags, and shipping Saudi and Qatari arms to our terrorist proxies in Syria. The high-level intelligence whitewashing was so bad that 50 of the DIA's lower-level analysts wrote an open letter protesting the manipulation of their less-than-positive assessment of the Syria strategy (i.e. promoting the "moderate opposition") into happy-talk-blather. And not to be outdone, 50 State Department staffers wrote an open letter of their own promoting a more "kinetic" approach to Syria. I linked all of these in the past, many times. If you insist I'll find links (again) to support all of this.
Trump, for example, literally just fired all of the State Department ambassadors. Told them to pack up their bags and go home on Jan 20, no exceptions. And while the President has the authority to do it, very few have. So Trump is doing a clean sweep of the State Department too, as much as possible.
In any case ALL IS NOT HAPPY IN SPOOK-LAND. There is a serious power-struggle going on behind the scenes. The CIA is protecting its turf.
Quote:First of all, I couldn't give a rat's ass about what Priebus says. Politicians lie, so do "the spooks". Haven't you been lied to enough to have figured that out?
Signym, it is time for you to flip-flop on this point because "He {Trump} accepts the fact that this particular case was entities in Russia, so that's not the issue," Priebus said on "Fox News Sunday."
The "hacking" tools could be ought online from a Ukrainian website, and it was so casual and disconnected of an effort that anybody could have done it. But on the basis of ciu bono? I assume that at least ONE of them was a non-serious attempt by the Russians to gather information. I've been saying that Russia was an involved party ALL ALONG. Maybe it's time you learned how to read. Or comprehend. Or think. Or something, because once again you're putting words in my mouth ... strawmanning as usual.
But the Russians didn't release the emails. It was some third party, which gave them to Wikileaks. Julian Assange knows the provenance of these emails, and he insists - even today, in press conference- that it was not a state party that was the source. The rest is so much blather.
If you want to know who the REAL manipulators of the election were, is was the Democratic Party, who manipulated Bernie Sanders out of the primaries, and Google and Facebook and the MSM who first promoted Trump's candidacy (since he was estimated to be the weakest candidate for Hillary to ruin against) and then, when to their horror the DNC found Trump gaining ground, manipulated coverage in the opposite direction. Even manipulated the polls. Wake up and smell the coffee, SECOND.
-----------
"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
"If you aren't aware, Texans don't have much concern for the well-being of Yankees or Californians, even Yankee factory workers in Indiana "- SECOND
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
But the Russians didn't release the emails. It was some third party, which gave them to Wikileaks.- SIGNY
The fact that you believe this is beyond incredible.- GSTRING
THE ODNI REPORT ITSELF SAYS SO.
Read it for yourself, if you don't believe me.
-----------
"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
"If you aren't aware, Texans don't have much concern for the well-being of Yankees or Californians, even Yankee factory workers in Indiana "- SECOND
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Was 'G' saying something? I'm sure it was beyond stupid.
Anyway,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/15/us/politics/democrats-joe-biden-hill
ary-clinton.html?
Democrats at Crossroads: Win Back Working-Class Whites, or Let Them Go?
By JONATHAN MARTIN and ALEXANDER BURNSDEC. 15, 2016
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Washington on Tuesday. He lamented last week that Hillary Clinton had not done enough to reach white working-class voters during her bid for the White House. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Sounding like a frustrated Cassandra, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. lamented last week that Hillary Clinton had not done enough to reach white working-class voters in the presidential campaign. Even more egregious to Mr. Biden, some fellow Democrats had concluded that blue-collar whites were not even worth pursuing.
“I mean these are good people, man!” Mr. Biden exclaimed in an interview on CNN. “These aren’t racists. These aren’t sexists.”
With his typically unambiguous assessment, the vice president thrust himself into a heated debate that has shaped the Democrats’ self-diagnosis since Donald J. Trump won the presidency: Should the party continue tailoring its message to the fast-growing young and nonwhite constituencies that propelled President Obama, or make a more concerted effort to win over the white voters who have drifted away?
For Democrats, the election last month has become a Rorschach test. Some see Mrs. Clinton’s loss as a result of an unfortunate series of flukes — Russian tampering, a late intervention by the Federal Bureau of Investigation director and a poor allocation of resources — but little more than a speed bump on the road to a demographic majority. Others believe the results reflect a more worrisome trend that could doom the party.
It is a sensitive topic, touching on race and class, but the choices that Democrats make in the coming months will shape their post-Obama identity and carry major implications in both the 2018 midterm elections and the next presidential race.
Few leading Democrats are arguing for a large-scale reconsideration of the party’s core liberal agenda. After all, history is a game of inches, and Mrs. Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2.8 million votes, but lost the presidency by 77,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — less than the capacity crowd at Lambeau Field on any given Sunday.
“Demographically, the Electoral College is heading in the right direction” for Democrats, Dan Pfeiffer, a former adviser to Mr. Obama, said. What Mr. Trump pulled off, he added, “would be hard to replicate.”
Even those who believe the party has become too fixated on identity politics do not think it should reverse course on such issues as immigration, criminal justice and legal protections for gay and transgender Americans.
Yet as a matter of politics, those in Mr. Biden’s camp believe the party’s ethos of inclusion may add up to less than the sum of its parts.
In the minds of those Democrats, they will not be a majority party again in Washington or across much of the country without winning back white voters of modest means.
“You don’t need those people?” Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary, asked. “You’re going to wait how many decades before this other strategy works?”
Mr. Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, had tried to push Mrs. Clinton, a longtime ally, toward focusing more on rural America, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. He was just as exasperated over what he described as his party’s decades-long pattern of neglect of many of the voters he spent eight years working with in his cabinet post.
“Rural America is 15 percent of America’s population,” Mr. Vilsack said. “It’s the same percentage as African-Americans; it’s the same percentage as Hispanics. We spend a lot of time thinking about that 15 percent — and we should, God bless them, we should. But not to the exclusion of the other 15 percent.”
In their zeal for pursuing clearly defined constituencies, some Democrats now w
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-15/theres-smart-way-resist-trump
-very-stupid-way-democrats-chose-latter
There's A Smart Way To Resist Trump & A Very Stupid Way (Democrats Chose The Latter)
Let me start this post by reiterating my view that a Trump Presidency carries various undeniable risks. Specifically, his stated views on civil liberties as well as a recent embrace of Wall Street, leaves much to be desired.
That said, if you want to effectively push back against the real risks Trump presents, it’s important you live in reality. Hysterically comparing him to Hitler, or saying he’s going to put Muslims in concentration camps, is a surefire way to incinerate your credibility and strengthen Trump’s support amongst the public. Trying to steal the office from him via an extremely dangerous and irresponsible coup attempt is equally foolish. These tactics only serve to strengthen Trump.
This is because a majority of Americans simply weren’t really into Trump or Hillary. Many of these people voted for Trump not because they like him or his policies, but because they just wanted to put up a gigantic middle finger in the face of the establishment and the mainstream media. Whether or not Trump is really such a middle finger is highly questionable, but that’s not the point. The point is enough people didn’t buy into the hysterical claims about Trump in the run up to the election, otherwise he wouldn’t have won. The lesson Trump opposition should have learned from Hillary’s loss is that the “just act like insane lunatics” approach to Trump doesn’t work against him. This would’ve been the logical conclusion reached upon genuine reflection and introspection, but this is not what happened.
Indeed, what many so called “liberals” have done in their post-election meltdown is fully embrace exactly what they have always accused the opposition of being — warmongering, racist, hateful, insensitive lunatics. In their clouded hysteria, many of these people are turning into the monsters they claim to be fighting.
For more on this, see recent articles:
Daily Kos Founder Tells Readers – ‘Be Happy for Coal Miners Losing Their Health Insurance’
Video of the Day – The ‘Fake Left’ Has Lost Its Mind
The example I will highlight today comes from Tim Wise. Let me be clear about something before I move forward. I have nothing personally against Tim. In fact, I had never even heard of him before today. A quick look at his bio doesn’t point to anything nefarious or hateful. He appears to be a guy who is genuinely compassionate about fighting racism. Like so many others who are no longer thinking clearly, he appears to have fully descended into the gutter and risks becoming indistinguishable from those he condemns.
First, Tim’s entire career seems to be dedicated to anti-rascist activism. As is seen from his Twitter profile.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of his recent tweets:
I have no idea if the above is representative of how this person has conducted himself over the years, but I’ll assume that it isn’t. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume his unhinged hate-mongering is the result of a mental breakdown following Donald Trump’s election. It’s not just him, of course. This mental collapse has clouded the judgement of so many self-proclaimed “liberals,” and resulted in them acting exactly like the monsters they profess to fight.
Beyond that point, the even larger issue is that although the type of commentary above might feel good in the moment, it is incredibly damaging to one’s reputation and does irreparable harm to any real attempt to oppose Trump. Nobody who isn’t already a card-carrying Hillary Clinton cultist or deranged neoconservative is going to read his tweets for the first time and think, “yeah, this guy’s really on to something.” Those are the people he is appealing to, and in the process he gleefully
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I'm gonna resist the urge to call this what it is and just say that "smart" and "stupid" should never be bandied about when describing anything Trump.
Not much else to say other than: Trump finally admits that Russian hacks do exist. WHAT A FUCKING NIGHTMARE!!! YOU ARE A REAL WORLD-TRAVELER, YEAH YOU ARE and a REAL SMOOTH TALKER!!!
(500 Points if anyone can guess which movie is the above from)
SGG
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Thanks for posting G - that was HI-larious.
Not only Hi-larious, but to the point!
SGG
Quote:
Originally posted by G:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
www.gocomics.com/theargylesweater/2017/01/09
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
BLAH, BLAH, BLAH blah, blah blah..................
Nah, it wasn't the teacher from the Peanuts cartoons, she has way much better
things to say than say 2 Russian trolls desperately seeking "susan".
SGG
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME