Trump fires NSA boss, deputy President Trump yesterday fired the head of the NSA and US Cyber Command and his deputy. The removal was confirmed today by Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Pentagon declined to comment. A spokesperson told us: "We’ve seen the reports but have nothing to offer at this time. We …
But to care for one ethnicity (Han) over the others that make up your polity (Uyghur, Tibetan...) is more characteristic of fascism than communism. There's now not a lot to distinguish the one party state in China from 1930's Germany, except China has thermonuclear weapons. They're just as touchy about criticism, internal or external.
Vance doesn't have the same ability to carry the vote. Like every fascist regime, MAGA is a cult of personality. They all proclaim themselves as a thousand year empire then collapse when their founder dies. It's why Republicans are talking about a third term, either doing an end run on the Constitution to make it happen or bemoaning that it can't.
Over the weekend Pam Bondi did come out and say that as much as they want Trump to hang around, she's convinced "he'll be done at the end of this term" and the constitutional issues would present "a heavy lift" which is a generous assessment of the Constitution. I think he's just so old and losing ground every day and there's no way he could press his case without undercutting his own cause by just sounding like late model Joe Biden/Ronald Reagan.
There's no "kompromat". Let go of that fantasy.
He doesn't need it. Putin is the richest man on the planet - he's been looting an entire country for a quarter of a century now - and that fact alone is quite enough to make Trump pathetically anxious to please him.
Putin's seems like an old belt-and-braces kind of guy to me.
Sure he's confident he manipulate this pathetically eager to please man-child but it's always nice to have some nice solid evidence in case he starts twigging that his pal isn't quite the bosom buddy the FOCF thinks he is. Preferably something obviously illegal.
And with the FOCF's looong history of shady businesses investment that could be literally anything.
I do agree though, if you wonder what the old fool is going to do next ask yourself "What's the thing that will benefit Putin the most"?
Trump's links to Russia go back to 1989, when he went to the Soviet Union as a bankrupt and came back with his pockets jingling to post adverts about how great Russia is. He wasn't pathetically eager to please a wealthy Putin then; he was bought and sold like the traitor he is.
This. Literally the only job responsibility any member of the Angry Toddler's government has is lovingly tonguing his bunghole. If you can't do that, you're out. It is certainly not doing your job competently, since he's installed the most incompetent people he can find. Bunghole tonguebath or GTFO.
Indortjnahekybhhat’s nogbwhatvyne law says on Cederal Dismissal. Hence his dismantling of IG’s and the agencies protecting federal employees as well as trying to remove protections for them.
Trump doing what the British, Mexican’s, Kaiser, Japanese, Nazi’s, CCCP, North Koreans, VietCong couldn’t.
"FOX News" and "leading expert on", er..., basically anything... also
Probably they'll send in another Cosplay-oriented character without any factual qualification to augment the many billionaires in the cabinet.
Worked "just great" for Homeland Security.
That's why he's so much worse this time than last time, because last time he had qualified people around him who were willing to tell him that stuff like putting tariffs on the whole world would be a disaster. There were plenty of reports about him wanting to do terrible things like shooting non violent protestors in DC in the legs but the people around him talked him down by telling him what he wanted to do was illegal or would make people hate him etc. This time he's doing all the illegal stuff they made him back off from before, which is why he is getting slapped down in court more often than any president ever has.
It is hilarious seeing his people talk up his tariffs and how great they are, but if you look at their record prior to last summer not one of them had anything but negative things to say about tariffs. They know they have to be yes men cheerleaders to keep their job. Which is the reason he chooses wholly unqualified people for all his appointments (save a few exceptions like Marco Rubio, who will probably be one of the first tossed off the bus) since it makes them feel extra loyalty to him for giving them the job they never could have got on their own merits.
Donal J. Trump IS 9/11 incarnate ... and COVID ... all in one, for the convenience of armageddon, doomsday, the apocalypse.
He's the spawn of Putin (aka satan), the locust plague, frogs, gnats, the death of all firstborns.
DJT is the Orange Offal Orifice Succubus in Cheese, demonic child of dancing roof-demons, a plague to humanity that causes epilepsy in children.
Stock up on toilet paper, *NOW* ... before it is too late!!!!
Yeah, Canada's been abusing us with its softwood for ages, very unfair. It's like when it confiscated all inbound flight airplanes on 9/11, very selfish. We can't have that anymore.
That's why we need huge import tariffs on Canadian goods, and bads, to stop them from shipping fentanyl toilet paper across the border, fentanyl electric power, fentanyl oil and gas, fentanyl auto parts, and fentanyl maple syrup.
As we very smartly MAGA our way into the glorious past, yes, it will be hard in the beginning, we will use hardwood chips for toilet paper, hardwood and sandpaper for the tough bits, with our very large hands, and none of the wet wipes that clog our very modern 100-year-old sewage systems with combined overflows.
Canada must be grateful to US for all of this, wear three-piece-suits, bend over in all directions, and obliterate its fentanyl trans woke first nations climate change woman equity nonsense, or else ... we'll do without its cushiony soft TP, like we did during COVID.
Yes, we're going forward back to prohibition at once, prohibition of comfortable ass cleaning! (Hegseth won't mind)
Don't forget those Fentanyl smuggling Canadian Geese. I have been suspicious of them for YEARS, with their beady little eyes and overly large bodies. Their ability to fly long distances in that suspicious vee formation. Have you ever noticed that the Right side of the vee is always longer than the left. Probably in a subtle nod to the MAGA right, letting them know their true allegiance. --Mule
I hope you Americans are now rethinking the God given mission to impose your flavour of democracy on the rest of the world?
It is demonstrably broken. Hopefully, for your sakes and ours, not beyond repair.
Perhaps the democrats could launch a total rethink of how something so fragile, yet so fundamental to a prosperous and fair world could be protected. It could be the one thing they take into the next election, if there is ever to be one, and present it to the voting public that this is what we will do once elected. Never again will an enemy of democracy ever be allowed to manoeuvre their man into power where they can then start dismantling the very core of what our once great nation stood for.
Unfortunately, for now, it looks like room for a hammer and sickle might just be found on the Stars and Stripes. Let's just hope it will eventually wash out.
>I hope you Americans are now rethinking the God given mission to impose your flavour of democracy on the rest of the world?
Now it's Canada's turn to rule. Your politicians will have to pretend to speak French and you will all play hockey.
Here's how that quotation should be stated, anywhere and everywhere [many thanks for bringing this to the attention of all of us, Dan 55]--
"When a clown moves into the palace, he doesn’t become the king; instead the palace becomes a circus."--Elizabeth Bangs
(With deepest and most sincere apologies to Elizabeth Bangs)
Great job, Elizabeth...
Americans built a system of checks & balances that turned out to be easily subverted, and mostly relied on trust that a head of state with a lot of the powers of an old style absolute monarch wouldn't do bad things.
Turns out if you build a naive system with insufficient controls that sooner or later people will take advantage of it.
And given what we've seen as themes in American literature & cinema over many many years not only did they already understand exactly what could happen to their Government, but they also understand it has scope to get much much worse.
The exploit (bug) isn't in the constitution, but in democracy: that a single charismatic leader can always subvert it. Same thing happened in Germany in the 1930s, and in India in the 2000s, and their constitutions were very different.
The exploit is, if one person has enough popular support - doesn't have to be overwhelming, doesn't even have to be a majority, just highly motivated - then the people who are supposed to enforce the checks on their power won't dare to do it. That's what happened in all three of those cases. Makes no difference who those people are, or what specific form the checks take, the principle is the same.
Except that, in this case, Trump really isn't that charismatic.
In the past, it has needed the leader to be charismatic, but the US experiment - with a two-party system that can't be broken, an electoral college system that means only a tiny minority of states count for anything, and a head-of-state with much too much power - has failed to cope with the destruction of serious journalism and the dominance of social media populists.
I hope someone is taking notes for the period of reconstruction after the global structure from the last 100 years collapses and is eventually rebuilt (after 1000 years of a new Reich?).
Yes, I never understood how people were saying that Trump is charismatic. He seems like the worst kind of golf club bore and he doesn’t even drink. Between the Houthis, Iranians, North Koreans and any country that trades with the US, you might think someone might have come up with a more permanent solution to “White House Apprentice, Season 2”.
It doesn't need a charismatic leader. It jus needs enough people ready to bent and serve one - usually in their own interestes, or at least is what they think.
Check and balances works well against one person or a few ones (see Nixon). They do not work if they can take over the Parliament, the higher courts, and nobody really stands - inculding the citizen who have voted the crooks in the beginning.
"It doesn't need a charismatic leader. It jus needs enough people ready to bent and serve one - usually in their own interestes, or at least is what they think."
That's what is happening, if congress and the senate actually had a spine he wouldn't be getting away with it. Mitch McConnell seems to have belatedly realised what a monster he's created but it might be too late. Likewise the Roberts Supreme Court.
The exploit is, if one person has enough popular support - doesn't have to be overwhelming, doesn't even have to be a majority, just highly motivated - then the people who are supposed to enforce the checks on their power won't dare to do it. That's what happened in all three of those cases. Makes no difference who those people are, or what specific form the checks take, the principle is the same.
It matters if the check on their power is not giving them the power in the first place.
Trump couldn't fire military officers in the UK because they answer to the King, not to the PM. Hence if he told the King "I want you to fire those officers because they aren't loyal to me" then he'd find that he'd be told "Yes, that's how it's supposed to work because they are sworn to the King, not the PM" and there would be nothing that he could do about it.
That's what an effective safeguard looks like, which is absent in the US system because they copied our government with the difference being that you elect a king. Which came about because most of the revolutionaries in the US knew how unstable democracies without a monarchy are, and wanted to solve the problem by having an elected king. Which obviously hasn't worked out the way that they wanted; it's been the source of the problem.
I think the chain of appointment goes up to the government. The government can reduce force i.e. fire people, doubtless in a variety of ways, and they can equally appoint patsies into top positions.
The only safeguard is that Chuckie Wingnut can fire the government and appoint another. The armed forces clearly do not report to the deposed government.
Perhaps Chuckie can directly call on the armed forces to depose a government that doesn't want to go quietly into the night.
"I do solemnly swear ... that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice"
The President can be a domestic enemy, and he could issue orders or commit acts against the UCMJ.
I'm sure there have been more than a few discussions amongst the officer class about what line he has to cross before the military can, or is obligated to, act. The military is always the last backstop against failure of civilian government.
"absent in the US system because they copied our government with the difference being that you elect a king"
Indeed. Those naive Founding Fathers probably thought that by replacing the House of Lords with an Senate they were putting enough of a "check and balance" in place, but then they completely f^&*(ed up by arbitrarily allocating two senators per State irrespective of population - clearly a massively UNbalanced system
In their defence, it lasted long beyond their lifetimes, and became the most powerful nation in the world for a good while.
They just had no idea that social media would come along like this - though perhaps they should have, given how much influence Alexander Hamilton had with just a few hundred letters! Once those "letters" could be posted free from anywhere in the world, arrive in milliseconds, and be generated by a team of enemies, in full colour, 24/7... And presented to millions! Oh, and without any return address to tip off the reader that the letter was actually written by an enemy of the state...
And so, here we are. Drones and memes.
On hold until a reasonable press release - is released.
But lets look at the basics. We are often told 'Generals' who are supposed to be safe hands - are really political climber sorts. If you looks at recent Judges decisions, 'Safe Hands' is becoming toxic, but only because clear conflicts of interest of family or LLC's are rarely fully disclosed. So a Lt may be a better choice. Pretty sure Trump's 'near miss' and NSA holding up the blame allocation process is another factor. One does not know if free and fair elections fall's under NSA responsibilities, but adding 4? million illegal SSN's and a lot voting sure looks shady. Did Trump ask 'Tell me what you know' and got back static? If the NSA bigwigs are conflicted, for Biden directives, and wont spill the beans, it is a fair cop that they have to go.
Woho! Hold your high horses a bit there stark naked chocolate Lady Godiva! As the Magnificent Incubus' Offal Orifice in Fake Orange Cosplay Cheese has abumindantely⁰ made clear over and over again, it's not his fault, at all, period, again!
And do we need reminding you, again, that there were very fine people on both sides, that's right. Both the side of the DOGE brownshirt nazi wankers with unfortunate sofa mishaps shoved deeply up their butts, and the side of the best anti-vax madministration ever that gives you free measles and avian flu just by looking at it or shaking Hegseth's hand, and also the side of intelligent design creationist tea party crossdressers who live with dinosaurs and are not witches, and the side of spawn-of-Satan™ Vladimir rectum Putin to whom we ALL owe a huge debt of gratitude, and fashionable three-piece-suits, for being such a wonderful role-model of economic success, fairplay, and open-mindedness -- we couldn't have done it without you Vlad, and chihuahuas, again!
All this agitated mess of folks who don't want to make millions right now as we regress the stock market to where it was 4 years ago, erasing the dumb stuff that the previous heretics have done, as maybe they wait for us to go forward farther into the past to also erase Obama and Clinton, to 1993 then, that takes just one word to tell you who's fault it is: the_very_scary_illegal_trans_woke_tunnel-burrowed_fentanyl_climate-changing_pet_dog-and-cat_voodoo_BBQ_migrant_cybersecurity_tourist_academics_of_the_Joe_Biden_sleepy_theoretical_conspiracy_cabal_and_women's_shower_sanctuary_abstraction,_constantly_changing_sex_to_pole-vault_the_border_wall,_and_also_Greta_Thunberg, again!
There. I hope bright antiworlds now float over your head, as they do ours, again!
⁰⁻abumindantely: noun; what happens when abumdantly meets abuminately
“Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.”
“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”
“Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.”
“The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.”
“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”
“An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.”
“For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future; but an excuse can last for life."
...And you'd better take very serious note of this one--
“Never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac."
Yeah, there sure is a sense of déjà vu in this 2ⁿᵈ coming of the Incubus Orange ... It's better prepared this time 'round, but I'm not 100% that the counter-prep has been commensurate. Some good amount of thinking should probably be focused on that (followed by action).
All true except: "“For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future; but an excuse can last for life."
It's just laziness, achieving something great is very hard work and usually well outside the comfort zone.
"But fired General Haugh, a nonpartisan national security expert, at the advice of a self-described 'pro-White nationalist.'"
The orange guy is the only expert the US needs. The most stable genius. That a white nationalist loon made the recommendation is only because those are the only people who have access.
"But fired General Haugh, a nonpartisan national security expert, at the advice of a self-described 'pro-White nationalist."
1. Who says he is non-partisan and what is their affiliation or interest?
2. Would it be ok if they were a pro-Black nationalist?
3. True information is true regardless of source.
PS I don't care what colour people are and they should be proud of who they are and their culture as long as they are not trying to force me to adopt it.
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
“No one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
― H.L. Mencken...
And Tacitus (quoted in Year 1 (with Mencken) and Year 2 of Incubus Orange I). Something about senators "exalted by wealth and honors ... each in proportion to his readiness for servitude" precipitating the "descent from republic to dictatorship".
What will it take to wake up from this groundhog day nightmare?!
"What will it take to wake up from this groundhog day nightmare?!"
It takes the impossible. It takes the people to stop watching TV, to take an interest, to research and validate what they are told, discuss it and interrogate the leaders, Then villify and out any media pushing self-interests or one sided narratives. Alas the "people" prefer Love Island and the easy distractions presented to them so they will remain in the Matrix and be abused. Their ire or virtue directed at whatever the manipulators desire.
Everyone gets upset when they "Islamophobe" and "White nationalist" but what do those terms really mean?
Islam is not only a religion but also a political movement, so to be against it is entirely legitimate. When leftists scream "Tory scum!" do they get vilified in the same way?
Additionally the term "White nationalist" is no more offensive than saying BLM.. it's in group preferences, that every other race indulges in...so...what?
All religions aspire to be a political movement, to the extent that they seek to have their adherents confirm to an ideal of behaviour, be it socially or economically, revolutionary or conservative. So what are you saying? It's ok to judge people on their choice of religion, in general or Islam in particular? I disagree.
There is no more moral equivalence to the political use of race between BLM and white nationalism than there is of socialism between, say, a card-carrying union member and Josef Stalin.
You bring nothing but false equivalences and straw-man arguments. Get serious.
Trump may turn out to be bad or good on the whole, I don't know yet and nor does anyone else.
But ... to think that the institutions of government are non-political and simply supporting the elected leaders is an extreme of naivety. Recently, they have become so partisan and so corrupt that no elected president can do anything than what the blob wants without first purging. In fact it was clear that the Democrats had become as one with the blob. The corruption was enormous and at the level where people were doing the exact opposite of what was in the interest of the American people because it provided them the most kick backs. The had sold their souls figuratively speaking, maybe literally.
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