That sure is the feeling one gets reading the Globe regarding his recent moves:
"Trump will order troop reductions in Afghanistan, Iraq" by Lolita C. Baldor Associated Press, November 16, 2020
The Trump administration is expected to cut the number of US troops in Afghanistan almost in half to 2,500 by Jan. 15, officials said Monday. The order would stop short of outgoing President Trump’s goal to have all troops withdrawn by the end of the year, which had faced opposition from military and diplomatic advisers.
They have caused great concern at the Washington Compost anyway.
The Pentagon also expects to cut the number of troops in Iraq to 2,500, a reduction of more than 500.
The decisions come as no surprise, following Trump’s shakeup of the Pentagon leadership last week, when he installed loyalists who share his frustration with the continued troop presence in the war zones. The cuts give Trump an accomplishment in his final weeks in office even as he refuses to concede he lost the election to Democrat Joe Biden.
The officials said military leaders were told over the weekend about the planned withdrawals and an executive order is in the works but has not yet been delivered to commanders. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The troop cuts would be completed just five days before Biden takes office, leaving him with a smaller military footprint in the two key war zones. Military commanders have expressed less concern about pulling troops from Iraq, where the Iraqi forces are better able to maintain their nation’s security.
He is positioning the incoming executive as do all presidents, and this move is coming three years too late.
Trump’s new Pentagon chief, Christopher Miller, hinted at the troop withdrawals over the weekend in a carefully worded message to the force that suggested compromise. He said that “we remain committed to finishing the war that Al Qaida brought to our shores in 2001,” and he warned that “we must avoid our past strategic error of failing to see the fight through to the finish,” but he also made it clear that “all wars must end.”
Yeah, Al-CIA-Duh brought war to our shores, sure.
“This fight has been long, our sacrifices have been enormous. and many are weary of war — I’m one of them,” he said. “Ending wars requires compromise and partnership. We met the challenge; we gave it our all. Now, it’s time to come home.”
To oppress the civilian population in the name of COVID.
The accelerated withdrawal, however, goes against the longstanding advice from Trump’s military leadership, including Marine General Frank McKenzie, the top US commander for the Middle East, but officials suggested this week that commanders will be able to live with the partial pullout, which allows them to keep counterterrorism troops in Afghanistan and gives more time to remove critical equipment.
McKenzie and others have repeatedly argued that a hasty withdrawal could undercut negotiations to finalize ongoing peace negotiations between the Taliban and representatives of Afghan society, including the current Afghan government, and they warn that US forces should remain in the country to keep the Islamic State group’s militants in check.
Biden has sounded less absolute about troop withdrawal. He has said some troops could stay in Afghanistan to focus on counterterrorism. In response to a questionnaire before the election, he said: "Americans are rightly weary of our longest war; I am, too, but we must end the war responsibly, in a manner that ensures we both guard against threats to our homeland and never have to go back.''
That was what Trump was going to do anyway.
The expected order adds to what has been a litany of muddled White House and Pentagon messages on troop withdrawals, exacerbating what has been an emotional roller coaster for the troops and their families.
Now the pre$$ cares about the troops and their families after lying them into multiple wars and deployments!
Hallelujah!
Of course, the troops that come home will be needed for round-up operations and camp guard duties so.... this peacenik would rather they just stay put on foreign shores for now.
America’s exit from Afghanistan after 19 years was laid out in a February agreement Washington reached with the Taliban. It said US troops would be out of Afghanistan in 18 months, provided the Taliban honored a commitment to fight terrorist groups, with most attention seemingly focused on the Islamic State group’s affiliate in the country.
Military officials also have warned that there is a large amount of critical, classified equipment at bases in Afghanistan that needs to be removed, but it will take more time, and they say that any full US withdrawal needs to be coordinated with other allies that have troops in the country.
The White House, however, issued a confusing series of statements about Afghanistan over the past month.....
Biden will straighten all that out no doubt, as Trump’s national security adviser says it looks as though Biden won.
--more--"
He wanted to take some parting shots but was talked out of it:
"Trump Sought Options for Attacking Iran to Stop Its Growing Nuclear Program" by Eric Schmitt, Maggie Haberman, David E. Sanger, Helene Cooper and Lara Jakes New York Times Nov. 16, 2020
What growing nuclear program, you lying sack of $hit paper?
I mean, this Iran is building a bomb thing has been a decades-long problem with these war-pushers from the New York Times, so I'm not out of bounds by asking the question.
WASHINGTON — President Trump asked senior advisers in an Oval Office meeting on Thursday whether he had options to take action against Iran’s main nuclear site in the coming weeks. The meeting occurred a day after international inspectors reported a significant increase in the country’s stockpile of nuclear material, four current and former U.S. officials said on Monday.
What kind of nuclear material?
A range of senior advisers dissuaded the president from moving ahead with a military strike. The advisers — including Vice President Mike Pence; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Christopher C. Miller, the acting defense secretary; and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — warned that a strike against Iran’s facilities could easily escalate into a broader conflict in the last weeks of Trump’s presidency.
That is quite a change from the last time when we were told Trump called them off at the last ten minutes while flights were in the air, angering John Bolton.
Any strike — whether by missile or cyber — would almost certainly be focused on Natanz, where the International Atomic Energy Agency reported on Wednesday that Iran’s uranium stockpile was now 12 times larger than permitted under the nuclear accord that Trump abandoned in 2018. The agency also noted that Iran had not allowed it access to another suspected site where there was evidence of past nuclear activity.
The U.S. was doing cyber strikes to preempt Russian interference before the election, which is why -- according to the CIA's Scorecard and Hammer -- this past vote fraud was the cleanest in election history.
As an aside from that, why does Iran have to adhere to an agreement no one else does and did you notice the parsing of language by the NYT hacks?
It's a suspected site where there was evidence of activity.
Trump asked his top national security aides what options were available and how to respond, officials said.
After Mr. Pompeo and General Milley described the potential risks of military escalation, officials left the meeting believing a missile attack inside Iran was off the table, according to administration officials with knowledge of the meeting.
Trump might still be looking at ways to strike Iranian assets and allies, including militias in Iraq, officials said. A smaller group of national security aides had met late Wednesday to discuss Iran, the day before the meeting with the president.
White House officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The episode underscored how Trump still faces an array of global threats in his final weeks in office. A strike on Iran may not play well to his base, which is largely opposed to a deeper American conflict in the Middle East, but it could poison relations with Tehran so that it would be much harder for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear accord, as he has promised to do.
This story is starting to stink like the absolutely total crap that it is, sorry, as the New York Times says Biden wants to rejoin Iran nuclear deal, but that is easier said than done.
He's already breaking campaign promises before he even officially wins office!
Since Trump dismissed Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and other top Pentagon aides last week, Defense Department and other national security officials have privately expressed worries that the president might initiate operations, whether overt or secret, against Iran or other adversaries at the end of his term.
Now I'm starting to laugh.
The Deep State has lied to and disobeyed him for four years but now they are going to snap to attention and carry out orders.
The events of the past few days are not the first time that Iran policy has emerged in the final days of a departing administration. During the last days of the Bush administration in 2008, Israeli officials, concerned that the incoming Obama administration would seek to block it from striking Iran’s nuclear facilities, sought bunker-busting bombs, bombers and intelligence assistance from the United States for an Israeli-led strike.
Vice President Dick Cheney later wrote in his memoir that he supported the idea. President George W. Bush did not, but the result was a far closer collaboration with Israel on a cyberstrike against the Natanz facility, which took out about 1,000 of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. Ever since, the Pentagon has revised its strike plans multiple times. It now has traditional military as well as cyberoptions, and some that combine the two. Some involve direct action by Israel.
Like the secret killing of Al-Qaida’s No. 2 where the US provides the intelligence while Israeli agents carry out the killings.
That would be a war crime were there true justice in this world, and can you imagine the reaction from the pre$$ if the shoe were on the other foot?
The report from the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that Iran now had a stockpile of more than 2,442 kilograms, or over 5,385 pounds, of low-enriched uranium. That is enough to produce about two nuclear weapons, according to an analysis of the report by the Institute for Science and International Security, but it would require several months of additional processing to enrich the uranium to bomb-grade material, meaning that Iran would not be close to a bomb until late spring at the earliest — well after Trump would have left office.
And there you go.
The Iranians are NOT BUILDING A BOMB, and shame on the New York Times for giving that impression.
While the amount is concerning, it is far below the amount of fuel Iran possessed before President Barack Obama reached a nuclear accord with Tehran in July 2015. Late that year, under the terms of the accord, Iran shipped about 97 percent of its fuel stockpile to Russia — about 25,000 pounds — leaving it with less than it would need to build a single weapon. The Iranians stuck to those limits even after Trump scrapped U.S. participation in the Iran accord in 2018 and reimposed sanctions. The Iranians began to slowly edge out of those limits last year, declaring that if Trump felt free to violate its terms, they would not continue to abide by them, but the Iranians have hardly raced to produce new material: Their advances have been slow and steady, and they have denied seeking to build a weapon — though evidence stolen from the country several years ago by Israel made clear that was the plan before 2003.
The Times is trumpeting the silly garbage and lies that Israel puts out while also noting all activity stopped in 2003!
This is awful, folks, and they have forfeited their right to be called a newspaper of journalism. It's pure propaganda just as it always has been.
Trump has argued since the 2016 campaign that Iran was hiding some of its actions and cheating on its commitments; the inspectors’ report last week gave him the first partial evidence to support that view. The report criticized Iran for not answering a series of questions about a warehouse in Tehran where inspectors found uranium particles, leading to suspicion that it had once been some kind of nuclear-processing facility. The report said Iran’s answers were “not technically credible.” The International Atomic Energy Agency has previously complained that inspectors have been barred from fully reviewing some suspected sites.
It's Iraq all over again!
It is not just the U.S. military that is looking at options. Pompeo, officials said, is closely watching events unfolding on the ground in Iraq for any hint of aggression from Iran or its proxy militias against American diplomats or troops stationed there.
With you assholes on the way out, why would they?
Any incident shall be viewed as the agenda-pushing false flag it will be!
Pompeo already drew up plans to close the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad over concerns of potential threats, although in recent days he appeared willing to leave that decision to the next administration. Mortar and rocket attacks against the embassy have waned over the past several weeks, and the task to shutter the largest American diplomatic mission in the world could take months to complete, but officials said that could change if any Americans are killed before Inauguration Day.
Officials are especially nervous about the Jan. 3 anniversary of the U.S. strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and the Iraqi leader of an Iranian-backed militia — deaths that Iranian leaders regularly insist they have not yet avenged.
Pompeo, who has been the most strident proponent among Trump’s advisers of hobbling Iran while the administration still can, has more recently made clear that the death of an American was a red line that could provoke a military response.
Think of whatever they come up with as a Christmas present to themselves, the evil f**kers.
That would also increase tensions between Washington and Baghdad. Diplomats said Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi of Iraq would almost certainly object to the killing of Iraqis — even Iranian-backed militiamen — on Iraqi soil by U.S. forces who already face demands to leave.
--more--"
If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself and drag the Americans in with you:
"Israel strikes Syria and Iranian forces as Pompeo flies in; Missiles land a day after Israeli forces found antipersonnel mines planted in Israeli-held territory along the boundary with Syria" by Isabel Kershner New York Times, November 18, 2020
JERUSALEM — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Bahraini counterpart landed in Israel on Wednesday to mark a new, US-brokered normalization deal just hours after Israeli forces carried out retaliatory air strikes on Iranian targets in Syria.
Just letting them know who is really in charge.
The strikes, which Syria’s state media said had killed at least three Syrian soldiers, came a day after Israeli forces found antipersonnel mines planted in Israeli-held territory along the boundary with Syria. They were part of a long-running campaign as Israel tries to thwart what it describes as a concerted effort by Iran to entrench itself on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau that overlooks northern Israel.
So they claim with no context.
How long have they been there?
Never mind that the supposed retaliatory airstrikes are a violation of Syria's sovereignty and a war crime. The pre$$ never does.
The normalization deals were struck in the waning days of the Trump administration to notch final foreign policy achievements just before the Nov. 3 US election. The sight of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Pompeo, and the foreign minister of Bahrain, Abdul Latif bin Rashid al-Zayani, standing side by side on a podium at Netanyahu’s residence served a victory image for the outgoing Trump administration.
Netanyahu thanked Pompeo for his “unwavering friendship” and said the normalization deals would never have been signed “without President Trump’s crucial support and leadership,” but after the election of the Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, regional powers now appear to be jostling for position amid worries that a Biden administration will be softer on Iran and seek to rejoin the international nuclear deal with Iran, repudiated by President Trump two years ago.
Trump has the American people on his side, and that's it.
Does he really think that will carry him to victory?
Netanyahu has long rejected the deal, which was meant to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions, saying it was inadequate and dangerous.
Pompeo, who has embarked on a last-minute lap of diplomacy in Europe and the Middle East, said that beside the opportunities for commerce and economic development, the normalization agreements “also tell malign actors like the Islamic Republic of Iran that their influence in the region is waning and that they are ever more isolated.”
The alliance between Israel and the Gulf states has largely been based on their shared interest in countering Iran, their common archnemesis. Wednesday’s events along the Syrian frontier only underscored the challenges.
Looks to me like someone is pushing real hard for a war!
In what analysts view as an effort to preempt, complicate, or narrow Biden’s options, Trump is now racing to increase US sanctions against Iran during his last weeks in office and to seal his pledge to sell advanced weapons to Tehran’s regional enemies.
The recent exposure of the assassination this summer of Al Qaeda’s number two in a Tehran suburb by Israeli agents working at the behest of the United States could also make it harder for Biden to maneuver. Trump is even said to have considered a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving office but was dissuaded from such a step to avoid the risk of a broader conflagration.
The Trump administration has benefited Israel as well as its Gulf allies. Overturning decades of US diplomacy, Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Israeli-controlled portion of the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in the 1967 war.
Israel's abandonment of him, along with Adelson and Fox, is a signal that, as Sharon put it, "we Jews control America and the Americans know it." That would seem to be confirmed by the reaction to the electoral theft from who we were told was the greatest friend Israel has ever had.
The United States under Trump also recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, despite Palestinian claims to the eastern portion of the city. Trump’s administration further declared that it no longer considered Israeli settlements in the West Bank as necessarily a violation of international law, defying international consensus.
It is possible that Pompeo will visit both the Golan Heights and an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank before leaving Israel on Friday, flouting longstanding diplomatic convention, though American officials have so far refused to confirm any details of his itinerary.
The latest events along the Golan frontier highlighted the volatile conditions there, with Israel directly engaging with Iranian forces, who have intervened in Syria’s civil war, several times in recent years.
Amos Yadlin, a former Israeli military intelligence chief who now directs the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said Wednesday that the Israeli airstrikes were a message to the Iranians that any restraint on Israel’s part is over. He predicted the Iranians would be cautious about responding in the final weeks of the Trump administration, but he warned in a series of posts on Twitter: “The campaign against Iranian entrenchment began before the Trump administration and will continue after it.”
Related:
"The Palestinian Authority announced on Tuesday that it was resuming its cooperation with Israel, ending six months of financial hardship for tens of thousands of West Bank residents and signaling relief over the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. In May, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel pressed to annex territory on the occupied West Bank that the Palestinians have long counted on for a future state, Mahmoud Abbas, the authority’s president, cut off security coordination with Israel in protest. The move raised fears that attacks might go unprevented. Abbas also severed civilian ties, including those that help Palestinians travel into Israel for work or medical treatment, and refused transfers of money from Israel. The loss of more than $100 million a month in taxes that Israel collects on the Palestinians’ behalf forced salary cuts for tens of thousands of public-sector employees. The lack of funds compounded what was already a devastating economic crisis because of the pandemic. In a surprising turn of events, Netanyahu agreed to “suspend” his push to assert Israeli sovereignty over much of the West Bank in exchange for landmark normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain....."
You can't talk about Israel without talking about Palestine, and are they foolish enough to believe anything will change with Biden?
Let me know when he moves the embassy back to Tel Aviv and once again recognizes it as Israel's capital.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
I'm sure the war will spread like COVID:
"US paid for Scott Brown, ambassador to New Zealand, to fly on a private jet; Flight let Brown and his wife avoid quarantining at the border" by Nick Perry, The Associated Press, November 18, 2020
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — The US government paid for Ambassador Scott Brown and his wife to fly domestically in New Zealand on a private jet so they could avoid going into quarantine at the border, documents show.
The COVID restrictions are for thee, not for me!
Just about everybody who returns to New Zealand is required to spend 14 days in a hotel guarded by the military as part of the nation’s strict strategy to keep out the coronavirus, but the Browns were able to use their status as diplomats to avoid staying in a hotel and instead isolated themselves at their home in Wellington.
The Browns’ special treatment has upset many New Zealanders. Documents released to the Associated Press under official information laws show the case was discussed by top officials and lawmakers and was not resolved until days before they arrived back.
Those idiots just voted in the tyrant Ardern for another term, so piss off!
The Browns returned to New Zealand in late August after spending a month in the United States on what the ambassador described as a “working vacation.”
After arriving at Auckland Airport, the Browns went to a private runway and left for Wellington on a chartered jet, documents show. That was because regular domestic flights can't be used by new arrivals who might be carrying the virus. US officials did not immediately provide the cost of the flight, although one charter operator said such a trip would typically cost $7,000 to $14,000.
That's a good use of tax dollars, 'eh?
Meanwhile, Congre$$ can't get you another $1200 bucks!
The US Embassy in New Zealand said Wednesday that the flight, paid for by the State Department, freed up hotel space for returning New Zealanders and was cost-effective.
Especially with set-upon taxpayers footing the bill.
The ruling cla$$ arrogance is beyond belief these days, probably because they know there is nothing the public can or will do.
Documents indicate the discussion about the couple’s return began in June, when Brown wrote an e-mail to New Zealand officials, saying, “I need to be assured that I will be able to get into my car and drive home and self-isolate.” The ambassador added, “It would be problematic for me to do my job in a hotel.” Brown told officials that he and his wife, Gail Brown, would make sure they tested negative for the virus in the United States before returning.
No COVID camp fo0r Brownie!
New Zealand officials responded that top lawmakers in the government’s Cabinet were discussing what to do about diplomats — whom they can’t force into quarantine because of their status under the Vienna Convention — and “we are hopefully close to the decision-point on these issues,” but the uncertainty would drag on for weeks.
An initial plan had the ambassador completing his two-week quarantine in Auckland at the home of the US consul-general. A second plan had Brown driving the eight-hour trip back to Wellington.
“We’ll have his vehicle pre-positioned at the airport with food, water, and extra fuel, and will arrange a ‘contact-less’ handover of the keys,” US officials wrote in an e-mail.
In the end, US officials told their counterparts it was their preference to book a charter flight. The following day, New Zealand officials wrote to say the Ministry of Health had given the plan the thumbs-up.
Brown, a former Republican senator from Massachusetts, has close ties to President Trump and was once considered a possible running mate. Brown and his wife plan to return to the United States permanently within the next few weeks, where Brown will take up a new role as president and dean of New England Law school in Boston.....
Also see:
Over 25,300 fleeing Ethiopia fighting have reached Sudan
Aid groups are pleading for access to refugees, according to the New York Times, who says that with airstrikes increasing and the conflict intensifying, international aid groups say that tens of thousands more people are fleeing as fighting rages in Ethiopia.
Their goal is to reach the shores of France before dying on their way to Germany, although one can only wonder why.
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Trump administration rushes to auction off rights to oil drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
The Wa$hington Compo$t piece comes with a new York Times photograph, and they say "the move would be a capstone of President Trump’s efforts to open up public lands to logging, mining, and grazing before Biden takes the oath of office, but some major banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, have announced they will not finance projects in the refuge, while on Monday, the Oslo-based energy research firm Rystad Energy published an analysis saying that going forward, ''companies will be less willing to drill high-risk wells in environmentally sensitive frontier areas, both for financial and environmental reasons, and as a result, the full petroleum potential of areas like the Alaskan Arctic, Foz do Amazonas in Brazil and the Barents Sea may never be unlocked.''
As per Great Re$et, and it is literally going to kill Alaskans.
"On Monday, after evaluating plans for a large annual event in the midst of an escalating pandemic, Arlington National Cemetery canceled the event, planned for next month, saying it could not mitigate the risk to thousands of visitors and cemetery staff, but on Tuesday, after criticism from Republican lawmakers and a public outcry, President Trump said he overrode Army officials, tweeting that he “reversed the ridiculous decision to cancel Wreaths Across America,” which draws thousands of volunteers to lay holiday wreaths on headstones. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said he decided to hold the event, after all. It was unclear who actually decided the event would be held as planned. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and Army officials declined to comment on whether McCarthy or Trump moved the event forward...."
Is there no one in charge down there?
Trump campaign jettisons major parts of its legal challenge against Pennsylvania’s election results
The Wa$hington Compo$t says "President Trump’s campaign on Sunday scrapped a major part of its federal lawsuit challenging the election results in Pennsylvania, but even as the campaign continued filing appeals in other Pennsylvania cases on Sunday night, the withdrawal of one of its most aggressive claims curtails a central part of its effort to fend off the certification of the vote in the state and that the revised filing came on a day when Trump reiterated his intention not to concede the election to Biden, moments after seeming to acknowledge the results of the Nov. 3 election. Biden won the popular vote and was projected the winner of the race, having received 306 electoral college votes to Trump’s 232. States are still certifying the results."
The Globe says they are teasing us if their ad services are correct, and Trump's total should be 410.
The Wa$hington Compo$t says President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is living in ‘‘some fantasy world’’ while the Globe runs this article right next to it:
What a relief, huh?
They can't track Al-CIA-Duh's phantom planes and keep them from crashing into buildings but they got a bead on Santa and the kids can rest easy!
Yes, Virginia, your government lies to you and you can't gain entry into the North Pole. Trump files for recount in pair of Wisconsin counties
Because the Wa$hington Compo$t told them so.
The New York Times says Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Detroit were not decisive in explaining why the Northern battleground states flipped from Trump four years ago to Biden in 2020 and that voters outside of these cities made the difference.
The New York Times is complaining that "of the 26 Republican governors, only about a half-dozen have stated without equivocation that Biden had won or that Trump should concede. and that most were operating in a murky middle ground, straddling a line in which they neither gave full credence to the president’s claims that the election was rigged nor affirmed Biden’s victory as they try to say nothing at all,"
while the Globe is of the opinion that most Republicans either cheer him on or quietly stand by as Trump, high on denial and megalomania, trashes democracy — and then gleefully buries the remains in a deep grave and has the gall to say the pandemic should not be political.
Graduates of Smith College, the elite women’s school in Northampton, are urging one of their own, Emily W. Murphy, the head of the General Services Administration, to formally recognize President-elect Joe Biden, according to the New York Times and Wa$hington Compo$t.
The Wa$hington Compo$t says that "“Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade said Wednesday morning that “it’s in the country’s best interest if he starts coordinating on the virus and starts coordinating on security with the Biden team,” even if the president continues with his legal crusade to challenge the election results. “We will be able to get this out as soon as two weeks, and we need to coordinate on the transportation and implementation, and we need to know how thorough the plan is so we don’t drop the ball,” Kilmeade said, signaling dissent from the president’s refusal to concede he lost the election even though Fox News has generally supported his unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud."
It looks like Facebook failed American democracy — again, as the social media company failed to prevent the spread of misinformation and incitement of violence and it is Democracy that continues to suffer the consequences.
I would prefer it if they shutdown and stayed that way, because a change of leaders doesn't seem to help, and believe it or not the Globe is saying that a gangster who killed people was the last stand-up guy.
"
Polarization in the United States is reaching the retail world, with three quarters of consumers now saying they plan to shop at businesses whose values line up with their own, a study from Mastercard SpendingPulse shows. Consumers say they will prefer to spend at local establishments and those owned by minorities and women, according to the survey, and
just over half of those interviewed said they’d
prefer no gift at all over receiving one from a retailer whose views differ from their own. The study indicates that rapid change in shopping habits, fueled in part by this year’s global pandemic and unrest related to racial inequality, have staying power. While its not unusual for younger generations of consumers to make a political statement with their shopping list, that trend is now widening to new demographics, according to Steve Sadove, senior adviser for Mastercard and former chief executive officer of Saks Inc."
Your bu$ine$$ is a luxury they can not afford:
The $ure$t $ign yet he is fini$hed.
"Jay Clayton, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said Monday he would step down at the end of this year. Clayton, a longtime corporate lawyer, was appointed by President Trump in May 2017 and was one of the commission’s longest serving chairs. It is unclear who President-elect Joe Biden could nominate to be the next SEC chair. The nominee would have to be confirmed by the Senate....."
Why that article came with an ad featuring a pre-pubescent girl in skivvies front and back is beyond me and part of some Maajical World!
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NEXT DAY UPDATES:
"Trump sees Michigan as key in his bid to subvert election" by Maggie Haberman, Jim Rutenberg, Nick Corasaniti and Reid J. Epstein New York Times, November 19, 2020
For President Trump and his Republican allies, Michigan has become the prime target in their campaign to subvert the will of voters backing President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the recent election. Trump called at least one G.O.P. elections official in the Detroit area this week after she voted to certify Biden’s overwhelming victory there, and he is now set to meet with legislators ahead of Michigan’s deadline on Monday to certify the results.
Everything has been turned upside down and the opposite of what the pre$$ says is the truth.
The Republican effort to undo the popular vote is all but certain to fail, as even many Trump allies concede, and it has already suffered near-total defeats in courts in multiple states, including losses on Thursday when judges in Georgia and Arizona ruled against the Trump campaign and its allies. The president suffered another electoral blow on Thursday when Georgia announced the completion of a full recount, reaffirming Biden’s victory there.
Biden, whose transition has been hindered by Trump’s attempt to cling to power, on Thursday delivered his most forceful condemnation yet of the president’s refusal to acknowledge his loss, saying Trump would be remembered as “one of the most irresponsible presidents in American history.”
“It sends a horrible message about who we are as a country,” Biden said in remarks in Wilmington, Del., after a discussion about the economy with both Democratic and Republican governors. “It’s hard to fathom how this man thinks,” Biden added. “I’m confident he knows he hasn’t won, and is not going to be able to win, and we’re going to be sworn in on Jan 20.”
Speak for yourself, you corrupt and demented pettophile.
Election officials and legal experts say there is virtually no scenario in which a Republican-controlled state legislature could legitimately override the results of a properly held vote, and some GOP legislators in battleground states said they would not intervene.
They would be in Wisconsin and Arizona.
The Trump maneuvering has intensified in part because many states are now poised to certify their election vote totals; crucially, six key states that Biden won — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin — have deadlines between Friday and Dec. 1 to certify his victories.
On Tuesday night, Trump called Monica Palmer, a Republican member of the canvassing board of Wayne County, which includes Detroit. Palmer was at the center of a fast-moving controversy over the routine certification of votes, when she and the other Republican board member at first declined to certify the county’s votes, then changed their minds under pressure from angry voters and officials.
Palmer told The Washington Post that Trump — who had celebrated on Twitter after her earlier vote against certification — called her after the meeting, to inquire about her safety. She said he did not pressure her to change her mind yet again.
Roughly 24 hours after that contact by the president, Palmer and the other Republican board member, William Hartmann, announced late Wednesday that they were reversing their move to certify the results.
At the White House, Trump has been toggling between appearing to recognize his loss and expressing bitterness and disbelief that what he believed was a victory was being taken from him, aides said. Bolstered by some core supporters, he has hardened in his belief that state legislatures could hold the keys to his political salvation.
The few people who have tried to intervene and tell him that it is time to let Biden begin a transition have been shut down by Trump. The president has been goaded along in particular by his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has further stoked Trump’s fury, along with his hope of overcoming the reality of Biden’s victory, a half-dozen White House and campaign advisers said.
The president has become obsessed with a conspiracy theory advanced by one of his lawyers, Sidney Powell, about Dominion Voting Systems machines, aides said, asking one adviser after another about whether there is something to the theory that there was a global effort to hack the election. Cybersecurity officials have said that “there is no evidence” voting systems were compromised.
This is getting sickening to read every day.
Though Trump has discussed reaching out to Republicans in other swing states, so far he has called officials only in Michigan, aides said.
On Thursday, Giuliani appeared in a cramped room at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, where he and his team of lawyers unspooled a meandering thread of conspiracies, alleging a “centralized” plot of widespread fraud with no evidence. (Though Giuliani said he had evidence, he said that he could not share it to protect personal identities, and that there were other allegations that “at this point, I really can’t reveal.”) Powell, another lawyer for the Trump campaign, followed Giuliani and furthered the baseless claims, including a lengthy digression that involved Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan leader who died in 2013.
That's where my print ended.
Now please read these two analyses as I did:
Jon Rappoport says it was a blistering press conference for the ages, and you see how the Globe reported it.
That's Stephen Lendman, no fan of Trump, who says evidence abounds of the most brazen political grand theft in the country’s history, and yet establishment media pretend it doesn’t exist and can anyone ever believe anything they claim ever again?
The answer to his question is no, nor can you believe those who swing into line and back the coup -- not that it really matter since while all this going on in front of us, Operation Warp Speed is silently barreling at us sooner than we think.
Senator Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa who just won re-election, was sharply critical of Powell’s false allegations that both Republicans and Democrats had been paid to have the system rigged on their behalf. “To insinuate that Republican and Democratic candidates paid to throw off this election, I think, is absolutely outrageous, and I do take offense to that,” Ernst said on Fox News Radio. “To have that accusation just offhandedly thrown out there just to confuse our voters across the United States, I think that is absolutely wrong.”
Late Thursday, Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, joined Biden in criticizing the actions by Trump, saying in a statement that the president had tried to “subvert the will of the people” and that it was “difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American president.”
Mitt in line for Treasury Secretary?
The next step in the election process in Michigan comes on Monday, when the four-member state canvassing board faces a deadline to finalize the certification of the state’s vote, after the submission of all 83 county certifications that were completed by Tuesday. During an interview on Thursday morning, one of the Republican members of the state board of canvassers, Norm Shinkle, said he had not made up his mind as to how he would vote, especially given the questions in Wayne County. He said he was being deluged with calls about his upcoming vote. At a news briefing on Thursday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat, was asked about what her message to Trump would be on his election efforts.
Who cares what that treasonous tyrant has to say, and why is the pre$4 not covering her impending impeachment?
Bob Bauer, a senior adviser to Biden and a longtime election lawyer, said there was no legal means by which Republicans in Michigan could cast aside a duly held election without violating the voting rights of the state’s entire electorate. “They cannot change the outcome after the fact,” he said. Still, he acknowledged, Trump could try, and it could create “a disgraceful spectacle.”
Initially, Trump campaign aides favored a discreet series of challenges and recount requests, people briefed on the discussions said, saying they would have been long shots but would not have been laughed out of a courtroom. Now, the effort has been taken over by Giuliani, who has embraced a scattershot strategy and promoted wild conspiracy theories — even in court proceedings, as he did at a hearing in Pennsylvania this week.....
One wonders why the pre$$ didn't make a stink about him destroying a crime scene and shipping WTC steel off to China to be melted down.
The Globe delivers Trump a front-page love letter today, although I don't expect them to have dinner any time soon:
"‘The corruption is unprecedented,’ ‘CHAOS,’ and other love notes to America from the Trump campaign" by Victoria McGrane Globe Staff, November 19, 2020
They come, day after day, a stampede of screaming subject lines dispatched from an alternate universe where the outcome of the presidential election remains in doubt.
Such is the communication from the Trump campaign more than two weeks after Election Day, more than a week and a half after news networks declared Joe Biden the president-elect after he eliminated the last mathematical path to a Trump victory.
That doesn't make it true, far from it!
For those rooted in reality, the Trump campaign’s missives — coming at a steady pace of more than a dozen a day, even now — might seem comical, the petulant last gasps of a rejected leader, one final grift to empty the pockets of his most stalwart supporters, yet experts say they’re far from a laughing matter; rather, they are part of the president’s latest assault on the norms underpinning American democracy.
Do you see me here laughing anymore, $hitbag?
The language of the e-mails and text messages emerging from the Trump campaign, which continue to falsely cast the election as stolen from Trump, “creates mistrust in democratic institutions, makes his supporters think that the structure of democracy can’t be trusted, and that unless Republicans win, it’s illegitimate — which is anti-democratic,” said Jason Stanley, a Yale University philosophy professor who wrote “How Fascism Works.”
Because it was, and the fa$ci$ts are Democrats and their collaborators -- although this is really distraction from the roar of the train named Warp Speed which is nearly upon us.
A stark illustration of the real-world consequences of Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud run amok and corrupt election processes surfaced Wednesday, when the top elections official in Arizona issued a statement saying she has faced “ongoing and escalating threats of violence” against herself and her family.
“[T]here are those, including the president, members of Congress and other elected officials, who are perpetuating misinformation and are encouraging others to distrust the election results in a manner that violates the oath of office they took. It is well past time that they stop. Their words and actions have consequences,” said Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat.
What exactly does that threat mean, you hypocrite?
The Republican Secretary of State in Georgia also has said he’s faced death threats as Trump and other Republicans have questioned the validity of vote counts in his state and his failure to expose fraud they claim, without evidence, was rampant in that state, among other places Trump lost, and a Monmouth poll released Wednesday found that 32 percent of Americans believe that Biden’s victory was secured by voter fraud. Among those who voted for Trump, more than three-quarters believe Democrats stole the election from the president.
I'm also sick of the self-serving false-flaggery promoted by the $tinking propaganda pre$$, too.
Opening one of these frequent post-election missives from the Trump campaign is to descend into a right-wing fever dream in which a vast conspiracy of Democrats, leftist radicals, and the mainstream media are working to steal the election from Trump, and unlike Twitter, where the platform has stepped up efforts to label the president’s baseless claims as misinformation, there’s no third party warning supporters about the content pumped straight into their inboxes and phones.....
They say “this is sheer MADNESS,” and I agree.
I need to stop buying and reading a Globe, period.
"Pompeo visits West Bank settlement and offers parting gifts to Israeli right; Secretary of state takes a victory lap over the Trump administration’s policy achievements in Middle East" by David M. Halbfinger and Isabel Kershner New York Times, November 19, 2020
JERUSALEM — The high point of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s valedictory trip to Israel could easily have been the long, grateful recitation by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday of the gifts that the Trump administration has bestowed upon his right-wing government, but then Pompeo unwrapped some new ones.
He announced that the United States would henceforth view the international campaign to boycott Israel as anti-Semitic. He stopped on the occupied West Bank, becoming the most senior American official to visit one of Israel’s settlements, which much of the world considers a violation of international law, and he directed that goods imported to the United States from a large swath of the West Bank be labeled “made in Israel.” The scope of that act, specialists noted, far exceeded even the large section of the West Bank that the Trump peace plan envisioned being annexed by Israel.
“The people of the book have not had a better friend,” Netanyahu said to Pompeo in Jerusalem on Thursday morning, after gushing that the classification of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement as anti-Semitic was “simply wonderful.”
All told, Pompeo’s whirlwind day was scarcely a mere victory lap. It was a last chance to reinforce Israel’s hard-line approach to Palestinians and, as Democrats and other supporters of a two-state solution cried foul, to place political land mines in the path of the incoming Biden administration.
It was also a day filled with photo opportunities that could be useful for Pompeo, particularly with the evangelical Christian voters he has long courted, were he to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2024, but there is also a rushed sense to the Trump administration’s diplomatic moves on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the clock runs down as if, like settlers themselves, they are frantically pouring concrete in hopes that it will set before Jan. 20. It is the same approach the lame-duck administration is taking with Iran.
In both places, some of those moves will be difficult to reverse.
Others, however, like the new labeling guidelines for West Bank products, could be undone with the stroke of a pen, said Michael Koplow, an analyst and supporter of a two-state solution at the Israel Policy Forum. He called the made-in-Israel rules a “fringe issue” that would resonate with Jewish Republicans, but said President-elect Joe Biden would pay little political price for reversing it.
Later in the day, in another first for a US secretary of state, Pompeo flew to an old military fortification atop a strategic hill in the long-disputed Golan Heights overlooking Syria, but it was Pompeo’s lunchtime stop at the Psagot winery in a Jewish settlement near the West Bank city of Ramallah that drew the loudest protests.
Local Palestinians and Israeli land specialists say that many of the vines that supply the Psagot winery grow on plundered soil. Several Palestinian families are registered as the legal owners of nearly 20 acres around the settlement that are now planted with the winery’s grapevines.
Pompeo said that the new guidelines were consistent with the administration’s “reality-based foreign policy approach,” and that the producers “operate within the economic and administrative framework of Israel and their goods should be treated accordingly,” but the new policy could have broader meaning.
The Trump plan, which Netanyahu endorsed, would ultimately grant Israel sovereignty over all the settlements in return for a truncated, barely contiguous Palestinian state.
“Falsely labeling settlement products as ‘made in Israel’ means that Israel continues to benefit from its illegal and oppressive occupation of Palestine with complete impunity, thus giving the Israeli government no incentive to change its behavior, end the occupation, and work toward peace,” said Mohammad Mustafa, economic adviser to Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.
Left-wing Israelis warned that the move to sanitize traces of the occupation from exports of settlement goods to the United States would backfire.
Modeled on the fight against apartheid in South Africa, BDS seeks to mobilize international economic and political pressure on Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians. Many supporters see it as aimed primarily at ending Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, but its opponents say the movement’s real goal is the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state.....
"Trump’s Confederate military base veto threat imperils defense bill" by Catie Edmondson, Luke Broadwater and Maggie Haberman New York Times, November 19, 2020
WASHINGTON — When the top lawmakers who oversee the Defense Department met privately this week to discuss a year-end effort to pass the annual military policy bill, a Republican senator, James Inhofe, issued an ultimatum: If they wanted the measure to pass this year, they would need to kill its requirement to strip the names of Confederate leaders from military bases.
Now, Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, has privately hinted that Trump would drop his objection to stripping Confederate leaders’ names from military bases if Democrats agreed to repeal an important legal shield for social media companies, but the offer reflected the appetite at the White House to score long-shot victories on top priorities in the final days of Trump’s presidency, and it further complicated what could become a bitter fight on Capitol Hill over the issue of Confederate base names.
Trump and his closest allies in Congress have agitated for a revocation of Section 230, which shields social media companies from liability for the content posted by users on their sites.
The Justice Department has written a legislative proposal intended to reform the law, and Trump signed an executive order several months ago intended to limit some of the Section 230 provisions.
Inhofe’s comments Monday night, which were described by two people familiar with the private discussion, previewed a looming fight over the issue that could snarl the entire defense bill in the waning days of the Trump administration.
In the months preceding the election, Inhofe had publicly warned that the bill could not become law if it included the provision, given Trump’s opposition. His comments this week reflected how, even as his presidency winds down, Trump has continued to cast a cloud over the fate of critical legislation that authorizes pay raises for American troops — all because of an issue on which he has found himself almost entirely alone.
They also raised the prospect of a messy legislative showdown over whether to defend Confederate symbols.
That is where the print portion of the article ended, and one can't help but notice the Jewi$h $upremaci$m that is unremarked upon be layered on top of the old racist Southern Confederates.
I will simply note that no one complained about the good old boys during the 150 years of wars for empire and leave it at that.
The defense bill passed both chambers with veto-proof majorities, but Congress has never been able to muster the votes to override any of Trump’s eight vetoes during his term. Still, many Democrats are spoiling for a fight to keep the provision, and a number of Republicans have made it clear they want to preserve it as well.
“I don’t think we should back away from our values and what we stand for,” said Representative Anthony Brown, a Democrat and an Army veteran who wrote the House measure. “I don’t think we should turn a blind eye to what would be viewed by many as a perpetuation of a racist symbol in a name, simply because he threatens to veto the Defense Authorization Act.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday evening said retaining the provision in the final bill was vital. “It is imperative that the conference report include provisions that secure this essential priority,” Pelosi said in a statement. “Our bases should reflect our highest ideals as Americans.”
That's from where the slaughter of those across the Globe are carried out.
The two top Democrats on the armed services panels, Smith and Senator Jack Reed are both institutionalists who have prided themselves on passing a bipartisan defense bill every year, even if it meant making compromises that disappointed their party’s base, but Reed said in a brief interview that he believed Congress must pass the legislation with the removal of Confederate base names included — and force Trump to make a decision on a veto.
Isn't there a pay raise for the troops in there?
Related:
Well, he won't be needing one.
It is highly unusual for a provision that has been passed by both the House and the Senate to be jettisoned in final negotiations over the bill, and Reed said he did not think anyone, including Inhofe, would be able to “strip things out unilaterally.”
“I think we should pass the bill,” Reed said Tuesday. “Hopefully, the president will reconsider. It was a bipartisan effort. The committee passed it by a voice-vote with very few objections. Then on the floor, the bill was passed with more than 80 votes and the House bill essentially has the equivalent language. It was a bipartisan effort in both houses, and has to be recognized and supported.”
Treason seems to be an e$tabli$hment, 'er, biparti$an effort, too!
Where is Smedley Butler when you need him?
"
Business leaders in Washington and on Wall Street are increasingly calling on the Trump administration to recognize Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election and initiate a formal transition ahead of Biden’s inauguration in January. Some of the
biggest corporate lobbying groups — including the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers — supported President Trump in his push to cut taxes and roll back regulations while in office but are
now breaking with the president as he pushes unfounded claims of fraud and wages a protracted court battle in an attempt to overturn the election results. The business pressure comes as the General Services Administration refuses to issue a letter of “ascertainment,” which would allow Biden’s transition team to begin the transfer of power, and
as top Republicans refuse to formally concede that Trump lost, and at the DealBook Online Summit on Wednesday, the
chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon,
expressed dismay that the transition has not yet formally begun. “We need a peaceful transition,” Dimon said. “We had an election. We
have a new president. We
should support that. Whether you like the election outcome or not, you
should support the
democracy because it is based on a system of faith and trust.” The
calls from business groups could bring additional
pressure on top Republicans in Congress
to finally recognize Biden as the winner of the election, even as Trump continues to pressure party officials to cast doubt on the results. Meanwhile, dozens of public health experts are urging the Trump administration to allow the presidential transition process to move forward, warning that the delay “places American lives at risk.”
The New York Times and Washington Post collaborated on that report, just as the $tring-pulling CEOs collaborate with the Deep State coup.
Related:
The Globe laments that some are still waiting because when incarcerated people are denied money they’re owed, their families suffer.
The Globe says Latinos came out strong to embrace Joe Biden on Nov. 3 and he should embrace them back -- even after pre$$ reports noted Trump's record total of Black and Hispanic votes for a Republican.
